They built.
Every morning.
Every evening.
Piece by piece.
Damian's section.
This was what he had been supposed to be doing at nineteen and twenty and through every year he had spent making himself invisible.
This.
Sitting across from someone who listened and argued and pushed back and built on what he said.
Using what he was good at.
For something that mattered.
He had always been good at pattern recognition.
At reading systems.
At understanding what a structure was actually designed to do versus what it claimed to do.
He had used these skills for years to stay invisible.
To read rooms.
To find exits.
To understand threats before they understood him.
He was using them for something different now.
He was mapping the acquisition.
Victor's target was Walker Corporation's primary subsidiary — the real estate and infrastructure division that was the company's most profitable and most publicly legible asset.
