CHAPTER 11
MARGARITA
Waking up felt like catching a stray punch to the jaw.
The transition from heavy, dreamless exhaustion to sharp reality didn't come with a gentle fade-in. It was instantaneous and entirely offensive. I opened my eyes to a vault of shadow, the room lit only by the cold, blue flicker of security monitors on the far concrete wall. I was buried in a massive, low-slung bed. The silk sheets practically screamed high thread count, and the sheer luxury of them felt like a sick joke scraping against my bruised, aching skin. My hips throbbed. My throat was sandpaper. And right beside me, the mattress dipped under the sheer density of a man who had spent the last few hours treating my body like it was prime real estate he’d just violently acquired.
Quiet. Just stay quiet. My brain snapped the order immediately, slipping right back into survival mode. Don't breathe too loud.
My body was a complete traitor. Despite the utter unhinged insanity of my situation, some primal, fucked-up part of my biology registered the radiating heat from his massive frame as safety.
I actually had to fight the urge to burrow deeper into his warmth while the logical, remaining shred of my sanity screamed at me to locate an exit.
I caught a loose thread on the edge of the silk pillowcase and twisted it around my index finger until the tip turned stark white.
It was a stupid, tiny anchor to the physical world, but it kept me from spiraling.
The industrial HVAC system hummed above us, cycling air that smelled distinctly of expensive bourbon, copper, and gun oil.
I froze, holding my breath until my lungs actively burned. Turning my head with agonizing slowness, I peeled my cheek off the sweat-damp pillow. My dark hair was a feral, tangled mess sticking to my face.
Damon was lying on his stomach, his face turned away from me, buried half into the mattress.
His breathing was deep, rhythmic, and heavy.
The absolute dead-ass sound of a predator in a food coma.
For the first time since he got dragged into my clinic bleeding out over my tiles, he was completely still.
The violence constantly vibrating beneath his skin was momentarily dormant.
Is he actually out? I stared at the back of his head. He looks human like this. Almost.
But I wasn't an idiot. Men like Damon Locke didn't just sleep; they idled.
They waited. The quiet in the room felt like a massive trap I was absolutely terrified to spring.
I watched the way his heavy shoulder blade shifted with every deep pull of oxygen, tracing the rhythmic rise and fall like I was staring at a patient's EKG monitor.
Stripped of his bespoke suits and tactical holsters, he was just meat and bone.
A very large, very lethal arrangement of it, but still just biology.
The same raw materials I cut into and stitched up every single day.
The clinical thought gave me a fake, fleeting sense of superiority.
When he didn't shift after another three minutes, I let out a shaky exhale that whistled pathetic and thin through my teeth.
The monster was quiet. The fortress around us felt suffocating—tons of concrete and steel locking me in with the man currently holding my sanity hostage.
The urge to bolt for the heavy iron door was a physical ache, warring with the paralyzing reality that I didn't have the key, the codes, or the firepower to make it past the hallway.
Three steps to the floor. Ten to the desk. I mapped the room in my head, hyper-fixated on the geometry of my cage. Don't look back.
I carefully untucked a corner of the sheet, moving the fabric millimeter by millimeter so it didn't whisper against the mattress.
The freezing air conditioning bit into my bare shoulders, carrying the faint smell of incoming rain through the vents.
Out in the hall, the distant clank of a guard's heavy boots echoed, reminding me exactly where I was.
As I pushed the blanket down, my gaze caught on his back, and everything in my brain just stopped.
The sheets were tangled low around his waist, exposing his left flank.
It wasn't just scarred; it was a horrific, jagged expanse of obliterated tissue that carved through the thick muscle of his ribs.
It was a chaotic, violent map of melted, puckered flesh ranging from dead, waxy white to angry, raised violet.
It was not a clean bullet graze or a surgical incision.
It was the undeniable aftermath of a catastrophic thermal injury.
Full-thickness. Fourth degree. The trauma surgeon in my head took the wheel instantly, overriding the hostage. How the hell did he live through this?
I leaned forward slightly, my eyes narrowing as I mentally adjusted the focus, my right hand twitching on the bedsheets like I was reaching for a scalpel.
