19. Damian #2
When the SUVs pull up in front of the mansion, I hustle Sienna inside as quickly as I can. I need her safe, behind walls that can protect her, away from anyone who might want to harm her.
“Damian?” Her voice pulls me out of my frantic, runaway train of thought, back to the present. She’s looking up at me with concern, concern for me , and it brings me up short. “Are you okay?”
"I'm fine." The lie comes automatically. I'm not fine. I'm the opposite of fine. But I don't know how to explain that to her without sounding weak.
"I need to see Adam," she says, and I can hear the ache in her voice. The need to hold her son and make sure he's really okay.
I hesitate. “Of course.” Of course she needs to see her son. I need to go and debrief with Konstantin. But I don’t want to let her out of my sight just yet. I can’t . It feels like a physical impossibility.
I follow her up the stairs, to her son’s room. She moves so quickly that I have to take long strides to keep up with her, and she’s out of breath by the time we get to it. She takes a deep breath as she stands just outside, then pushes open the door.
Adam is in the room, curled up in bed with a stuffed animal. It’s late—past midnight—but he’s awake, chewing on his thumb worriedly. The moment he sees Sienna, his green eyes—so much like hers—go wide and excited.
"Mama!" He scrambles out of bed and launches himself into Sienna's arms. She clutches him to her chest, stroking his hair as she whispers something into his ear, and I feel my chest ache watching them, as if it could crack open. I watch her hold him, her face buried in his dark hair, and it hurts to see the kind of family I’ve told myself all my life that I could never, and should never, have .
I've never had that. Never thought I wanted it. But watching Sienna with her son, seeing the way her whole body relaxes now that she knows he's okay, I understand why men start wars for their families.
I’m on the verge of starting a war for her.
"I was scared," Adam mumbles, his small voice muffled against Sienna's shoulder. "You didn't come home."
"I know, baby. I'm sorry. But we're here now, and we're safe."
"Both of you?" Adam pulls back to look at me over his mother's shoulder. "Damian came back too?"
I manage a tight smile in his direction. "Yeah, kid. I came back too."
The relief on his face is a sucker punch to the gut. This three-year-old was worried about me. Me, a man who kills for a living, who's done things that would give grown men nightmares. But this innocent little boy was scared that something might happen to me.
Adam looks back at his mother. “Mama, you’re dirty. And hurt.” He touches her face, and Sienna bites her lip.
“I just got into a little accident,” she says solemnly. “Just a little scrape, like when you trip and hurt your knee. But I’m fine. It just took a minute for me to get back.”
It’s a lie, through and through, but it would be impossible for her to tell Adam the truth. I doubt she ever will.
“You should clean up, Mama,” Adam says solemnly, and Sienna laughs, a bright, sharp burst of sound.
“Okay. But only if you promise to get some sleep. It’s very late.”
“I’m tired.” He yawns, clearly exhausted now that he’s no longer worried about his mother—and me. “I’ll go sleepy now.”
“Good.” Sienna carries him back to the bed, and I step out into the hall to let her tuck him in and say goodnight, feeling as if it’s something that I shouldn’t intrude on.
After all, no matter what happened back there in the warehouse, whatever proof I had to give to Giovanni Russo, this isn’t my family.
Sienna isn’t mine, not in any of the ways that matter, and her son isn’t my child.
Her family is her own, separate from me—and it always will be .
Why the fuck does that hurt so goddamn badly?
When Sienna steps back out into the hallway, she looks surprised but relieved to see me there. And exhausted. She looks utterly, completely exhausted.
“I need to shower,” she says softly. “I need?—”
“I know.” I have that same feeling, the desire to scrub away the time spent in that warehouse, to carve it off of my skin and let it slither away down the drain.
I know, logically, that it’s not my touch she wants to wash away, but still—that stings, too, in the illogical part of myself.
I want to cover her with my body, touch every inch of her, leave it imprinted on her skin…
and all she wants is to be clean of what’s just happened.
“Are you hungry?” I ask, and her lips twist.
“Yes and no. Yes, but I don’t think I could eat. I just need to shower… and sleep. That’s all. I’ll eat in the morning.”
My jaw tightens, but I nod. I’m already thinking of making sure food is sent up to her. She needs to eat, regardless. And I?—
I just need her. But now isn’t the time to talk about it, especially when I don’t even know what to say.
