"Please, I don't know! I don't know what you're talking about!" Harper screamed as Damon slowly traced a circle around his eye with a stalk of vervain. The young man had been denying his involvement in anything for the past hour and Damon's patience with his intractability was wearing thin.

"Where were you last weekend, Harper?" Damon asked, eerily calm as he readjusted the leather gloves on his hands before plucking a fresh stalk of purple flowers from the thinning crop that he grew in the basement. Harper was only his fifth subject for the night and he was already running out of the dreaded plant.

"No!" Harper screamed again, struggling to catch his breath as he fought against the leather cuffs lashing his wrists to a sturdy wooden chair. His skin was still hissing and crackling from the last round of vervain, even with his healing abilities he would be blistered and sore well into the weekend.

"It wasn't a yes or no question. Where were you last weekend?"

"Town! I went into town to see some friends, that's all," the young man offered quickly, but was already closing his eyes and cringing from the anticipated pain of the vervain.

"What friends?"

"Just my friends, I don't know!"

"What. Friends?"

"They work at the Grill, they don't know what we are. I swear! They're just my friends, sir, please, it's the truth."

"Names, Harper, I want their names."

"Matt and Vickie."

"Matt and Vickie what?"

"I don't know!" Harper squirmed as Damon pulled his gloves back on. "Donnelly, Donnell, Van Don… Donovan. MATT AND VICKIE DONOVAN!"

"Donovan," Damon nodded and turned towards Will who was watching silently from the dark corner of the basement.

"Never heard of them, they're not of the Council," Will shrugged, keeping his eyes fixed on Damon to make sure that his disapproval of his current methods was clear.

"What did you and Matt and Vickie Donovan do?"

"Nothing, we just hung out. Matt was really upset because his ex-girlfriend went missing recently. We didn't do anything, I swear. Please stop, I swear. I'm telling the truth, Damon, I swear it."

"What did he say about his ex-girlfriend?" Damon growled as the pieces fit together, the boy in Elena's dream, the boy that she had broken up with. Passionless, boring Matt.

"Just that she went missing and the sheriff doesn't have any leads and everyone's worried that she ran away or that she's dead. Her family is offering a big reward for her return."

"What kind of reward?" Damon growled and extinguished the voices of Will and Stefan in the back of his mind that kept reminding him that Elena was loved by more than just him. He couldn't allow himself to think of Elena's family, when he did for just a moment he felt a senseless burning jealousy in the pit of his stomach. His primal possessiveness wouldn't allow him to concede that there was anyone else in Elena's life who could care for her or love her.

"Four-hundred and fifty thousand dollars," Harper gasped, taking momentary reprieve in the fact that Damon had paused to arrange a new stalk of vervain.

"You could do a lot with almost a half of a million dollars."

"Yes, sir."

"So you agree, you have ideas of how you could use four-hundred-fifty thousand dollars."

"Yes, I mean no, not personally, but someone could do a lot with that."

"Damon, he doesn't know anything," Will stepped forward and attempting to calmly intervene.

"Shut up, Will."

"You're being paranoid, let him go," Will argued, grabbing Damon's wrist with crushing force.

"You do not get to tell me what to do and what not to do," Damon sneered and ripped his hand away. His central circle was falling to pieces around him, he briefly allowed the thought in that he'd have to interrogate them as well if he didn't get any results on his current course. "If I want your soft-hearted advice I would ask for it."

"Enough! Harper doesn't know anything," Stefan said sternly as he released the cuffs holding the young man's hands behind the interrogation chair. "You're free to go, Harp. You know the conditions, a word of this gets out and you're a dead man. Now go."

"You're overstepping your position," Damon growled, ready to fight his own brother

"You're completely off the rails, brother. I haven't seen you like this in… ever. Come on, man, you're slipping down that proverbial slippery slope fast. Look at you, it's three am and you're torturing the kid who's been nothing but loyal for one-hundred and fifty years because he met some friends for pizza."

"You heard him, he already knows what he'd do with the reward for Elena's return!"

"I didn't hear that, did you hear that Will? Rose?" Stefan cocked his head in his companions' direction and they both shook their heads. "See, you're being paranoid."

"It was you, wasn't it? It was you and Will, you were the two who have been telling me to give her back to her family since day one. You know about the ransom, didn't you?"

"How dare you insinuate…" Will started in, fury raging in his usually-docile brown eyes.

"Insinuate what? The truth?" Damon roared, "Just admit it Will, you hate Elena. You want her gone and it doesn't matter how it happens. Who are you working with?"

"Damon!" Rose shouted and stepped in to barricade Will from Damon's advance. "Stop this at once! Control yourself!"

"And you, what lies have you been telling Elena?"

Stefan stepped in with a firm arm around Damon's shoulder, asserting himself and attempting to cease the situation spiraling out of control before him.

