Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
Damon
“ E verything all right?” Pat’s question caught me as soon as I opened the car door.
“Yeah.” I slid into the back seat and firmly shut it behind me. “Just had to take care of some loose ends.”
Closing my eyes, I pinched the bridge of my nose and let out a slow breath, the pound in my head pulsing without a missed beat. It was bad enough walking into that event with a migraine, but that camera flash was like a white-hot knife…driven right through my skull by my furious wife.
Dammit, Robber.
As soon as the spots cleared from my vision, I’d grabbed the green man’s camera and checked the image. It was blurry and could be dealt with later. My wife, on the other hand, who’d fled from the room like Cinderella after watching her prince turn into a pumpkin, needed to be stopped. Needed to understand.
Instead, my cheek still stung from the scorn of her palm.
Monster.
“And the meeting?”
I stretched my neck side to side, the pounding in my head intensifying. “He’ll send the coordinates tomorrow morning if you could call Charlie and tell him to have the helicopter ready.”
I didn’t know where Belmont’s private lair was, but I had a feeling it would require a flight.
“Will do,” Pat grumbled and pulled away from the convention center for the second time tonight.
Monster.
Fuck. Grabbing the tail of my bow tie, I tugged and freed it from around my neck.
There was no reasoning with her when she was this angry, and who the hell knew? Maybe after what I’d done, I had no right to. So, I bundled her into the car knowing Pat would get her home safe and went back inside in search of that camera.
Blurry or not, Damon Remington didn’t leave a trace. Nor was I going to leave her wedding band behind as a damn donation.
It took ten minutes to find the man in green. Two minutes to persuade him to open the box so I could retrieve the ring. And one minute to take his camera and drop it into one of the numerous champagne fountains in the room. He knew better than to make a single sound of protest.
“She okay?” I asked. He was waiting for me to ask. His stare was like a loaded gun.
“Depends on your definition of okay.”
I frowned. “Physically well but emotionally enraged with me.”
“Yeah, then she’s okay.”
“Thanks,” I grunted and tipped my head back against the headrest, sliding my hat over my eyes .
Monster.
I was a monster. There was no question. The things I’d done over the last fifteen years were the definition of monstrous. Drug deals. Arms deals. Smuggling. Extortion. Thievery. Bribery. Piracy. Murder. It didn’t matter how I buttoned them up in salt-and-pepper suits and manicured manners or gave my infamy a flare with my skewed moral code— Damon Remington never did business that dealt in the harm of women and children— I was still a criminal. The king of the criminal underworld.
I’d become a monster, but so would any man resigned to hell for long enough; becoming a monster was the only way to survive. Becoming the biggest monster was the only way to protect her.
“Damon—”
“Not tonight, Pat,” I cut him and his good intentions off, wanting nothing more than to sink into the darkness.
“Then when, Damon? You’re leaving tomorrow.”
My throat managed to siphon a swallow. “Maybe never.”
All I ever wanted was to protect her. Robber. My wife. I was the one who brought her into my world, and I swore to keep her safe from the demons who lived there. To keep that promise, I did things I never imagined I was capable of because that was the price of love.
To protect her, I left everything behind. I’d become a traitor. I’d been beaten and tortured. I’d swindled and charmed, lied and stole, threatened and harmed—I’d committed every crime in the book and some outside the box to pave my way from nothing into the world’s most wanted man.
Fifteen goddamn years, and it never occurred to me that what I had to become to keep her safe was the very thing she could never love. A monster.
“Damon— ”
“She can’t love a monster, Pat. I never should’ve asked her to.”
She was mine, for better or for worse, but she didn’t belong in my universe.
“You’re not a monster, Damon.”
A sound puffed through my lips. A laugh starved of any actual joy. “You have to say that because I pay you.”
Pat swore. The man hated when I brought up our professional relationship as a barrier to conversation.
“You’re a stubborn, wool-brained bastard, Damon. You think I tell you that because you pay me? Because I got plenty more where that came from if it’ll get me a good raise.”
I palmed my hat and pulled it from my face. So much for a few minutes to decompress on the ride home.
“What do you want me to say?” I glared at him. “I couldn’t tell her. I couldn’t risk it. And I don’t expect her to forgive me. Her forgiveness wasn’t part of the deal.”
“You know, the same party trick gets old after a while.”
My brows pulled together. “What do you mean?”
“The one where you do the right thing but make yourself look like the villain.”
“That’s not a party trick, Pat, that’s who I am.”
“Not with her, it’s not. It doesn’t have to be.”
I sighed and shook my head, my fingers crunching into the fabric of my hat, the last few miles back to the house dragging interminably.
“Maybe if you told her the truth…”
“Christ, Pat, she doesn’t want the truth!” I yelled, the boom of my voice quaking the inside of the car. “Did you not hear her? See her? It doesn’t matter what I say.”
