Chapter 20 Damian
Damian
The hours dragged like weighted chains. We spent the day sharpening plans, cycling through contingencies, and waiting for Hemsley’s tracker to light up the next breadcrumb.
I tried to lose myself in the work, but every time I glanced toward the kitchen, Morgan was there.
Bent over her notes, her pen tapping against the table in rhythm with her thoughts. Cheeks flushed when she muttered too loudly into the recorder. Lips pursed when she pieced fragments into patterns that even Cyclone raised a brow at.
It should’ve been background noise. Just a civilian scribbling.
But my body betrayed me.
The way her hair fell loose around her shoulders, soft against the collar of her shirt, made my hands itch to tuck it back.
The curve of her neck when she bent over the papers drew my gaze like a target I shouldn’t aim at.
And when she smiled faintly — that rare, unguarded moment when she cracked her own armor — it hit me low, hard, in a place no rifle or knife had ever touched.
I shifted in my chair, jaw tight. Christ. I was reacting to her like a green recruit, not a man who’d seen more battlefields than birthdays.
“Something on your mind, Damian?” River’s voice was too casual from across the room.
I shot him a look sharp enough to silence a lesser man. He just smirked and went back to cleaning his pistol. Bloody nuisance. He’d clocked me hours ago.
Cyclone didn’t look up from his screen, but the slight twitch at the corner of his mouth told me he’d noticed too.
I forced myself back into the mission. Focus. Hub 9. Caldwell. Hemsley. Luthor. Every name a stone I stacked between me and the pull of Morgan Tate.
But when her voice drifted across the room, soft and steady — “Charities hide monsters in plain sight, but monsters always leave cracks” — I felt it again. That dangerous tug in my chest.
I clenched my fists until my knuckles whitened. I couldn’t afford this. Not now. Not with Ruby missing, not with Luthor watching, not with a woman who didn’t even realize the kind of storm she’d walked into.
And yet… when her eyes lifted and met mine, wide and earnest, I couldn’t look away.
For the first time in years, the battlefield wasn’t out there.
It was in m