Chapter Fifteen No Mercy
Mercy had always been a weakness in Augustus Blackthorne’s vocabulary and a calculated variable in Damien’s. Aria wanted it to become a choice.
When Damien stood on the precipice of extreme violence, she did not ask him to become harmless.
She asked him to decide who he wanted to be after the rage receded.
The question followed him like a specter—Damien had spent years believing restraint meant surrendering power, but Aria forced him to face another reality: that having the absolute power to destroy someone and choosing not to might be the ultimate form of control.
The first guard collapsed before the estate’s emergency lights painted the smoke-filled corridor in strobing red.
Aria sprinted toward the sound of Damien’s voice, but Victor lunged from the shadows and snagged the back of her dress. Silk tore cleanly. Without hesitation, Aria whipped around and slashed downward with the sewing scissors she had pulled off the vanity.
The razor edge opened Victor’s forearm. He released her with a sharp scream. “You little bitch—”
A suppressed gunshot struck the plaster an inch beside his head, startling Aria into dropping the scissors.
Damien stood at the far end of the hallway, framed by swirling gray smoke. Blood trickled down his left temple. His gun remained aimed at Victor with unnatural, lethal steadiness.
“Take your hands off my wife.”
Victor raised both blood-stained palms. “She is not yours, Damien.”
“Correct,” Aria said, stepping out of Victor’s reach. “But you should still listen to him.”
Damien’s eyes found hers. For a fraction of a second, raw relief broke through his icy facade, exposing just how close he had come to losing control entirely.
Then automatic gunfire erupted from the grand staircase behind them.
Damien closed the distance instantly, driving Aria behind a heavy marble pillar. He used his own body as a shield as concrete chips rained down around them.
“Are you hit?” He demanded, checking her face.
“No.”
“The bruise on your head—?”
“We talk about that later,” she snapped.
He reached into his jacket and pressed a secondary firearm into her hands.
Aria recoiled. “I don’t know how to shoot this!”
“The safety is off,” Damien said calmly over the deafening noise. “Point it at anyone who enters this corridor without calling your name first. Do not place your finger on the trigger unless you intend to kill them.”
“Where are you going?”
“To end this.”
Aria caught the lapel of his tailored shirt, holding him back. “Come back.”
The words spilled out before her pride could stop them. Damien looked down at her hand gripping his fabric.
“That sounds dangerously like a request.”
“It’s an order.”
His mouth brushed her forehead—one fierce, brief press of lips amidst the gun smoke. “Then I will obey.”
A guard burst through the smoke behind them, aiming at Damien’s back. Before Aria could react, Lucien materialized from the stairwell and drove the butt of a tactical rifle into the man’s throat, sending him crashing into the drywall.
“Move, now!” Lucien ordered Aria. He grabbed her arm, yanking her away from her relative safety, as well as away from Damien.
“Where is Damien going?”
A single, heavy gunshot cracked from the library, followed by Victor’s furious shout.
Lucien shoved a small tactical radio into her free hand. “East stairwell! Do not stop for anyone!”
Aria ran in the opposite direction—straight toward the library.
“Damn it, Aria!” Lucien barked behind her, but he was forced to turn and cover the rear.
She followed the trail of destruction through the estate. Smoke hung thick in the lower gallery. Alarms shrieked. Two people lay unconscious on the marble floor.
Inside the library, Damien had Victor pinned across the shattered glass of a mahogany desk. Blood coated Damien’s knuckles. Victor laughed through a mouthful of blood.
“Ask him!” Victor taunted, looking past Damien’s shoulder as Aria entered. “Ask your husband who ordered Elias Vale’s execution!”
Damien struck him across the jaw with terrifying force.
“Stop!” Aria screamed.
Damien froze.
Slowly, he turned toward her. The expression on his face did not belong to the man who stopped when she asked him to in the quiet living room at Blackthorne House. This was the creature his corporate rivals feared—cold, bloodied, and stripped of humanity.
Then his eyes landed on the purple bruised imprint of fingers on her jawline.
Something far more dangerous replaced the rage in his eyes. “Did he touch you?”
“I’m alive, Damien.”
“That was not my question.”
Victor laughed again, spitting blood onto the rug. “She defended herself beautifully, nephew.”
Damien picked up his weapon from the desk and raised it toward Victor’s temple.
Aria stepped directly in front of Damien, grabbing his hand that held the gun.