“I’m going to go talk to Konstantin. Make sure the estate is locked down. I’ll—” I press my lips together, a hundred different thoughts fighting for supremacy in my head. “I’ll come check on you. Later.”
I go and wake Mrs. Horvat, instructing her to take a tray of food up to Sienna’s room, and then spend the next hour going through the security protocols with Konstantin's men, checking camera feeds, making sure every entrance is covered. Konstantin tells me we’ll talk in the morning, that his priority is Valentina tonight, and I can understand that.
He trusts me to make sure everything is secure.
But my mind isn't really on the work. It's on the woman upstairs, probably standing under hot water right now, trying to wash away the memory of strange hands on her skin.
The thought makes me want to put my fist through a wall. It makes me want to go find Russo now, and peel his skin from his body. I don’t just want him dead, I want him to hurt . I want him to beg for mercy before I’m done with him .
I want all of Sienna’s pain etched on his body before he dies.
When I finally make it upstairs, after a quick, rough shower of my own, there’s no sound of her shower running. I knock on the door once, firmly, and I hear Sienna’s voice, soft from inside, call out.
“Who is it?”
“It’s Damian.” I wonder if she won’t answer the door, if she’ll tell me to go away.
She’d be within her rights to do so. I swore I’d protect her and…
I hurt her tonight. I can argue with myself that it was forced, that we had no other choice, but at the end of the day, I still hurt her.
I still ruined something that I never even planned to have with her.
And the thought of how good she felt, how easily I could have come in her, even with all of those eyes on us, even with how it all happened…
I feel like a fucking monster.
“Come in.” The sound of her voice, inviting me in, feels like utter relief.
I open the door, stepping inside as I run a hand through my wet hair, dressed now in sweatpants and a tight-fitting black T-shirt.
I see Sienna’s gaze skate over me from where she’s sitting on the edge of the bed, her hands gripping the sides.
On the dresser across from the bed, there’s a tray with a half-eaten sandwich and a pile of chips that look picked at.
I don’t know what the fuck I'm supposed to say to her. How do I apologize for what happened? How do I explain that having her in that warehouse, having those animals touch her, was the closest I've ever come to losing my mind completely?
She looks beautiful, even like this, even tired and pale.
There are dark shadows smudged under her eyes, and her hair is wet, bound up in a knot at the back of her head, slicked back across her scalp.
She’s wearing a pair of tiny cotton sleep shorts with small flowers printed on them, and a pink tank top with lace scalloping along the edge.
It’s all I can do not to let myself look at her small breasts, at the imprint of her nipples against the fabric.
She looks young and clean and beautiful, and I have to clench my hands into fists to keep from reaching for her .
All I want is to touch her, even after everything. I’m a fucking monster.
“How are you feeling?” I manage, my voice sounding tight and strangled in my throat. She bites her lip.
“Better,” she admits, on an exhale. “Cleaner, at least. You?” Her voice sounds clipped, everything between us tense and awkward. My jaw tightens.
“I’m fine.”
She gives me a look. "Damian."
"What?" I blow out a sharp breath, and she rolls her eyes.
"You're allowed to not be fine. After what happened tonight, you're allowed to be fucked up about it."
“I didn’t protect you,” I bite out. “And you were threatened—” I can’t get the words out, can’t say out loud what those animals threatened her with. Rape. Slavery. Human trafficking. All of the worst, most vile things in existence. “They made you perform for them?—”
“They made us perform for them,” she says gently, her voice so calm and soft that it astonishes me.
How can she sit there, calm and thoughtful, not coming out of her skin?
I feel like I can’t sit still, like I won’t be able to breathe until I tear Russo’s empire down stone by stone around him and leave him bloody and tortured in the middle of it.
I couldn't protect her. I let them take her in the first place.
"It's my fault," I say finally. "I should have seen the ambush coming. Should have taken a different route, had backup, something."
Sienna looks at me with gentle exasperation on her face. “You can’t be prepared for everything, Damian.”
“That’s my job,” I bite out. “That’s literally my job. And I promised to keep you safe?—”
“You got me out of there.”
“ Konstantin got us out of there. I didn’t do shit?—”
“You kept us alive. If you hadn’t been able to perform, if you had refused, I—” She swallows hard. “I know you had a plan.”