And he realized, with brutal clarity, that the person who had been pretending all along wasn’t Sophie.
It was him.
THE APOLOGY THAT DIDN’T ASK TO BE FORGIVEN
Damian went to the agency himself. Not through lawyers. Not through assistants. He asked to see Sophie, and he accepted the condition that if she refused, he would leave without argument.
Sophie agreed to meet him in a small break room. She stood with her purse clutched to her chest, face pale but posture stubbornly upright.
Damian apologized without trying to soften the truth.
He admitted the deception. He admitted the cruelty. He admitted that he had been wrong.
He told her he’d read the notebook, and Sophie flinched, anger flashing in her eyes, but Damian didn’t defend himself. He only said, honestly, that the notebook had made him see his own ugliness.
Then he did the one thing that mattered more than words.
He removed the power imbalance.
He terminated her employment contract with full severance, not as punishment, but as freedom. He offered to fund her EMT education through a third-party scholarship in her name so she wouldn’t owe him anything or feel trapped by gratitude.
Sophie stared at him, tears slipping down her cheeks, confused by the sincerity.