“She can’t judge your choices if she doesn’t know your reasons, Damon,” he fired back, completely unfazed by my outburst. “Unless it’s you who doesn’t want the truth, Damon. ”
“And what truth is that?” I rasped, my head throbbing as he pulled through the gate and up to the house.
The car came to a stop, and I reached for the door.
“That redemption is a choice.”
My hand stilled on the handle.
“And since you’re so damn wool-brained, I’ll give you a hint: it’s not hers.”
I ground my teeth together at his snark. My choice.
“I’ll see you in the morning,” I clipped and let myself out of the car, the door closing a little too hard behind me.
Inside, the house was dark and as quiet as a tomb. Fitting for the seeming death of my relationship with my wife.
I hung my hat on the empty rack, a small smile managing to find its way out when I thought about all the others she’d buried in the pool. God, she was incredible. Too incredible to love a monster.
I swore under my breath and began popping open the buttons on my shirt, striding quickly toward my room. I needed a hot shower, some ibuprofen, and the ability to selectively forget Pat’s conversation in the car.
Maybe redemption was my choice, but the only path to it was straight through fire.
I had sins to atone for. Crimes to answer for. And a vow I needed to uphold. And the truth I didn’t want to face? That choosing to redeem myself meant losing Robyn for good.
I swung open the door to my bedroom and reached for the light, a silhouette in the window stopping my heart mid-beat.
“What are you doing here?”
I froze, my feet just over the threshold.
Robyn stood by the windows, her back to me even though she had to have heard my footsteps.
Her dress was now layered in moonlight daring to peek through the clouds, the midnight velvet like a shroud of mourning she couldn’t shake. Along the back, only the slightest puckers scarred the fabric where she’d ripped the cape off the back. Even her hair hadn’t been touched, most of it still pinned except for the few curls loosened during her escape.
There’d been plenty of time for her to change and sequester herself before I returned, but she’d done none of those things. She’d remained just as I’d left her…and waited for me.
A desperate kind of hope fisted my throat. Why?
A deep shudder cracked through me, adrenaline infused with attraction spilling into my veins. She shouldn’t be here. Not now. Not tonight. Even armed with the truth, I didn’t have it in me to go another round.
Funny how at various times over my checkered past, I’d endured weeks of all manner of torture, and yet, mere hours in the presence of my wife—the presence of wanting a woman who hated me so acutely was beyond what a man was capable of enduring.
Beyond what I was capable of enduring.
“Robyn,” I growled when she didn’t acknowledge me.
I watched a shiver bring her to life, the reflection of her beautiful face slowly materializing as she turned. I really fucked myself by giving her that dress to wear. I should’ve picked something different—anything different than the gown that clung to her full breasts and the curve of her hips like it was made of nothing but shadow. Anything different than a dress that I could either pull down or lift up without any effort .
I shouldn’t have put myself so close to heaven knowing she’d never let a devil like me touch her again.
“I’m waiting for answers,” my wife replied, folding her arms over her chest.
Without even trying, my body recalled the feel of her pressed to me. Muscle memory combined with heart chemistry. It was still hard to believe she was here with me.
“It’s late, Robber.” My jaw locked, and I roughly tugged the slip of my bow tie free and then shrugged out of my jacket. She made no move to leave as I rounded the bed, giving her a clear path to the exit, so I ordered low, “Go to bed.”
I didn’t want her here. Not after kissing her. Not seeing the look of betrayal on her face minutes later. Not after she’d given away her wedding ring—donating it to a man she despised.
In all this time, in all the ways she’d stood defiant against me—against us, watching her toss that ring, the one she’d kept for fifteen goddamn years, was like a knife to my soul.
“You should’ve told me the truth.”
I stopped, my head tilting toward my shoulder, but I refused to let myself turn. Her words were the sound of a sword pulled from stone. An impossibility. A feat of magic or fate. And something that came too late.
I couldn’t do this. Not tonight. Not when I’d have to walk away from her again in the morning.
“I’m a monster, Robber. You already knew that truth,” I said, my voice strained like a stone about to crack.
Striding into the bathroom, I tugged the door to shut it behind me and reached for the buttons on my shirt. My head cocked.
The door hadn’t clicked closed.
“Fine,” I told her, knowing I wasn’t alone in the bathroom. “What truth should I have told you?”
“That you didn’t and never planned on giving Belmont the information on my girls,” she answered, and I stiffened. “That you sent him fake information of associates of yours who you’d already warned.”
Goddammit, Pat. A hard exhale punched from my lungs as I turned.
Robyn stood with her arms bracketing the doorframe, her angry gaze matching the glittering ire in mine.
