Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Robyn
M y list of hated men was shrinking.
A year ago, Magnus Sinclair had been captured and turned over to the FBI; the man who’d stolen the inheritance left to me by my parents in order to fund his burgeoning criminal activities would never hurt anyone again. Today, I would mark a second name in my sights. A target soon to be taken out.
It remained to be seen whether that target was Belmont or Remington, but it would be one of them.
The sound of my engine thundered louder as the walls of the parking garage closed in around us, the tires squealing on the concrete as I chose a spot closest to the staircase; I didn’t trust elevators.
My apartment was only four flights up on the second floor. I’d met a secret service agent once—a woman who’d crossed paths with my brothers—who’d told me to always take a room closest to the ground floor. Views didn’t matter when they made it harder to escape.
I rounded the back of the car, sweeping the garage to make sure no one else was here before sliding my gun from the holster inside my leather jacket. Opening the passenger door, I crouched by my captive.
“I’m going to remove the towel, and you are going to stay quiet. Understood?”
Damon winked back at me. Winked . Not nodded. Not grunted his agreement. He winked like this was all some little game to him.
Inside, I seethed. Outside, I calmly removed the towel and tossed it onto the empty driver’s seat.
“Out.” I stepped back, showing no qualm as I waved my gun to usher him from the car.
Black dress shoes, their miraculously unscuffed pebble leather hit the concrete first before he rose in front of me, drawing an army of shivers up my spine.
It had been fifteen years since I’d been this close to him. Fifteen years since the tendrils of his musky cologne wove through my nostrils, drawing memories up from the depths of their slumber. That scent on my sheets. In my shower. On my skin. Fifteen years since I’d felt any prickle of warmth in my veins or a flutter in my stomach. Fifteen years since I’d felt the burgeoning ache between my thighs, as irrational as it was physiologically unstoppable.
There was no crime—no sin—Damon could commit that would stop my body from craving his, and I loathed him for it. All the more because the way he looked at me, he seemed to know it, too.
He straightened to the extent of his six-foot-two frame, his bound hands placing his hat on his head as though even imprisonment didn’t excuse poor style .
When I’d first seen him back at Sherwood, he was sitting. Even as we left, I’d been too focused on getting out of the building before the FBI arrived to look too long at the man I’d propelled toward my car. But now…now, my wandering gaze, helpless to the lure of him, skated over all the perfectly stacked inches of him.
His suit jacket stretched over the width of his shoulders and then tapered to his narrow waist. His vest carved out the muscles of his pecs and pulled firm over the washboard plane of his abdomen. And the rich navy of his suit pants wasn’t dark enough to hide the shadows in the fabric as it molded to his powerful thighs nor where it stretched over the thick bulge of his groin.
My throat worked to swallow just as hard as my loathing battled lust. As my anger toiled against ache and as wisdom argued against my weakness of wanting him.
Fifteen years of wanting the man who’d betrayed me was like a steady drip of poison in my veins, slowly inoculating myself to survive this moment. At least, I hoped.
“Let’s go.”
“Are you going to untie me?” Damon held his hands toward me, the smile on his lips like he knew the traitorous thoughts of my body.
The harsh lights of the garage made the glint in his eyes even more pronounced when I looked up.
“What part of quiet didn’t you understand?”
He cocked a smile. “The same part you didn’t understand every time my tongue found that little spot?—”
With a hiss, I moved in front of him and pinned my gun right under his chin, ripping his hat off his head. “This isn’t a game, Remington. Keep talking and you won’t have a tongue.”
“And you would come to greatly regret that,” he rasped, eyes glittering .
I cocked my weapon, the click echoing in the hollow of the garage as the only warning he’d get.
His voice lowered. “How else will I be able to tell you how to catch Belmont?”
Dammit .
Anger teemed inside me, hot and helpless. The most dangerous thing about Damon Remington was that once he knew exactly what you wanted, he’d find a way to give it to you. It was only later on…after you thought you were safe…that he came around to collect the cost.
“You need this tongue, Robber, whether you want it or not.” His husky voice oozed into the air, tormenting me with the truth.
For better or for worse—or in my case, always for worse—what I wanted was the man responsible for the deaths of my parents, and Damon Remington had offered him to me on a silver-tongued platter.
Bernard Belmont was the CEO of GrowTech, a biochemical company specializing in genetically modified pesticides. My parents had been scientists hired to work on one of Belmont’s revolutionary new products.
When they’d started to get sick, they’d approached the GrowTech doctor assigned to their research team, Dr. Ray Ivans. He’d told them it wasn’t the chemicals— he’d told them a lie. Belmont ordered him—and paid him—to bury any side effects so they could get the product to market because to not do so would cripple the company.