I was looking at keloid scars. Poorly executed skin grafts near the base of his spine.
The telltale, rigid edges of ancient, brutal debridements.
The contracted skin had to limit his range of motion, even if he masked it with terrifying efficiency.
My brain ran the Parkland Formula for fluid resuscitation on autopilot, estimating the total body surface area burned.
The math was sickening. The sheer agony of his recovery—the risk of fatal sepsis, the weeks of screaming through dressing changes—was unfathomable.
Someone wanted you gone. I stared at the ruined landscape of his ribs, the sheer brutality of it making my stomach turn. They didn't just want you dead; they wanted you erased.
The image of him as an untouchable, god-tier syndicate boss shattered into a million pieces.
He had been burned to the fucking bone. It humanized him in a way that completely wrecked my defensive walls.
If he could be physically destroyed like this, he wasn't immortal.
I didn't know if that realization made me feel better or worse.
Driven by an absolute toxic blend of clinical obsession and morbid curiosity, I reached out.
My fingers trembled, hovering just two inches above the roughest patch of raised violet skin.
I needed to know if the tissue was rigid, if the margin retained any heat, if the nerve endings were completely dead or hypersensitive.
I just want to feel the margin, I justified to myself, my hand a shaky bridge between me and the violent psycho sleeping next to me. Does it still hurt?
A drop of sweat rolled down my temple, stinging my eye with salt, but I refused to blink. The static electricity in the silk sheets snapped faintly. I could smell old, phantom smoke clinging to the memory of the trauma.
Damon shifted.
A low, guttural groan rumbled out of his chest.
Shit. Shit. Shit. I snatched my hand back like the air itself had caught fire, my heart slamming into my ribs so hard I thought it might crack my sternum.
I turned to stone, watching the thick muscle of his shoulders tense and then slowly relax.
He didn't wake up. But the near-miss spiked my adrenaline so hard I tasted metal.
Stay under. Please, stay under.
His breathing leveled out, returning to that deep, rhythmic churn. He was still out.
I dug my fingernails into my palms, carving four tiny crescents of pain into my skin to stop my hands from shaking.
Even completely unconscious, he dictated every move I made.
But realizing I might have a solid ten minutes of actual privacy in this concrete tomb shifted my perspective.
Information is the only currency here. If I was going to survive being his collateral, I needed to know what built the monster.
Find the leverage.
I licked my dry lips, the lingering taste of his skin from last night feeding a sudden spike of reckless audacity. With painstaking slowness, I slid my legs out from under the heavy silk and slipped off the mattress.
Cold. Don't slip.
My bare feet hit the polished concrete floor, the freezing shock of it snapping my brain to full attention.
Keep your weight on the balls of your feet.
I stood dead still for a full sixty seconds, just listening to the ambient noise of the bunker.
The hum of the servers, the distant settling of the building's foundation.
Every tiny sound felt amplified, like a gunshot in a library.
I gripped the edge of the mattress until my knuckles turned white, then finally forced myself to let go.
The room was massive and entirely devoid of personality.
It was a command center that just happened to have a bed in it.
No art. No personal photos. Just brutalist concrete, exposed ceiling pipes, the massive dark-wood desk, and the wall of flickering perimeter feeds.
Everything is a weapon in here. He lives in a cage of his own making.
I crept toward the desk, wrapping my arms tightly around my chest as the AC blasted my bare skin.
On the desk's surface sat a half-empty crystal glass of scotch and a heavy, matte-black Glock 17.
The gun was lined up perfectly parallel to the edge of the wood.
Obsessive-compulsive murderer aesthetic.
The urge to grab the gun pulled at my gut, but I wasn't stupid.
I knew the weight of a loaded 9mm, knew the kick, and knew for an absolute fact that Damon would disarm me and likely use it on me before I even cleared the safety mechanism.
I stopped my hand an inch from the glass of scotch, terrified the melting ice would clink.
The gun is a distraction. Information is what kills men like him.
I swept my eyes over the desk. No laptop. No iPad. No encrypted hard drives in sight. He’s old school. No digital trail.
Where do you keep your ghosts, Damon?