“That wasn’t his truth to share,” I said, my teeth ground tight. I didn’t care how many times he’d saved my life, stepping in to foster my forgiveness was a line he never should’ve crossed.
“Because you should’ve told me,” she repeated, her pert chin lifting.
I lifted my arms and positioned my hands a couple of inches above hers on the doorframe. “And if I had, it would’ve jeopardized my plan.”
Her eyes popped and cracked, their color the very shade of my kryptonite.
“I know,” she said and then let her arms fall. “That’s why I understand why you didn’t.”
My weight shifted back onto my heels. The notion that I’d just been unburdened by the slightest bit of her anger affecting me cataclysmically.
“Well, now you know,” I croaked. “And now you should leave.”
“Again, you’re trying to get me to leave your bedroom.”
My head dipped. “And again, you’re fighting to stay when there is every reason for you to go.”
The air rippled between us like the first tremor of an earthquake. An invisible foreshock. Neither of us knowing how much time we had until the real devastation occurred.
“I just told you that I understand,” she said and stepped forward. Another shock. “I understand you tried to warn me. I understand why you needed me to react that way. And I understand I would’ve done the same thing if our roles were reversed.”
“Which is why I don’t understand why you waited here—why you’re still here. You know the truth. It was all a setup to give Belmont what he wanted and to get me into their operation. So, go to bed. It’s done,” I snapped, the pound of my headache was crushed by the painful throb of my cock. She was so damn close. And she wanted to be here.
Who was I to be turning away the very thing I’d ached for this entire time?
A monster who wanted to be redeemed.
“Why do you want me gone?”
Again, she moved closer, her chest almost brushing mine. It was like she didn’t realize she was stepping straight into the jaws of a lion. Into the grip of a beast.
The growl that loosed from my chest was nothing short of feral as I dropped my head to hers and latched my hand around the column of her throat. “Because I want you like a criminal. Like a madman. I want you like a psychopath who’s only been fixated on one woman for the past fifteen years who’s now standing within reach,” I said savagely, watching her blush steal down her cheeks and under my palm. “Because I want my wife. I want to possess her. I want to put my ring back on her finger and my cock back in her cunt and never let her go.”
My whispered vulgarities lifted goose bumps over her skin, each one calling to the promise of my touch. Meanwhile, my cock was so stiff, it was hard to see straight, let alone think rationally.
I tore my hand away from her and stepped back before I couldn’t.
“Go, Robber,” I croaked, my chest heaving.
I should’ve had another bead put in before coming for her. I should’ve…incapacitated myself the moment I knew I’d been returning that girl to my brothers-in-laws’ garage in exchange for my wife.
Wordlessly, Robyn inched away, and I let out the breath locked in the cage of my chest. My lip twitched and then curled when she turned and crossed back through my bedroom.
Good.
She needed to go…and I needed a cold shower and an hour with my fist.
Except she didn’t leave.
My jaw crashed to the floor as she reached the bedroom door, and instead of walking through it, the lock clicked into place like a bullet lodging in the chamber of a gun.
“Locking yourself in the lion’s den is never a smart idea, Robber.”
“I came here for the truth, and I’m not leaving until I get it.”
“Didn’t I just confirm it?” I quipped, my eyes hunting her like prey as she walked back to her original position by the window. “Belmont demanded I replace the sex trafficking side business we’d cost Shazad. So, I lied about giving him your network of spies, and I lied to you so you’d make it believable.”
Her head nodded in slow undulations, rolling along the waves of a current that she refused to let sweep her away. “Yes, I do know that,” she said and began to make her way back toward me. “That’s not the truth I’m asking for.”
I’d felt gunshots less than I did the force and velocity of her request embedding itself in my chest. Yet in the same manner, adrenaline staved off the physical pain for me to demand, “What are you asking for then, Robber?”
I couldn’t believe it. I needed to hear the words. I needed to hear the exact words to be sure I wasn’t hallucinating.
She stopped, and I stopped breathing .
“I want to know what happened that night, Damon. I want to know why you disappeared. I want to know why you said you loved me, why you married me, and then why you betrayed me with Sandrine.”
The fury that came over me was so intense, I didn’t realize I’d moved until I was in front of her. Until her chin was between my fingers and her face held up to mine.
How was it that nothing about her had changed for me? All these years and the brightness of her eyes, the softness of her skin, the peach color of her plump lips…it all looked just the same to me, as though her visage hadn’t been etched into my memory but into stone.
“And if the truth comes at a price?” I rumbled, feeling the rhythm of my pulse turn ragged and charged like a thoroughbred stomping at the gate. At the chance to let the truth finally run free.
Her chin lifted. “And if I’m willing to pay?”
