Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
Robyn
F ifteen years ago…
“Damon?” I wrapped my towel tighter around me and walked from the bathroom toward the sound of my husband’s determined stride.
We were getting ready to go out to dinner, but there was no rush. Not like his pace implied.
“Hey.” I stopped when I saw him standing at the closet door, completely dressed and almost ready to walk out the door. “What’s going on?”
Damon’s head dipped down at the sound of my voice, and he plucked his hat from its hook. Even from his profile, I caught the corners of his mouth pinching his lips tight.
“Damon— ”
“Sandrine texted. She wants to talk to me. She said it’s urgent.”
Like an electrical pulse along my spine, I stiffened, fully alert and my mind turning over the possibilities. Did Sinclair realize what we were doing? What our intention was? Did Sandrine?
Worry wrapped its grip around my throat.
With Sinclair trying to distance himself from Damon, especially since Damon and I had gotten married, our only secure access to their house was through Sandrine.
When this was all over, I’d let myself fully feel the guilt for using Sandrine to get to Sinclair. She was a friend, if I could even call her that because of our deception.
Last week, she’d caught us in Sinclair’s office, and we’d pulled the same in flagrante schtick as the first time, but tacked on the honeymoon-phase excuse, too. If she’d told Sinclair, he wouldn’t have bought the excuse as easily. Not anymore.
“Did she say anything else?” I croaked as he settled his hat on his head and faced me, my body warming at the sight of his impeccably clad form.
“No.” He came to me, gripped my chin, and brought my mouth to his for a hard kiss, promising, “I’ll be back.”
I started. “Wait, I’ll come with?—”
“No.” The word fired with unexpected ferocity.
Balking, I scrambled to protest. There was no way I’d let him walk into the lion’s den alone. Not with something as cryptic as a message like that.
“Damon…”
“I don’t want you leaving here until I know what’s going on.”
Not since that very first night when we’d met had I felt the pit in my stomach like I did now. It hadn’t formed instantly, instead yawning ever wider over the last four weeks ever since Damon proposed, and we’d married a few days later at the courthouse.
The flagrant upending of Sinclair’s plans for me was the proverbial straw that broke Sinclair’s back. An unspoken, invisible line drawn between them that, should Sinclair try to use me, he would risk being undone by his very own Brutus.
Since then, Sinclair had almost completely withdrawn Damon from his operations, replacing him with this hot-tempered brute, Rodgers, as his second-in-command. The uncouth grunt enjoyed nothing more than keeping Damon at arm’s length and conversing in barely concealed threats.
We were on borrowed time. We’d gathered lots of information over the last several months, copious proof that Sinclair was defrauding people with his phony, Ponzi scheme investments, but the deeper, more insidious ties to Belmont and GrowTech still eluded us. And now, Amir Shazad was thrown into the mix. It didn’t need to be said what a boon it would be to the FBI…to the world…to bring down a man such as him. It left Damon and me no choice, leaving Damon and me to resort to drastic and riskier measures to find the incriminating evidence we needed before time ran out.
“Do you think she knows?”
Sandrine, as always, was a wildcard, one we’d had no choice but to play because Sinclair had shut Damon out. We’d argued countless times about whether or not to bring her completely into the fold, after all, she had warned Damon about Sinclair’s plans for me, but Damon always shot down the idea.
“ We’ll never get to him if any of us has something to lose.” And Sandrine had her daughter, so trying to turn her was too great a risk to everyone .
But it wasn’t too great a risk to pry as much information from her as we could. Damon decided to capitalize on the concern she’d shown for us, and now, I worried all the time he’d spent ingratiating himself with her had worked against him.
“She doesn’t know,” he grunted.
The knot in my throat ballooned, and I asked hoarsely, “And if he does?”
“He doesn’t.”
I couldn’t really argue with that. If Sinclair knew anything, there would’ve been a full-blown assault on Damon, not a warning text from Sandrine.
“But if he suspects?”
“If he does, then it’s all the more reason I need you here,” he said, the angle of his jaw feathering with the flex of the muscle underneath.
Swallowing, I read between the lines. If I were there, and things went south, I would be used as leverage against Damon. I would be his weakness.
“Okay,” I conceded, though the twist of my stomach seemed to only tighten. “Text me as soon as you know…”
“It’s going to be okay,” he promised instead, his lips hunting for mine once more. “I will protect you.”
“And who protects you?”
The only answer I got was the warmth of his mouth on mine. And when he walked out the door, I tried not to fear the absolute worst.
In the end, my imagined absolute worst was nothing compared to what actually happened.
One hour later…
I called once. That was our protocol. And when the call went to voicemail, I tapped out our coded message and sent it.
Is the chicken in the fridge still good?
A yes meant that he was still okay. A no meant otherwise. But no response?
