Chapter 63: Unimpeachable Older-brother Rights Or Blank Check

Damon had actually come to Vespera for something embarrassingly simple, given everything else the day had piled onto his plate; he was going home, yeah, that was the entire message he’d walked all the way to her door to deliver and somehow the universe had spent the previous hour making sure he arrived carrying a stalker, a business partner he hadn’t agreed to, and a photo of his own genitals in a stranger’s cloud storage.

She looked him over once, and her eyes dropped straight to his pockets. "You got your ID?"

Damon pulled the card out and waved it. "Obviously."

Vespera’s shoulders loosened. "Good."

Yeah. Good. How he’d gotten the fucking thing was a revelation he had no intention of revisiting unless somebody held a gun to his head, and even then he’d want to inspect the gun first, stall for time, maybe negotiate.

Celeste had had it.

He’d asked her earlier, once the horror had settled into something more like grim curiosity, whether she even attended Blackwood — on the reasonable theory that knowing whether Psycho Bellamy was going to keep materializing around campus counted as survival intelligence.

She did.

Worse: same class as him.

’Curse the fucking luck. Curse it into the ground and salt the earth after.’

Somehow and cosmically, he’d landed in the exact same lecture as the one girl he wanted to be away from.

The universe had jokes. Damon sincerely hoped it choked on the next one.

She’d known about who had his ID before he even asked, too because she’d engineered it:

Her older sister had the card and she was supposed to hand it to Vespera; so Celeste, behaving exactly as any loving younger sister would, had stolen it off her own sibling first and then blackmailed her and told her flatly that if she didn’t fancy Vespera finding out she’d misplaced her friend’s brother’s student ID into the crazy girl’s hands, she’d go quiet and tell Vespera she’d given Damon his card, back off and leave the ID and Damon to Celeste.

And it had worked.

It also explained a few things, actually — chief among them why Vespera got along with Celeste’s older sister in the first place:

Elite friendships were weird as hell. People liked to imagine money smoothed everything out and made socializing easy, but Damon had grown up close enough to these families to know friendship among them was really just a ranking system wearing a nicer coat. Surnames and board seats mattered. Which father golfed with which mayor or senator, which mother controlled which foundation, who’d married up and who’d married sideways — all of it fed quietly into who got to stand next to whom at a party and feel comfortable about it.

Celeste’s older sister was the rare exception.

She was simple-minded, maybe, but not stupid — naturally soft, submissive and genuinely uninterested in controlling a room or proving she outranked the person beside her. Vespera was decent enough not to weaponize that, so the two of them fit.

A rich-girl friendship that ran on one of them not caring about the scoreboard.

Her fear of Celeste, though — that was a separate subject entirely, and Damon understood it on sight, he’d met the girl exactly once and she already knew passwords he’d forgotten, habits he barely remembered having, the layout of a bedroom he’d had years ago, rejections he had no memory of delivering, his class schedule, his website, and God alone knew what else she was sitting on.

’Now try sharing a childhood home with that.’

Her family had managed it for nineteen years. Damon almost felt bad for them.

None of which meant he had any intention of dancing to Celeste Bellamy’s tune. She could be a genius and could rebuild his entire Service Path in a single afternoon and probably recite what boxers he’d worn last Christmas if you gave her a running start.

That didn’t mean she he’d work with her... that was never fucking happening.

Vespera watched him tuck the ID away and gave a satisfied little nod. "So you’re heading back home?"

"Yeah."

"Tonight?"

Damon looked at her. "That’s usually implied by ’going home,’ yeah."

She gave him a look and he smiled. Then Vespera went suspiciously quiet with her lips pressing together, eyes sliding sideways like she was waiting for the tactically correct moment to ask for something.

He’d known her his whole life: "You want me to take your car back, don’t you?"

Vespera looked at him, he laughed and reached over to wreck her hair like he was the older brother now before she could dodge.

"Damon!" She slapped at his wrist. "My hair—"

"You’ll live."

She batted his hand away and started repairing the damage, glaring the whole time, which only made him grin harder. She genuinely hated when he touched her hair but she needed something from him, which granted him full and unimpeachable older-brother rights to be as annoying about it as he pleased although he was the young one here.

Small windows like this didn’t come often.

’And a man takes what the universe offers.’

Vespera finally got everything back into place, and then her whole face changed with her shoulders drawing in first and next eyes grew wide and bright. That ridiculous, devastating, weaponized cute face she deployed exclusively when she wanted something badly enough to spend a little dignity on it.

"Pretty please?"

Damon stared at her.

’Fuck.’

After an entire afternoon in the ring with the actual monster, his sister suddenly looked like something that belonged on top of a Christmas tree. Her eyes were even doing the shining thing — some unfair, clearly rehearsed bullshit she’d never once admitted to practicing.

’Who taught her that? Nobody. They come pre-installed. The women in this family were manipulating grown men before I understood object permanence.’

"You really want it back?"

"Yes."

"The four-hundred-and-twenty-thousand-dollar car you missed so badly that Uber and a personal chauffeur became unbearable hardships?"

Her mouth twitched and rolled her eyes. "You remembered."

"I remember stupidity with perfect clarity."

"Damon."

He laughed. Obviously he was taking the car back but a man who’d just survived Celeste Bellamy was, in his professional opinion, entitled to at least one small crime to rebalance the day.

"Come here."

Her eyes narrowed instantly. "What."

"Come here."

"What are you doing."

"Nothing criminal." He pulled her in by the shoulder and got his phone out. The second the camera opened and flicked to video, her suspicion came roaring back.

"No."

"You don’t even know what I’m asking yet."

"I know you."

"Fair. Now, smile."

"Damon."

"Say: ’I owe Damon one favor.’"

Her jaw dropped a fraction. "What?"

"One favor."

"No."

He lowered the phone. "Cool. Uber still exists, I can take that back home."

"Damon!"

"So does the chauffeur. Weird guy but sure. Better than helping you for free.."

"You’re such an asshole."

"And yet — still holding your car hoped if you want it home."

She stared at him long enough that he genuinely started running odds on whether fratricide was on the table. He raised the phone again and gave it a little encouraging shake.

"Come on."

She exhaled like a woman signing a confession, then looked into the lens with all the joy of a hostage recording proof of life. "I owe Damon one favor."

He shook his head. "Nope. Full sentence. And specify that it’s a blank check."

Her head snapped toward him. "A what?"

"Blank check."

"Absolutely fucking not."

He lowered the phone but she caught his wrist before it finished descending:

"Wait."

Vespera looked at the phone, then at him and released a sigh so theatrical he nearly felt guilty.

Nearly... he started recording again.

Vespera stared dead into the camera. "I owe Damon one favor, and apparently it’s a blank check, because my brother is a terrible human being."

Damon grinned. "Beautiful."

"Delete it."

"Never."

"I’m serious."

"So am I. Deeply."

He stopped recording and immediately backed the file up before she could attempt anything clever. She watched him do it, watched the little upload spin. "You actually backed it up."

"I grew up with women. I learn, or I die."

"I hate you."

"No you don’t."

She rolled her eyes but he caught the small smile before she turned away.