"Do you guys mind if I take a minute with my brother?" Stefan asked, Will and Rose modded and watched carefully as they retreated and closed the heavy basement door behind them. As soon as the door was closed and the brothers were alone Damon threw Stefan's arm off of his shoulders and raced back to the door. Stefan blurred to the exit just in time, "What the fuck is up with you?"

"Get. Out. Of. My. Way, Stefan."

"Talk to me, what's going on with you?" grabbing once again at his brother's shoulder in an attempt to ground the elder Salvatore.

"Nothing, now move."

"It doesn't look like nothing," Stefan answered coolly, knowing that he was stronger and faster than his brother, even if only by a small margin. "I know whatever is driving you to this madness has something to do with Elena. You might as well just tell me so she'll have both Salvatores protecting her. There's no match for the Wonder Twins."

"Spare me the Double Mint moment, Stefan. You don't care about her. None of you care about her. You just want this fucking curse to be broken and you'll stop at nothing to see that come to be."

"True that, but you are my brother and she must be special if she's got you this fucked up. So… you gonna spill or do I have to wait you out?"

"I'm just trying to prevent a war, Stefan, and you're standing in my way. I'm trying to protect the coven and avoid getting the girl killed in the process. Do you remember the Great War? Do you want to fight another one?"

"You love her." Stefan stated simply, as though he was commenting on the weather. Damon didn't answered, but his jaw tensed infinitesimally. "So that's why you've been reset to your factory psychopath settings? Because you're trying to impress of human teenager? Brother brother brother, I hate to tell you this but torture and murder and this crazy dark mystery thing… chicks do not dig that."

"This isn't funny, Stefan."

"Oh I know, trust me. It's not even a little bit funny, which is why I'm making an executive decision here: no more for tonight. We're done. We're not 'interrogating' more of our own. Harper is a good kid, Damon, maybe a little lost but he's never been anything but loyal and you know this."

Damon quietly sat on the bottom stair leading out of the basement and dropped his head into his hands. He felt shame for what he'd done, he knew that Stefan was right: Harper was a good, loyal kid. He was family and Damon had tortured him. Throughout his entire life his control and measured response had been something that he'd prized. Control is who Damon Salvatore was, without it he was no better than the curs stalking the woods beyond his walls. Without control he was weak and weakness inevitably collapsed in his world. Collapse mean losing his position, his estate, his coven, and Elena. If the Grand Council got word that he'd tortured members of his own coven without oversight he'd be done for. How had he gotten here?

"And what do you propose we do then?" he asked his brother after a steadying breath. He felt the step he was sitting on bow ever so slightly as his brother took a seat next to him.

"Get some shut eye, big breakfast tomorrow morning, and then we approach this logically. You let me do what I do best: think."

"And why should I believe that's going to work?"

"You and I both know it's going to work. Remember Damon, I'm the safe brother, my ideas always work."

A long pause settled between the brothers, punctuated only by the wind scraping a branch of the apple tree outside against the window glaze.

"I love her, Stefan," Damon finally offered with uncharacteristic vulnerability.

"I know, brother," Stefan answered with a clap against Damon's shoulder.

"We can't lose her, I… don't…"

"We won't," Stefan said resolutely on hoisted himself up before bounding up the stairs. When the click of the door latch affirmed Stefan's exit Damon allowed the single tear that had been threatening his authoritative countenance all evening to slip out. He hurriedly brushed it away and followed his brother out of the basement where his darkest secret now lived.

"Did you get it?" a hushed voice whispered in one of the darkest hallways of the Salvatore manor.

"Just barely," another voice answered and held out a disc that caught the few rays of light coming from the occupied parts of the house. "But they know."

"Who knows?"

"Damon, RoseMarie, Stefan," the other voice whispered harshly, "they're interrogating Harper in the basement right now. Torturing him for answers. It's only a matter of ti…"

"Stop, it's fine," the first conversant hushed. "I have this under control, we've covered our tracks. The Contact has overwritten the security breach code, they'll never find out it was us."

"And if they take us to the basement?"

"Stick with the original story. The Contact can vouch for our alibi, we'll be fine as long as you keep your head on straight."

"This was supposed to be easy!"

"It will be, you just need to be patient."

"Who is the Contact?"

"That's on a need-to-know basis and you don't need to know, just trust me. Can you do that?"

"Fine, just make sure it goes like we planned," and with that footsteps disappeared down the hall, briefly overshadowed by the sound of the CD cracking into pieces.

The pale green light of a mobile phone display lit the small corner of darkness as a muffled ringtone echoed from the speaker.

"Hello?" a tin-tone voice asked from the other end of the line.

"We need to chat about your niece," the voice in the hallway answered briskly. "The disc has been destroyed, meet me in the town square in an hour."

With that the line went dead.