No. I forced myself to breathe slowly. Damon was trained. Skilled. He was prepared for all kinds of situations and had access to resources in case of any emergency.
He was fine.
But if he wasn’t…I pressed my hand to my throat, coaxing it to work over the lump that obstructed it.
One of the rules of our agreement was that under no circumstances was I to put myself in danger to help him. I wasn’t an agent. I wasn’t trained. I was a civilian he never should’ve let on the inside.
But those rules were made before our marriage. Before I’d sworn to protect him for better or for worse. Before I’d fallen in love with him.
I walked out of the apartment ten minutes later, never more sure of my destination and my intent than when I checked my phone one last time and saw no reply.
Something was wrong.
The wind hosed a steady stream of cold on my face as I approached Sinclair’s home. The street was as quiet as ever. The bowels of winter holding everyone tight to the clutches of their warm homes. The sky was overcast, blotting out the sun and any sense of what time it could be.
On the walk over, I rationalized that if something had happened to Damon, if Sinclair had realized Damon’s intentions, he would’ve had men at the apartment looking. And Damon would’ve found a way to warn me. To get me to safety.
Reaching the front door, I slipped the key from my pocket. One of the few levels of access we still had into Sinclair’s life, and solely because of Sandrine.
Sliding soundlessly through the entrance, I closed the door to an empty hall. The silence broke a second later with angry male voices coming from the direction of the dining room.
As I’d done countless times over the last six months, I walked with swift familiarity through the layout of the Sinclair house, choosing a path through the shadowed living room rather than the lit hallway.
The closer I drew to the voices, I realized two things. First, neither voice was Sandrine’s or Damon’s. And second, Sinclair was talking, and he wasn’t happy. No, he was furious.
In all these months, Sinclair always had a relatively even keel over his emotions. There were flickers of annoyance, some curt tones of disapproval, but never anger. Maybe because I’d only ever interacted with him in a social setting, but I couldn’t recall a time when I’d seen Sinclair angry, let alone raise his voice.
Damon warned that Sinclair’s anger had an easy tell. Like that of a rattlesnake, the man’s voice took on a trembling hiss before his rage lashed out.
“You’ve tracked her phone? My daughter’s? His? Frozen her cards?” Sinclair demanded, his rattling tone carrying louder. “They couldn’t have gotten far.”
Gotten far. Sandrine. Daria. Damon.
Oh god .
I slowed my steps, my mind whirring like a spinning top losing its balance.
Sandrine must’ve found something—realized what Damon was really doing. Either that or she’d been in danger from Sinclair, and Damon had broken his protocol to get her out. To protect them both.
But then why didn’t he text me back?
Was it because he worried Sinclair would track his phone? Still, wouldn’t he have had time to get me some kind of message?
Gritting my teeth, I inched closer, discerning that they weren’t in the dining room but in the adjoining parlor where Daria’s piano was. The perimeter of the living room was marked by massive iconoclastic Greek columns. If I could hide behind the very last corner column, I’d be able to hear their conversation easily, and if I was careful, I could even turn and see them.
I drew deeper into the shadows of the living room and crouched, using the large pieces of furniture to my advantage. As I ducked along their cover to the final column, I didn’t even realize I’d been holding my breath until my back straightened along the cool marble.
“All done,” Rodgers’s nasally voice joined the conversation. “I can put everyone on this?—”
“No,” Sinclair snarled, the vicious sound making me turn at fractions of an inch.
I saw the back of Rodgers’s stocky figure first, and then in front of him, Sinclair, his body partially angled toward the roaring fire in the fireplace, a sheaf of paper pinched in his right hand.
“No one can know about this. Not yet,” Sinclair repeated and looked at Rodgers. I jerked back behind my cover but not before catching the rat-like contortion of his face. “Is Antoni at his apartment yet? If he’s going to take my wife, I’m going to kill his.”
Kill me? My mind tumbled backward over itself. Because Damon rescued Sandrine?
“He’s pulling up now.”
And if I had stayed here…hadn’t come to look for Damon…
What the hell had happened? My mind buzzed, unstoppable and self-destructive. If he’d done something to Sandrine…argued with her…even hit her…Sinclair would’ve been too paranoid and too controlling to leave her alone. Yet, if it wasn’t some kind of attack with that urgency, why hadn’t Damon texted me? Warned me?
More importantly, what did I do now?
Damon wasn’t responding, and Sinclair wanted me dead.
I closed my eyes, swearing that the pound of my pulse was loud enough for the men to hear. Somehow, all that wreckage was contained in the hollow of my chest.
“I knew it. I knew there was something…” Sinclair swore. “I knew that cunt told him Shazad wanted Robyn, and I couldn’t figure out why she’d told him. Now, I know.”
My eyes flung open, my body tensing. I should get out of here. I should be making every attempt to flee for my life. Yet, my feet were stapled to the ground, something in the tone of his voice when he said the last thing, making me desperate to know what he was talking about.
