Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
Robyn
“ Y ou should listen to what he has to say, Robbie.” Pat’s low drawl wrapped around the interior of the car.
I tensed. I was tired of nicknames laden with intimacy given to me by those who continued to put their own needs above mine—or worse, at the expense of mine.
And I was tired of everyone being on Damon’s side when all he did was hurt people. When all he did was hurt me.
“Why? So, I can be brainwashed like you?” I grumbled, staring out the window as we crossed back over the Golden Gate Bridge, wishing my past and my husband could disappear as easily as the city skyline.
A string of curses, some possibly not even in English, spewed from his lips.
“You know better than to think I’m brainwashed, Robbie. I just happen to know the truth.” His voice grated as the car picked up speed. “What you saw in there wasn’t what it looked like. ”
Oranges.
Unease coated my skin in goose bumps. No. He couldn’t be telling the truth; it didn’t make sense.
“Then why wouldn’t he tell me? Why would he let me think…” That he was handing over my network to Belmont.
“Oh, I told him to, believe me,” the large man grumbled, his eyes flickering to mine in the rearview mirror. “I’m sure you heard me in there with him last night.”
So, this was what they were arguing about.
I pulled my bottom lip between my teeth. God, who was I? Still finding reasons to keep believing the man who lied to me? Maybe Damon lied to Pat, too. That had to be what happened. Damon lied to Pat so that he would go along with it.
“Well then maybe he lied to you, too. I know what I saw, and it doesn’t surprise me that Damon did…what he did. It’s what he always does, right? Whatever it takes to meet his ends.”
You are my end. Those words haunted me like a gorgeous ghost from our first conversation we shared all those weeks ago. What would Damon resort to to make sure I remained his at the end of this?
After tonight, I didn’t want to think about the possibilities.
“Goddammit.” Another strung-out expletive before the car made a sharp veer off the highway.
“Shit.” My heart leaped into my throat, and I grabbed the door handle, my heart jackhammering as Pat pulled into the lot of a scenic overlook and stopped the car with equal swiftness as his last maneuver.
I swallowed and looked around. Had someone followed us? Were we in danger? Was it Belmont?
From my seat, I could see Pat’s pulsing grip on the wheel, knuckles blanching and then coloring like a silent metronome until I couldn’t take the thud of my own heartbeat any longer.
“Pat…what’s going on? ”
His broad shoulders sagged with a heavy sigh. “Just coming to terms with how painful he’s going to make my death for telling you,” he rasped ruefully. “He didn’t give Belmont access to your girls, Robbie. Never in a million years would he have done that.”
I blinked, the memory of Damon showing Belmont my phone and the familiar faces on the screen was not only as clear as glass but as sharp, the way it sliced through my breath.
“I saw it, Pat. I saw their faces. Their information on my phone. I saw everything he showed to Belmont.” A wave of disgust rolled through me again. I had to warn them. I had to get out of here.
“Robbie—”
“Stop,” I begged. A surge of urgency had me trying the handle of the door, the latch flipping uselessly through my fingers as the door was child-locked. “Please, Pat. I have to get back to the house. I don’t care what you do with me after, but please just let me warn my friends—warn my brothers.”
“Listen to me. Christ, you’re just as stubborn as your infuriating husband,” he growled. “You saw what Damon showed Belmont. Not what he sent him.”
I choked out a bitter laugh.
“Really? That is what you want me to believe? How gullible do you think I am?” I tried the handle again, more out of frustration than anything. “Is that what he told you? How gullible are you?”
“Not gullible at all, Robbie, since I’m the one who was responsible for sending the encrypted information to Belmont on Damon’s signal.”
I stilled at his admission, the sheer force of his stare tamping out what was left of my lingering protest.
“You contacted Belmont? ”
“I send all of Damon’s communication,” Pat said, removing his hand from the steering wheel. “Safer that way.”
I bit into the side of my cheek, my mind working through the information. It made sense. Damon was a ghost to the world for the last decade and a half. No sightings. No communication. No contact. It was his men—men like Pat who did everything.
“Here.” He drew me from my thoughts, his arm extended back, holding a cell phone.
I stared at it, then looked at him. It wasn’t just a phone—it was an agreement to hear him out. To consider a different explanation. And when my fingers closed around it, it became an admission: that part of me wanted to believe him. And Damon. And that this wasn’t what it looked like.
The screen was unlocked, and the first thing I saw was the opened conversation in the encrypted messaging app. A quick glance confirmed it was Belmont he was communicating with; the other party had initiated the conversation with a QR invitation to the fundraiser tonight. Not like we’d needed it to get in, but Belmont was about appearances, and he didn’t like having uninvited guests at his parties.
The most recent message was sent almost thirty minutes ago, which would’ve been when Damon told Belmont the first quarter of the list was delivered.
I tapped on the packaged file, a sheet opening that looked like an exact replica of what was on my phone…except the details were all different. My pulse sped up, my eyes zipping over the details.
The images. The information. It was definitely different. Completely different. I knew the women Damon had shown to Belmont earlier. Bailey. Morrissey. Kate. Mara. But these women…I didn’t recognize them at all .
“Who are they?” I demanded. Even if he hadn’t sold out my network, it didn’t mean he hadn’t put innocent women at risk.
“The first fifty or so are.” He paused and considered the right word. “Fugitives that Damon has helped over the years.”
“Fugitives?”