“Move,” Damien said softly.
“No.”
“Aria.”
“If you kill him right now, I will never learn the truth!”
“He will lie to you.”
“So will you!”
The accusation hit Damien like a physical blow. A flicker of genuine pain passed across his face, but it didn’t make her step aside.
In the distance, police sirens echoed across the grounds.
Victor adjusted his ruined collar, grinning wickedly. “She doesn’t trust you anymore, Damien.”
Damien’s gun remained level with Aria’s chest, blocking her from Victor. “She does not need to trust me for me to keep her alive.”
“That was always your mistake,” Aria said, looking straight into Damien’s eyes. “You think survival is enough.”
His gaze locked onto hers. Very slowly, he lowered the barrel of the gun.
Lucien burst into the room accompanied by three armed guards. They grabbed Victor, pulling his arms behind his back and hauling him away through the side exit.
Damien and Aria were left alone in the lingering smoke.
He took one step toward her.
Aria raised the gun Damien had given her. She had no intention of shooting it, she didn’t even really know how. She would hate to hurt Damien, but she couldn’t have him near her right then. Not after what she had just witnessed. Not after what he had just done and claimed was for her.
Damien stopped immediately.
“I came for you,” he said, his voice rough.
“You came because you cannot tolerate losing what you believe belongs to you.”
“Both can be true.”
“Did you know my father was murdered?” She demanded, her voice trembling.
“Yes.”
The single word shattered whatever fragile hope she had held onto. “Who ordered it?”
“I do not have legal proof.”
“Who, Damien?”
“Augustus.”
Aria closed her eyes, breathing through the wave of nausea. When she opened them, Damien had not shifted an inch.
“Did you marry me because of the ledger?” she asked.
“No.” She found herself relieved by that more than she would care to admit.
“Did you begin watching me because of it?”
“Yes.”
The next question was harder to ask. “Did you know Victor would come for me?”
“I knew it was a possibility. I believed my security detail could prevent it.”
“Your security detail let me walk off the estate alone!”
“Because you demanded freedom from me,” he said quietly.
“And some part of you wanted to prove I couldn’t survive without you.”
His silence condemned him.
Aria slowly lowered the gun. “You used me as bait.”
“No.”
“Some part of you did.”
Damien looked visibly sick. “...Yes.”
The truth hurt far worse than a lie would have.
“The authorities are outside,” Damien said, his voice hollow. “Lucien can take you anywhere you choose. The hospital. A hotel. My home.”
“Your home?”
“I will not set foot in the penthouse if you select it.”
Aria stared at him. “You would leave?”
Every muscle in his frame resisted the admission. “If that is the price of keeping you somewhere secure.”
For the first time since they had met, Damien offered a choice without secretly removing the alternatives.
Aria stepped towards him. She stopped directly in front of him and extended her right hand, setting the gun down on the desk with her left.
Hope—fragile and terrifying—entered his expression.
“This is not forgiveness,” she warned.
“I know.”
“I am returning because Victor and Augustus fear you, and right now I need the protection of what they fear.”
“Use whatever part of me keeps you alive, Aria.”
Aria let him take her hand. His long fingers closed around hers with extreme care, as though he finally understood that holding her was not the same as keeping her.
Outside, flashing red and blue strobes painted the estate driveway.
Two men in plainclothes were loading a handcuffed Victor into an unmarked black sedan rather than a standard police cruiser.
Aria turned to Damien. “Where are they taking him?”
“Somewhere he will answer questions without an attorney present.”
“You said the police were here.”
“They are.”
“But they aren’t taking Victor.” It wasn’t a statement, it was an assessment. She was analyzing everything now.
Damien held open the rear door of his armored vehicle for her. “No.”
“What are you going to do to him, Damien?”
Before he could answer, Lucien approached the car carrying a sealed evidence bag. Inside sat a narrow, antique brass key.
“Found beneath the van used in the abduction,” Lucien reported softly. “It was lodged inside the base of the ceramic figure.”
Aria took the bag from Lucien’s hands.
A set of alphanumeric characters had been hand-engraved along the key’s stem:
BGT-714
Damien recognized the designation instantly. “Blackthorne Grand Terminal,” he said, his voice darkening. “Locker seven-fourteen.”
Her father’s master evidence had been sitting inside a locker at a transit station owned by the very family that murdered him—waiting in the dark for nineteen years.