306 Compromise

"Thanks." Damien handed Styles's phone back to him after calling Markus. He had asked for a new set of suit and shoes as well as a new cell phone. He had no time to have his phone fixed so he'll just have to use a new one. Markus didn't have to buy though, because one of the perks of Damien being an influential person was that he gets free stuff all the time. A few brand new cellphones were sitting somewhere in the closet of his penthouse.

"Woah… What happened to you?" Styles remarked when Katherine entered the kitchen to join them. She had a scowl on her face and she avoided looking at Damien as she grabbed a bottle of water from the double-door fridge.

She kept quiet and scoffed before she drank her water and faced Styles who was sitting next to Damien at the kitchen island.

"She looks frustrated," Damien commented casually while he played with the tiny listening devices in front of him. She was the one who started it and he only retaliated. Why was she the one pissed? Tch.

"Oh-kaaay…" Styles eyed the two big babies who had been bickering since they arrived earlier. They were gone too long in Katherine's bedroom but judging by the look on her face, something must have happened. 'Did they fight? Hmmm…'

"So I tried to contact Am—Falcon..." Styles eyed Damien when he almost said Falcon's real name to her son who still had no idea who she was. "...and it went straight to her voicemail."

Katherine sat opposite Styles and questioned, "You don't think something happened to her, do you?"

"Falcon?" Damien probed. He remembered hearing the name before and thought that it was the woman with them last Saturday.

Hearing Damien's question, Styles began to get nervous. "She's uh… she's…" He looked at Katherine, hoping that she would save him from saying something he shouldn't. Why was he stuck in this situation? He didn't like being in the middle of this kind of thing. It wasn't his secret to tell so he had a hard time keeping his calm.

"She's the woman with us at the party," Katherine continued. When Damien nodded, she turned back to Styles and shifted the topic, "Styles, the bugs?"

"Right." Styles gathered the bugs on the white marble of the kitchen island and continued, "I found one more from his clothes. And also one from yours." On the kitchen island's surface, there were a total of four tiny metal devices. The small piece of technology was a product of Shadow. Every device had six holes on it and a tiny red blinking dot at the back — a listening and a tracking device in one.

Damien's suit was tailored and the smooth material of his suit could cause the device to slide when attached. The blond woman must have thought of this so she placed three on him to make sure at least one stays attached. Judging by the Shadow agent's tactic, she must be lower than Level 3 if her skill was this sloppy.

Wait. "Huh… Now that I think about it, someone bumped into me when I arrived at the office building a couple of hours before that. I didn't get to see the woman's face but she was wearing an office outfit and had blond hair. It must have been the same woman who clung onto Damien outside the building." She couldn't believe she missed it. After being inactive for five years, she surely was out of shape.

A Steward Mission is when an agent plants a listening device on the subject to get some information. But why would Shadow send a low-level agent for this when the subject was Damien Park?

"Who are these people?" Damien finally questioned, snapping Katherine out of her thought.

She and Styles looked at each other, wondering how to answer Damien's questions. The two just had the conversation in the morning before she went to work and now she was being tested. How was she supposed to handle this?

"Katherine." Damien's voice was low and demanding. He wouldn't accept it if she tried to brush him off again this time.

Taking in a deep breath, she exhaled slowly as if it would help calm her nerves when she answered him, "It's the people I'm working for before I lost my memories. They're after me… I'm not sure why they're after you—they could be after you because of me."

"How dangerous are these people?"

"More than you can imagine," she told him as she looked at him straight in the eye. At least she could tell him this. But for how much more she could tell him, she just wasn't certain.

Damien stared back at her, studying her eyes as though he was looking into her soul to see what else she was hiding from him.

Katherine reached out and held his arm. "I know you have a lot of questions right now, and I've been telling you to give me some time… I'm sure it's frustrating already. But I swear I will tell you more. I promise. Just… give me a little more time. Will that be okay?" She could no longer hide it from him but at this time, she also needed to find Falcon and she had to leave now. Where was she?

Damien let out a sigh. His patience was wearing off but he wanted to trust her. "Fine. You have one day. Or I'm going to start persuading someone else to tell me." His eyes darted to the man next to him.

Styles swallowed the lump in his throat. King Charming said "persuade" but Styles felt like his method of persuasion didn't seem nice.

"Fair enough." Katherine nodded.

There was a bell from the intercom on the wall and Styles went to press a button, allowing Markus to enter Katherine's penthouse.

Damien changed into the suit while Katherine excused herself to the bedroom and when she came out, she had a black leather jacket and keys in her hand.

"Where are you headed?" Damien asked as he buttoned his coat and fixed his cufflinks.

"I need to find Falcon."

"How are you going to do that?" He walked up to her and watched as she received a palm-sized device from Styles.

"It's a tracker. I lost her signal a couple of hours ago and it hasn't come back until now. She's also not answering her phone. Something must have happened," said Styles.

"Can I help?" Damien probed. He didn't know what Katherine intended to do and he didn't want to think that she was going to put herself in danger again.

"It's okay. I'm sure she's fine. I just need to see if she's still in the last place she went to. It's just about an hour's drive. Don't you have somewhere you need to go?" she asked.

Damien and Markus exchanged looks. He had been late to a meeting for more than an hour already and he did need to get going. But how was he supposed to let Katherine go on her own?

"Damien, you need to go and do whatever you need to do like normal. If someone is watching, you need to go about your business like usual as if nothing happened."

"I can't let you go alone."

Extending her palm out, she asked for his new phone and saved Styles's number. "Styles has my tracker. If you don't hear from me in a few hours, you can call him."

It wasn't what Damien would have wanted but he could work with it. He just hoped she would be safe wherever she needed to go and hopefully find her friend.