“The only way to keep you safe was to make sure you were no longer associated with me.”

“I had to make you run, Nora.”

“I had to make the world believe I had discarded you so completely that you were no longer a useful target.”

My mind struggled to process the weight of his words.

Four years of anger, of feeling worthless, of raising our son in the freezing isolation of Copper Harbor.

All of it had been built on a foundation of his desperation to keep me alive.

“You let me hate you,” I said.

“Hating me kept you alive,” he replied.

He looked away, his jaw tightening as he stared into the dark corners of the study.

“Every day of those four years was a calculation,” he said.

“I watched the court cases, I watched Vance’s assets, waiting for the threat to clear.”

“And Marlene?” I asked, remembering my kind landlady.

“I set up a shell company to buy her building’s mortgage,” Damon admitted.

“I lowered her payments on the condition that she rent the apartment to you for next to nothing.”