10. Chapter Ten
Chapter Ten
Damyr
F ury and rage like nothing I’d ever felt before made my skin crawl and my fangs ache. I really needed to revoke her invitation and get my keys back because this was getting ridiculous.
“Your wife?” Benjamin seethed through a clenched jaw. “You’re married?”
“In a fashion,” I said. I hadn’t really been married for a while, but Lucia seemed to have a hard time letting go. “We haven’t been together for a long time.” Almost eighty years, in fact.
“Come now, darling,” Lucia purred, her sugary voice grating on my skull like a knife. “Don’t minimise what we have.”
I wanted to pull her off Benjamin and assert my dominance, but I didn’t want to frighten him. For some reason, I didn’t want him to see what I was capable off.
“Had, Lucia. What do you want?”
Her green eyes met mine. So dull in comparison to Benjamin’s. “I wanted to chat, to see if we could… rekindle something.”
She only ever came here when she wanted money or if she needed help digging herself out of a hole. I glanced at Benjamin, his hands held wide, his lips still swollen from my kiss. I could still taste him on my tongue. I shouldn’t have bitten him, but when it came to Benjamin, resistance wasn’t possible.
“Let’s step into my office,” I said curtly. I wanted to get her away from Benjamin as soon as possible.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Benjamin muttered under his breath. He probably didn’t think I’d hear him, but vampire senses were sharp.
“Lucia. Remove your foot from him, or I’ll remove it for you.”
“Oh, Damyr, I love it when you give me orders.” She lowered her voice and flicked her long red waves over her shoulder, exposing her neck. I’d loved her once, but now all I wanted to do was snap that pretty little neck.
“My office. Now.” I didn’t like that I was pandering to her, but I wanted a moment with Benjamin to explain myself. For some reason, I didn’t want him to think badly of me but judging by the hate seeping from his eyes as he watched the exchange with Lucia, he already thought less of me. My heart lurched uncomfortably in my chest. I didn’t understand it. I’d never been one to feel but all I could do at the moment was feel. Turmoil churned in my gut and for the first time ever, I felt unsure of myself.
Lucia giggled like a schoolgirl, and I tried my best not to flinch.
“I’ll be waiting,” she hummed as she strode past me and I held my breath, not wanting to catch her scent.
I waited until she’d left the room before releasing that breath.
“You didn’t think you should mention the fact that you were married before sucking my face?” Benjamin hissed as he sat up.
I held my hand out to help him up, but he slapped it away.
“I don’t need your help, Damyr. I don’t need anything from you.”
There was a venom to his words that made me frown. “Lucia is my wife in name only. She hasn’t been part of my life for a long time. I didn’t think I needed to mention her.”
“What? Are you serious?” he said, jerking his head back. “You think it’s okay to hide the fact that you’re married ?”
“I don’t consider myself married,” I shrugged. “It’s just a piece of paper now.”
I didn’t understand his anger. It almost too long in the past to remedy, practically a lifetime ago, and the world currently saw Damyr Morozov as an eternal bachelor.
“You’re a real piece of fucking work. You know that?” Benjamin had his hands on his hips, his shoulders tight and bunched up under his ears.
“Why are you angry?”
He pinched the bridge of his nose and muttered under his breath. He spoke so fast that I couldn’t catch all his words, but I did hear words like ‘idiot’, ‘madness’ and ‘jackass’. I guessed the last one applied to me.
“Look, I’ll deal with Lucia and send her away; then we can talk.”
“Great,” he drawled.
I didn’t think he actually meant that but maybe I should leave him to it for a few minutes. Perhaps it would give me a chance to figure things out as well. I didn’t get humans anymore. Apart from Byron, but he was a lot easier to deal with than normal humans. Give him someone to torture and kill and he was happier than a pig in the proverbial shit. Benjamin was something new and I wanted to pick him apart until I understood everything about him. I wanted to burrow under his skin and worm my way into his brain until I understood him completely.
“I’ll be back shortly,” I said as I tried to get my obsession under control. I didn’t want to deal with Lucia, I wanted to ask Benjamin to march his ass to my room so I could make bend him to my will.
“Whatever,” was the reply I got. Fucking hell, his sass was like catnip to my soul. My hands itched to scare that brattishness out of him, but now wasn’t the right time. Now he needed space, and I needed to deal with my wife.
***
Lucia lounged gracefully in one of the chairs and I’d never hated her more than I did at this moment. She’d put her hands on Benjamin. No one was allowed to touch him but me. Possessive much? Absolutely, but he was mine to protect.
“What do you want?” I said sharply as I sat behind my desk. My skin started to crawl the longer I looked at her. She’d never been this much of a problem before. But then again, I’d never had Benjamin before.
“Who was that boy, Damyr?” she asked with a pout.
“No one you need to concern yourself about.”
“But he’s so pretty.” She trailed a finger over her ruby red lips. “Can I have a turn?”
“No,” I said, my expression taut.
She leant closer, pushing her cleavage towards me. “Does he taste as sweet as he looks?”