The doctor falsified the medical reports, and Belmont had my parents killed before the chemicals could kill them. A car accident. They veered off through a break in the guardrail and off the side of a cliff—a consequence of being run off the road by another car driven by Belmont’s hired thug.
In my mind, Bernard Belmont had murdered them twice. First, with his pesticides and then with the accident. After their deaths, he’d used his money and power and criminal connections to shelter himself all these years.
Slowly— painstakingly —my brothers and I had peeled through the layers of armor shielding Belmont from justice, but just because I’d gotten closer to taking him down didn’t mean I was close.
And then Damon showed up at the garage earlier with his sinful smile and an offer I couldn’t refuse.
For fifteen years, I hadn’t seen or heard from him. Fifteen years since I’d tied my life and my heart to him. Fifteen years since he’d betrayed me and his country. So, I did what any woman would do on seeing her traitorous, fugitive husband for the first time in over a decade—I’d called the FBI to come and arrest him. And that was when he smiled and pulled out his “get out of jail free” card: the ability to take down Belmont.
I loathed the idea that there was anything I could still want from my duplicitous husband, but of course, Damon knew that, too; and so, he reappeared after all this time—gave himself up in false surrender only when he had a greater prize to offer.
Except it wasn’t an offer. It wasn’t Belmont as an olive branch for penance or forgiveness. It was a deal. Damon would get me Belmont, and in exchange, I’d give him…me. My assistance. Those were his terms. He had the means to bring Belmont down, but he’d only help me do it. Not the police. Not the FBI. Not even my brothers. Only me.
So, I agreed. I made a deal with my very own devil.
My nostrils flared, drawing in a single slow breath before my arm lowered and pinned the barrel to his side. “Walk.”
We moved to the stairwell and climbed to the second floor, my apartment the first door after the stairs. I urged him several paces into the room before I went back to close and lock the door and then deactivated the silent alarm that would be triggered if I didn’t enter my code.
When I turned, Damon was perusing my apartment on his own. My shoulders relaxed. His examination of my space didn’t bother me. It was walls and furniture. A bed, a couch, and a table with two chairs. Functional and immaculate. And sparse, a quiet voice whispered inside me. I shoved it aside. I had the basics needed to survive. Nothing personal— something I’d learned was essential to survival, too.
“Interesting space you’ve got, Robber…”
I stiffened at the name again, wishing he’d stop using it, but to ask or demand so would only be interpreted as encouragement.
Striding over to the table, I dragged a chair out. “Sit.”
With a placating smile that I did my damnedest to ignore, Damon came over and obligingly took a seat.
I left him there for a moment to go into the second bedroom that I’d turned into my office. While the rest of the apartment was sparse, this room was filled to the brim with information. With my life.
People. Names. Places. Assets. Shelves of surveillance gear. Folders of evidence. Flash drives of photographs and files to be used as proof or blackmail depending on what the situation called for. And then there was the machine I was looking for.
Grabbing the handle, I lugged the large black case off the shelf and carried it back to the dining table, making sure to close the room’s door behind me. It was to Damon’s back, but I took no chances.
He was silent, his appreciative gaze speaking volumes as I opened the clips and pulled out the biofeedback sensors, their cords neatly wound, and then the laptop that pulled and processed all the data.
The program was fancy. Designed by the Chinese for some Russian oligarch who’d brought it to San Francisco for business, untrusting of everyone around him. Unfortunately for him, his abusive tendencies toward women put him on my radar, so he’d become one of my prey. This machine was a spoil of my underworld war, one that had come in handy over the last several years to determine friend from foe.
His silence was like salt in the wound as I hooked him up to monitors. This required freeing his hands from the zip ties around his wrists, but even if I didn’t have a gun, he wouldn’t have attempted to escape.
Damon’s complacency oozed with the cool confidence that his cooperation was at his leisure rather than by my command. He enjoyed behaving like a gentleman when all I wanted was for him to act like a gangster—for him to give me reason to let loose the loathing burning inside me.
Arm cuff. Finger sensors. And the EEG cap that I enjoyed tugging over his perfect hair, the sensors that studded the cap picking up on the strength and frequency of brain waves that computed into the program as either lie or truth.
When I finished, I took the other seat, setting my weapon on the table with the barrel not too subtly aimed at him, and started the laptop, the fan whirring in the silence.
“Fancy,” he remarked.
“Foolproof.” I met his gaze over the screen. As soon as the icon flashed that the program was ready, I started the recording. “We’ll start with some simple questions. Tell me your name.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “Damon Remington.”
“What is today’s date?”
“December 16 th .”
“And what is your birthday?”
“August 6th.”
My eyes whipped up. “That’s not your birthday. ”
“No, Robber. It’s yours,” he said with a smile, his nonchalance infuriating.