Pat’s jaw worked over an explanation that would be enough without revealing too much. “Women with colorful pasts like Damon’s. Ones he’s helped who owe him a favor.” So, other criminals, I thought, reading between the lines.
“And that favor extends to being kidnapped and sold as a sex slave to a Pakistani warlord?”
Pat snorted. “None of those women are getting kidnapped, Robbie. And trust me, they’d love nothing more than for someone to try.” His brogue thickened, rolling into the faintest chuckle at the end.
I bit into the corner of my lip. So, Damon had given away information on women who were well-protected, and judging by that laugh, dangerous in their own right.
“What about the rest?” I asked. There was no way every woman in this file fell into that category.
“Fake names and AI-generated images,” he said. “But they’ll never even get to the first fifty before Damon is through with them.”
My throat worked to swallow just like my mind worked to wrap itself around the idea that it had all been fake…a setup.
Oranges.
I set the phone down on the center console like it turned to hot coals in my palm. “Then why didn’t Damon say that? Why didn’t he tell me that before we met with Belmont? Warn me?”
“Didn’t he?”
“Telling me that everything isn’t as it seems is not the same as informing me he was going to pull a bait and switch on Belmont and use my girls as the bait,” I snapped. “I’m sorry, but that’s not the kind of thing you can just vaguely allude to and then not expect me to react.”
“This isn’t an information game, Robbie, it’s a mind game. Do you not see that? Damon has to play Belmont into his hand?—”
“But he didn’t have to play me,” I broke in, refusing to quell my anger no matter how relieved I felt.
Even if my friends weren’t in danger, Damon still lied to me— didn’t trust me— and yet I was just supposed to blindly forgive him.
“What was the alternative?” Pat returned, growing impatient with my impertinence. “Belmont would want to verify the information before bringing Damon into this deal, right?”
“Of course.”
“And if you hadn’t reacted the way you did, how would he have done that?”
“By looking at the list and investigating each name…” I trailed off and sat back in the seat, suddenly feeling off-kilter as I met his knowing eyes in the rearview, confirming what I’d just come to realize.
If I hadn’t been shocked and furious, Belmont would’ve scrutinized the information Damon sent him—information I’d just seen with my own eyes that was forged. But because I lashed out…because Damon had to physically restrain me… I’d been a distraction and a confirmation.
“I’m the reason Belmont believed it,” I murmured, feeling like I’d just walked away from a head-on collision. My heart boomed. Mind scrambled. And adrenaline screwed with every barometer of emotion. “He still could’ve told me. I could’ve pretended,” I insisted but weakly .
“Would you have wanted to take the risk if it wasn’t good enough? If Belmont didn’t believe it?”
My teeth fit tightly together. No. If the situation had been reversed, I wouldn’t have risked me knowing the truth.
“So, I’m just supposed to be okay with it? To feel okay with having my emotions manipulated for the greater good?”
Pat’s heavy exhale laid its weight on the silence, and my gaze drifted to my balled fists.
“You feel what you want, but I won’t let you continue believing Damon would do anything to hurt you, no matter what he wants.”
My head snapped up. “Why does he want me to believe that?”
There was an opportunity back in the garage for him to explain the truth. For him to get in the car and leave with us and reveal all of this just like Pat was doing now. But he hadn’t. Damon had let me think the worst of him, let me hit him—begged me to slap him again—and then sent me off on my own.
“Because apparently all these years of punishing himself isn’t enough. He wants your punishment, too,” Pat said, sorrow flooding his tone. “You weren’t wrong in what you said.”
My brows pinched. “I said a lot of things…”
“The part where you asked Damon if he enjoyed pain now,” Pat rumbled, giving his head a small shake. “Sometimes, I think he does.”
I didn’t need to clarify that we were talking about two different kinds of pain. Pat referenced something that went far deeper than any physical harm could reach. A pain that was self-inflicted. Because of me.
My fingers curled into the soft fabric of my dress, my heart careening like a runaway train in my chest.
It still didn’t make it okay for him to manipulate my emotions. To use my anger—my fear to exact the response he wanted.
Just like you did when you threw your wedding ring into the donation box. I winced.
And then the doors unlocked.
I searched out Pat with a questioning gaze. “What are you doing?”
“I’m giving you a choice.”
“To leave?” My brows banged into my forehead.
“If that’s what you still want.”
I reached for the handle, running my fingers along the smooth metal. “And if that’s not what Damon wants.”
“Damon can go pound sand. Or bury me in it,” he added, knowing what he risked. “But I’m not taking you back to the house if you can’t…if you’re unwilling to see any other side.”
I’d looked at his phone. I’d listened to his explanation of what just happened at the event. Shouldn’t that imply I was willing to listen to alternatives? Maybe . Or maybe Pat was a smart man and wanted to hear me say the words or get out of the car. Then there would be no mistaking my choice—no gray area I could look back and convince myself meant something that it didn’t.
My grip closed, feeling the resistance of the door’s latch the same way I felt the resistance in my heart, begging my mind not to push through it.
“And what other side is that, Pat?” I asked softly, sure that while he’d told me about tonight, he wasn’t going to open up about my and Damon’s past.
“The side of a man who became a monster to protect the woman he loves.”
The words fired like a bullet right to my chest, stopping my heart and dropping my hand to my side .
Maybe Damon did enjoy pain now…but he wasn’t the only one.
“Take me home,” I said softly, wondering when I’d gone from hating my estranged husband with every breath to willingly subjecting myself to further emotional destruction at his very capable hands in the chance he might just put me back together when it was all over.