“Lucia,” I growled but she just laughed.
“You always were so easy to wind up. Keep your toy, Damyr, I’m sure you’ll get bored of him soon.”
That wasn’t going to be likely, but she didn’t need to know that. The less she thought of him, the better.
“Is it money you want, or are you in trouble?”
She flopped back into the chair. “Straight to business, then? I don’t need money, Damyr. I earn enough keeping criminals like yourself out of prison. I may have found myself in somewhat of a tense situation with the Lavaeux clan.”
“What kind of situation?”
“I may have fucked Marcelle’s brother.”
“What?” Rage flushed my body. How could she be so fucking stupid? We didn’t piss in our own back yards, and fucking Remy Lavaeux was the epitome of that.
“It was a stupid mistake, but someone saw us, and he started to get handsy with me. I tried to get rid of him, but Remy jumped to my defence, and you know what wolves are like near the full moon.”
Oh, yes. They were aggressive, impulsive and highly volatile. Throw in someone trying to encroach on a shifter’s lover and it was a sure-fire way to start a massacre.
Lucia sighed deeply. “Now they’re dead and—”
“Dead? You killed him? Please tell me it wasn’t someone important.” Save me from fucking incompetence.
“No!” she snapped. At least she had the grace to look sheepish. “At least I don’t think so. He didn’t have any ID on him, but he didn’t look familiar.”
Well, at least that was somewhat of a bonus. Lucia tended to know everyone who was anyone so if she didn’t recognise him, he probably was a nobody.
“Okay, I suppose that’s a good th—”
There was a sudden knock at the door and Vlad stepped into the room, his stride determined. “There’s something you need to see, Boss.”
He dropped a manilla envelope on my desk and flicked a glance at Lucia.
The word ‘ENJOY’ was written in an elegant script across the front and someone had drawn two ‘x’s’ in blood beneath it.
“What is this?” I asked.
“It’s not the only thing to arrive,” Vlad said ominously.
“Where’s Benjamin?” I had to know. Was he safe? I ignored the curious look from Lucia and turned to Vlad.
His brows were drawn down in a disapproving frown. “He’s in the library with his cat.”
Okay. Good. The tension left my shoulders as soon as I knew he was far away from whatever this was. I turned my attention to the envelope and opened it. Inside was a collection of photographs but they weren’t just still images. They were time stamped like they’d been taken from CCTV footage.
It took me a minute to figure out what I was looking at but by the third image I’d worked it out.
This was evidence of the shitshow Lucia had just walked into my office. It was picture after picture of her and Remy fucking in some backwater motel and then the incident that occurred after. Remy attacking someone outside the building. What a fucking mess.
It wasn’t that we couldn’t have interspecies relations, it was more that we’d forbidden any kind of sexual relations between the Three Families to keep things on an even keel. Hopefully I wouldn’t have to reveal this mess to Marcelle, although, knowing him, he already knew anyway. That guy always knew any secret worth knowing.
“What else was delivered?” I asked.
“A box,” Vlad said simply.
I stood up and headed out of my office. “Where is it?”
“The foyer.”
I stopped short. “You left it in the foyer?”
“It’s a large box.”
I could hear Lucia’s heels clacking on the hardwood floor behind me as I picked up my pace. I didn’t care that she was following Vlad and me, I just wanted to prove myself wrong. That my mysterious hooded figure hadn’t delivered what I thought he had.
I could smell it before I could see it. Rancid and like old pennies.
A black box wrapped in a gold bow sat in the middle of my entrance hall. It stood at waist height and there was a tag hanging on the front. I reached out and flipped it over.
Damyr, I hope you like my gift. Make sure you do the right thing. Ronin xx
“Ronin. Who the fuck is Ronin?” Vlad growled.
I had no idea. “Guess we’d better open it.”
I undid the bow and lifted the lid. The smell intensified as the sides of the box fell to the floor with a soft thud.
There, right in the centre, was a body.
“My God,” Lucia gasped.
I didn’t need her reaction to realise this was the guy from the CCTV footage. And he was human. Fuck.
I stepped closer and crouched over the body. His head was twisted at and unnatural angle and bruises marred his face, arms and hands. He was mid-forties, well dressed and clearly came from money. There was a twinge of recognition as I stared at his face. There were three jagged slices across the apple of his cheek. Remy’s handiwork, no doubt. The flesh was cut right down to the bone.
Why did he seem familiar?
Something was taped to the man’s forehead. I peered closer and realised it was his drivers license, covered in bloody fingerprints.
“Who is it?” Vlad asked.
The only word that was easy enough to read was his surname.
My blood ran cold. “Montgomery.”
“Impossible,” Vlad mumbled.
“It’s Theo Montgomery.” Vlad was right. It was impossible for this man to be decomposing in my entrance hall.
“Who is that?” Lucia asked.
The black sheep of the monarchy and I’d killed him over ten years ago. Or so I’d thought.
“Why is there a dead body in your house?”
Everybody spun towards the voice in the doorway and my heart sank.
“Benjamin, I can explain.”