My hand tightened on my gun. “ Your birthday.”
“September 10 th .”
“That’s not your birthday.” My fuse began to shorten.
“Is that what your computer says?” His perfectly sculpted brow arched.
My eyes darted to the screen. It read truth. But it couldn’t be true…
“Your birthday is October 12 th ,” I corrected him, unless that had been a lie, too.
“You remember,” he murmured, a smile tugging at his lips, and too late, I realized the small trap he’d laid, seeing what I was willing to remember about him.
“So, I’m remembering a lie then?”
“No.” Severity leveled the smile from his face.
“Then what is September 10 th ?”
He leaned forward, his eyes cuffed to mine. “The day I met you.”
Surprise stole my breath. I knew we’d met in September, but the exact date… why would he remember it? And why would he bring it up like this? I didn’t believe for one minute that he missed me, no matter what he said. Damon had fifteen years to do something about missing me if that was the truth; he didn’t get to miss me now.
“I generally consider that my life began the day you walked into it, Robber.”
I shuddered. There was nothing so devastating as the poison of his sweet words.
“Yes, well, then by that definition, you should’ve died the day you walked out of it?—”
“March 21 st ?—”
Enough of this. I wasn’t going to get dragged into the past when my future was at stake.
“Do you have information that will incriminate Bernard Belmont?” I blurted out.
“I do.”
I winced at his purposeful choice of words and checked my screen. Pointed, but true. So, what he’d said back at Sherwood wasn’t just to escape the FBI’s clutches.
“What is it?”
His tongue swiped along his bottom lip. “I can’t tell you.”
“I’m not playing this game with you, Remington,” I said and pulled out my cell. “You can tell me or you can tell the FBI.” I’d spared him once from their clutches, but I wouldn’t do it again.
“I can’t tell you because information isn’t proof, Robber, you know that.” His eyes darkened, drawing into their depths and a different time where we’d been on the same side. Or so I’d thought. “I know enough to know what needs to be done. To know how to get to him. I know enough to have a plan and the means to get you what you want.”
“And bringing down Belmont was always my desire, not yours. So why did you come to me? Why are you offering to help me? What end of yours does this serve?” I faltered there, recalling a time when we’d been partners rather than enemies, and then just as quickly pushed it aside; I wouldn’t be caught off-guard by my husband’s ulterior motives again.
“Because you’re my wife. You are my end,” he murmured like a man at the altar professing his wedding vows, rather than a criminal attached to a polygraph machine.
The flutter in my chest tripped, my pulse falling flat on its face. Heat flooded my cheeks, and I dropped my gaze to the laptop screen, aching for the program to reveal his lie.
Truth .
Shit.
Looking up, I found his smug smile waiting for me. I balled my fist, wanting to punch the sweetness right off his too-handsome face.
“You’re right. I am your end.” I sat forward, informing him with a tense voice, “I will be your end. Not as your wife but as the reason you end up in cuffs being hauled away by the FBI. So, if you still want to only work with me, knowing that’s where you’ll be…”
Damon didn’t even flinch. “For you, I will gladly end up in cuffs.”
I barely caught my eyes before they rolled. Only Damon would greet the threat of life in prison as some sort of kink proposition. Just like every other god before him, his hubris would be his downfall.
I reached for the edge of the screen to close the laptop, his voice stopping me.
“Ask me what you really want to ask me,” Damon taunted, his silver eyes gleaming. “What you really want to know.”
I shivered, the temptation running through my blood like the smell of alcohol to an addict.
Why did you leave? Why did you betray me? Why did you break my heart?
“You’re angry, Robber.” His voice was raw, the confidence in it tarnished—something I didn’t want to acknowledge. “Ask me for the truth and let me make it better.”
No. I shook it off. To want to know meant I cared, then and now. And I didn’t—couldn’t if I wanted to survive another round with him.
“Why would I ask for the truth from a man I don’t trust?”
The corner of Damon’s jaw pulsed. Slowly, he sat back and reached in his pocket.
“What are you doing?” My finger twitched on my weapon.
“Getting you to trust me.”
I went to laugh, but the sound crashed inside my throat when he pulled his hand from his jacket and held it in front of me, a diamond ring pinned between his fingers.
My eyes narrowed on him. “Considering the last ring you gave me was a lie, I can’t imagine why you think this one would inspire my trust.”
Even as I spoke, my wedding band felt like a hot brand against my chest. The ring hung suspended from a long chain around my neck, always concealed by whatever shirt I was wearing.
When I made no move to take his offering, he placed it on the table and sat back.
“Because this one has a microdot inside the fake gem with all of my information. Accounts. Properties. Associates. Aliases. Everything that belongs to my empire—everything your friends at the FBI will need to put me in cuffs. It’s all there,” he said, and as soon as he caught a whiff of my disbelief, he instructed, “Check your program, Robber. I’m not lying.”
