Part 4 — At Romanos’ Charity Evening I Danced with Another Man, and Then Damien Told Me Something About My Father That Made Victoria’s Smile Disappear

But it was already too late. I squeezed the little shell pressed into my palm until it bled, because I knew that the hardest answer was still waiting for me in that harbor…

It was eleven o’clock at night when Damien’s lawyer called me.

“Ms. Sophie, Mr. Romano asks you not to go to the harbor.”

“Why doesn’t he call me himself?”

For several seconds, silence fell on the other side.

“Because the police took his phone.”

“And why are you calling me?”

“Because today I am meeting for the first time a person who no longer wants to defend Damien Romano.”

He hung up.

The second call was made by Victoria’s father. The number was unknown, but his voice was sharp despite his age.

“Your father thought that the truth set people free.”

“Did you kill him?”

“I gave the order.”

My breath caught.

“Why?”

“Because he thought he would escape everything by hiding a little girl.”

“You employed that little girl in your company for four years.”

“No. Damien worked to protect you. I was waiting for the truth to bring you to me.”

“Are you coming to the harbor?” I asked.

“You are already there, aren’t you?”

I was standing by the window. Rain was beginning in the street. I held my little shell between my fingers.

I did not go to the harbor alone.

Ethan was waiting for me by the car, while two undercover investigators followed us behind. I could not call Damien, but I received a short message from him in the morning: “If you go, stay in a lighted place. This time do not stop because of my life.”

It was the first message from him that did not sound like an order.

We arrived at the harbor at four in the morning. The water was black, and the ships’ chains rang in the wind like heavy bells.

Alister Sinclair was waiting for us there.

Two armed men stood behind him. He was holding my father’s old leather notebook in his hand.

“I always wondered how long his face would live in your eyes,” he told me.

“You knew him.”

“I knew his stubbornness. He thought Damien would turn against me.”

“He did.”

Alister smiled.

“Damien did not turn against me because of you. He merely took over his own father’s guilt and thought that it would be redemption.”

I looked at him.

“What do you mean?”

“On the night your father died, Damien was standing beside me. He knew that a fire was going to start in the car.”

Ethan took hold of my arm.

“Sophie, step back.”

But I could not move.

For years I had believed that Damien was my silent protector. Now I was learning that on that night he had stood there when my father’s life ended.

“Why didn’t he save him?”

Alister tilted his head to the side.

“Because your father himself asked him to choose your life. Damien could only pull you out of the car. Your father locked the door from inside.”

“That is a lie.”

“Then listen.”

He took a small voice recorder from the back pocket of the notebook.

“Damien does not have this. I kept it because I knew it would be useful to you someday.”

The recording began.

My father’s voice sounded faintly.

“Choose Sophie. My time is over.”

Then Damien’s young voice sounded.

“I will not leave you alone.”

“If you stay, you will both die.”

“I swear, I will protect her.”

“Not for four years. A whole lifetime.”

The recording stopped.

I fell to my knees. The cold surface of the concrete froze my knees, but what hurt me most was that before dying my father had assigned Damien to me, making me an object of surveillance for him.

The undercover investigators came out of the shadows then.

“Weapons down!” one of them shouted.

Everything happened in a few seconds. Alister’s men began shooting, Ethan threw me to the ground, and the investigators pinned them against the wall. Alister tried to escape, but his foot slipped on the wet concrete.

I stood in front of him.

“Give me my father’s notebook.”

“This is your family’s curse.”

“No. This is evidence of your crime.”

He handed me the notebook.

That same morning Damien confessed everything. Not because the lawyer forced him to. Because he finally understood that protecting me was no longer hiding the truth.

His company’s accounts were opened. Shipments of weapons hidden in the ship lists were discovered. Victoria and Alister were arrested. Damien was not charged with murder, because the recording confirmed that he had saved my life on my father’s orders, although because of the illegal business he too had to go to court for years.

At the first court hearing Damien told me:

“If you want, never speak to me again.”

“I want your words to have consequences for the first time.”

He nodded.

Then the judge played the audio recording. Damien’s young voice was heard in the hall again: “I swear, I will protect her.”

Damien sat on the bench and listened to his own words.

For the first time he understood that the promise he had considered love had become a four-year prison for me.

He buried his head in his hands.

I did not go to help him.

It was not cruelty.

It was the first time that I left his pain in his own hands.

Three weeks later I left the Romano house.

In my room only a bed, two books, and a childhood photograph remained. On the cabinet stood the small wooden box that had belonged to my father, empty, because I had already taken the shell to my new apartment.

Damien found the photograph and sent it to me.

On the back it said: “Now you choose, Sophie.”

I did not answer.

I moved from Chicago to Milwaukee. In the small apartment, the kitchen window looked out over the railway. In the mornings I woke to the sound of trains, made coffee myself, and no longer asked anyone how much milk was needed.

I found a job at a charitable foundation. For the first time my work was not hiding other people’s secrets, but finding homes for people.

Ethan visited me once a week. I was not in a hurry to be with him. I wanted to learn my life without the shadow of a man.

Six months later, my little neighbor Lily gave me a drawing. A large blue water, a small boat, and a woman wearing a glass shell around her neck were drawn on the picture.

“This is you,” Lily told me. “And the boat is the place where you are no longer afraid.”

I pinned the drawing to the refrigerator.

That same evening I received a message from Damien.

“Sophie, the court has completed the sale of my company. I transferred the money to a foundation created in your father’s name. I know that I cannot ask you to return. I only wanted to say once: I do not protect you anymore. I simply hope that you are at peace.”

I looked at the screen for a long time.

Then I wrote:

“I am at peace. Do not protect me anymore. Do not wait for me anymore. Live with the truth you finally told me.”

He did not write back.

The first snow came in December. The street turned white, and the sound of the railway made the windows tremble. I placed my father’s little shell beneath Lily’s drawing.

Once I thought that his voice came only from the past.

That night the shell was slightly shaken by the wind.

And for the first time I understood that the waves no longer protected me.

I learned how to swim.