Sinclair might not know where Damon was or where he was going, but he did know something I didn’t; he knew why they’d left.
“Antoni said Robyn’s not there.”
Sinclair let out a roar of rage.
I peered beyond the column once more, holding my breath. Rodgers was tapping furiously on his cell, but Sinclair…he st ared at the paper in his hand, and if rage had the ability to ignite, it would’ve combusted at that moment.
“Get Antoni on the phone.”
“Sir—”
“Now!” Sinclair crushed the paper in his fist and tossed it toward the fireplace, not even noticing when the ball hit the side of the stone facing and bounced in front of the flame instead of landing in it.
“Yes, sir.” There was a beat of silence before the call rang on speakerphone.
“Hello?”
Their footsteps came closer. I pressed back to the column, feeling heartbeats start to scale my throat.
“Antoni. I want her found. I want to know if she had any idea. And then I want her dead, do you understand?”
I squeezed my eyes shut, wondering what he would ask if he knew I was right here. Wondering if he would kill me with his bare hands?
Their footsteps and voices faded, and I tipped forward just enough to see them enter Sinclair’s office and close the door behind them. Without thinking, I bolted from my post and ran to the fireplace, grabbing the wad of paper and praying it contained an answer.
Magnus,
I know this letter will come as a surprise to you, but not the choices in it. While I’ve loved you in the past, you know I’m nothing more than a victim to the whims of my heart. Our love hasn’t existed for some time, though I’ve stayed for the sake of our daughter. But I can’t stay anymore. My heart has found another.
Damon and I are in love .
My knees sagged, and I reached for the mantle for support.
We’ve tried to resist and deny. Damon even married to obscure our clandestine relationship. But I can’t do it anymore. My heart has another love, and I must follow it, and it will be best for you to let us go. I wish you all the best, ma chèr Magnus.
Sandrine
If Sinclair had walked into the room right then, I wouldn’t even have had the strength to be afraid. I wouldn’t have had the strength to be anything but broken.
My mind warred like oil and water trying to mix. I couldn’t believe the man I’d married, the man I’d spent the last nine months living with and falling for, had just disappeared…with another woman.
No.
I refused to believe it. There had to be another explanation. Any other explanation.
Yes, Sandrine and Damon were close. We’d all become close since Damon and I began our ruse; it was the whole purpose for it. And yes, she’d coquettishly flirted with him, but she did that with everyone; it was her personality. And Damon never seemed to be affected by it.
Then again, lying…making the people around him, the people who felt closest to him, believe untruths was what he was trained to do.
No . He loved me. He’d made a vow to me. There had to be an explanation.
And it was to that belief that I staked myself. My hopes. My future. My heart. And then I slipped back out of Sinclair’s house the way I’d come, deciding the best thing to do was keep myself safe until Damon came for me.
Over the next two months, I burned for that belief.
Forty-eight hours after they’d disappeared, I feared the worst: that Sinclair had found them and killed them both. Then I convinced myself Damon must’ve gotten them to the safety of the FBI and they were looking for a way to turn around and quickly arrest Sinclair. I left the city and went south to Carmel Cove. I kept a low profile and stayed in my brothers’ vacant apartment since they were overseas.
Every day, I waited for the knock. Wondering who would find me first: Sinclair. Damon. Or the authorities when they realized Damon and I were married.
The knock never came.
A week after Damon and Sandrine disappeared, my husband’s face appeared on every news station, headlines plastered with crimes I knew he hadn’t committed. Fraud and drugs, accounts in his name filled with millions of dollars stolen from Sinclair’s clients. At every turn, I waited for the announcement that Damon returned and exonerated himself, but it never came. Instead, there were only more rumors that he’d fled the country under another alias, officially branding him a traitor to the United States.
Days turned into months, all without a single word or sign that he was okay. Still, I found more excuses. I mined them out of the depths of my despair, clinging to the polished memories of our time together. The instant connection. The unquenchable passion. The exquisite promises of love and a future—the perfect lure for someone as lonely as me.
Months spilled into each other and then into years. My brothers returned from overseas and opened a business. My focus homed in on putting other criminals behind bars. And somehow, I moved forward.
Every so often, I’d hear about the famed traitor, Damon Remington. I’d hear about another crime he’d facilitated. Another villainous feat he’d accomplished. And eventually, the renown of his more intimate exploits along the way.
He’d become a bad spy. A bad Bond. Charismatic and criminal. And I…I’d been nothing more than a casualty.
A pawn in his game to gain wealth and notoriety by working alongside Sinclair and then betraying him. I doubted he’d loved Sandrine either. Somehow, I was sure she was one more piece he deployed to aggrandize his entrance into the underworld.
And I swore, one day, I’d make my husband pay for what he’d done, and maybe then, my heart would start beating again.