I looked at the laptop. All his biometrics were reading as truth.
“So you hid your kompromat in a diamond ring?”
“I wanted to give you an engagement ring, but I figured this was far more valuable to you than any trinket I could buy.”
Trinket was a very diminutive term for the kind of jewelry he could afford, at least if the rumors about his estimated wealth were to be believed.
“It’s yours, Robber. My whole empire,” he said, though the look in his eyes promised it was even more than that.
The absurdity of this—the incredulity was debilitating. To have Damon sitting in front of me after fifteen years, offering his help to bring my parents’ murderer to justice, and giving me the keys to his criminal kingdom…it was too much. Too unbelievable. Too risky.
Just like the last time he’d offered me everything, there would be a price to pay. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew it existed, and for now that would have to be enough.
“I’m sure the authorities will appreciate the clarity.” I swiped the ring and shoved it in my jacket pocket, ignoring all allusions to our former relationship and avoiding any mention of how I felt about it.
Damon’s jaw fired once, hard, contorting his expression with something akin to anger before it cleared. “Robber?—”
“So, if I agree to your deal, what happens next?” I interrupted, looking at him with what I hoped was a blank stare and not the turmoil that clouded my mind.
Damon sat silent for a minute, his gaze boring over me like he couldn’t decide whether to press forward or retreat, and when he responded, I wasn’t sure which route he’d actually taken.
“Not here.” He pulled the cap off his head.
My eyes narrowed to slits. “Where?”
Plucking the sensors off his fingers, he linked his hands on the table, appearing every inch the businessman about to strike a bargain.
“You seem to forget, Robber, that I have what you want. I’m the one with the means. The plan. The opportunity to take down the man who killed your parents. And while I’m more than happy to sit here and let you test me through and through to assure yourself of something you already know”— asshole— “if you want my help, you play by my rules.”
The urge to fight him was like an itch I desperately wanted to scratch. But I couldn’t. Not if I wanted to get to Belmont. Not if I wanted the both of them to end behind bars.
“Of course.” I smiled, the cold, superficial expression I used in the face of dozens of arrogant pricks before him. “I know your help never comes at face value.”
The barb landed. His mouth tightened, but he didn’t acknowledge the thinly veiled insult.
“I don’t need to remind you how dangerous Belmont is. How dangerous his associates are or how enraged he is that you’ve knocked so many players off his chess board.”
I bit into the side of my tongue. Belmont had a small army of associates who’d helped him over the years, many of whom my brother and I had either killed or handed to the authorities.
“So, first, I will give you information when it’s pertinent for you to know it. For your safety.” He paused when I let out a loud snort of disbelief. Swallowing, I motioned for him to continue. “Second, when we are around Belmont, you do exactly what I say when I say it, and you do not question me.”
“Fine.” I fumed but didn’t protest.
“Give me your phone.”
“No,” I scoffed.
“Do you want your brothers to track you? Because that is exactly what they’ll do, and this won’t work if they’re in the picture.”
It was pointless to protest. As we spoke, I was certain Harm was having Tynan track my phone so they could come find me as soon as the FBI were gone. As much as I appreciated their overbearing protectiveness when it came to the people they loved, I couldn’t risk it now. They’d already done so much for me, but this was only ever my fight. And especially now that they’d all found love, I couldn’t put them in danger. I wouldn’t.
“I need to let them know I’m okay,” I insisted and reluctantly pulled my cell from my pocket and handed it to him.
“I’ll give you a new one to use that’s too encrypted to trace,” he said, powering down my cell and then pulling apart all the pieces before tucking everything awkwardly into his jacket pocket.
When Damon looked back to me, I smiled and asked through gritted teeth, “Anything else?”
“Yes.” He sat back in his chair, his lips pinning a dimple to one cheek. “I’d like you to address me by my first name.”
He requested it like he was asking for extra ice in his water or more dressing on his salad. Like calling him Damon rather than Remington didn’t infer a level of intimacy that had been lethal to my crippled heart.
But what choice did I have? If I wanted the vengeance I’d been searching for all these years, I was bound to the demands of the man who’d hurt me in the worst way possible. Bound to obey him like I’d already sworn to do.
Maybe it was pathetic to stoop so low for revenge, but I’d already sold my soul to the devil. This was the only way to get it back.
“Of course, Damon,” I said, my tone one of perfectly feigned apathy. “Now, where do we start?”
He set his arms on the table, eyeing his bound wrists.
With another huff, I pulled out my pocket knife and expertly slid the blade under the zip tie, the ominous pop when it released echoing through the room.
I held the knife still. “Where?”
“My house.”