Another shudder went through me. “Are you if the price is that you’ll never be free of me? That I’ll never stop fighting for you and to be yours again.” Her lips parted on a soft inhale, and my head dipped, about to kiss her because I couldn’t stop myself— almost. Pausing on the edge of temptation, I murmured, “And that you’ll always be mine, Robber. As ever. Forever.”
A price or a promise, the interpretation was hers.
Slowly, I pulled back, a sound of pain bubbling from my chest. Our warm breaths tangled like knotted threads, making it harder for me to move away. Her gaze rose to mine, her irises the color of ivy wet from a storm. Determined but uncertain.
“Tell me.” Her words detonated with honesty and simplicity and shook my entire world.
Fuck.
I nodded slowly and forced myself to take a step back .
Her proximity messed with my mind, and there was no way I could get through this with her being in arm’s reach. It was a miracle I’d survived the night she’d climbed on my lap—a miracle she’d fled from the room before seeing me grab my cock and come at the first touch.
It had been so long. So fucking long…
“You should sit,” I told her, and it must’ve been the strangled grip around my voice that made her comply without protest.
Walking to the bed, Robyn sat on the end. Her hands curled into the duvet as though she knew this was going to be a roller coaster and needed to hold on.
Meanwhile, I went to the window and planted one hand on the glass. “The truth.”
Funny how I’d imagined this moment since the second I honored my promise to Sandrine. Years stacked upon years preparing and perfecting how to evacuate the truth about that day, and now, when the moment came, my confession…my honed explanation evaded me.
But only briefly.
One look at my wife’s beautiful face shimmering in the reflection, and I knew I’d find a way to tell her the truth even if I had to slice my wrist and spell it out in blood.
“Do you remember why I proposed to you?” I asked, lowering my arm and facing her, making sure to keep my back pressed to the glass; I needed the physical anchor to tether me at a distance.
“Of course. Sinclair wanted to…force me to marry Uzair Shazad. What does that have to do with why you left?”
“Because.” My throat worked to swallow. “Because when I took you off the table, Sinclair needed someone else.”
“Sandrine?” Robyn scoffed in disbelief, but when I shook my head, her brows knitted together, and I watched the darkness settle on her face when she realized who. “No…”
“He was going to give Daria to Uzair.”
“No—she was a fucking child.” She bolted upright as though this were happening now and as though the child in question hadn’t aged in fifteen years into the woman engaged to her adopted brother.
“Robber,” my voice grated, my eyes flicking to the bed.
Her nostrils flared, but she slowly returned to her perch. “So, when Sinclair found her again…”
I’d told Sandrine three years ago it was too dangerous for Daria to come to the States for school, but she’d never been able to say no to her daughter. And coming to New York had alerted Sinclair to their presence. He found them, killed Sandrine, and then pretended to be Daria’s protector, all the while…
“It was to fulfill a bargain that was made over a decade ago.”
Flecks of angry gold appeared in her eyes. “I wish you would’ve killed him.”
The night Harmon had saved Daria from her father, it had been with my help, and in exchange, Harmon had left Sinclair to me.
“It would’ve been so easy, Robber,” I confessed. “Too easy.” A man like that deserved to rot the rest of his life knowing everything and everyone he’d sacrificed for power and influence…only to fail.
“So, Sandrine realized what he was going to do to Daria,” she murmured, returning back to the past.
“She called me that day because she overheard Sinclair talking—preparing to exchange their daughter for a business deal. She was crazed. I mean, you know how she…” I cleared my throat. “Daria was the only thing she cared about. The only reason she stayed with him. ”
Robyn gave a slow nod.
“When I got to the house, she was already packed. She demanded I get her and Daria out. Away from him. She went on about some place in France that belonged to her family—family she’d lied to Magnus about not having.”
Sandrine Decatur was a colorful person. She felt big and dreamed bigger. She wanted fame and fortune, and when she came to the States, she found it was easier…that it made for a better story if she was a poor French orphan looking to catch her big break. Her parents had cut ties with her when she left, so when she met Magnus, she’d never told him the truth about her parents; why would she? They hadn’t been in her life for years. Or maybe she knew deep down they’d sense the kind of man she’d chosen…and the qualities in him she’d overlooked because of his wealth.
“Of course, I wanted to help her. I was infuriated at Magnus for selling”—I broke off with a grimace—“I couldn’t imagine what Sandrine was feeling. But to help her…”
“Meant going against him.”
My chin settled into a nod. “You know how sequestered he kept her. As soon as she was gone, if I were still there, he’d suspect me.”
“So, you either had to blow your entire mission—our mission—or leave Sandrine to fend for herself.”
“It was never a choice, Robber,” I rumbled, and the sudden glow of her eyes told me it was the right thing to say. “I let him get away with a lot of things—helped him get away with a lot of things, but not this. Not a child.”
Her understanding of my decision was brief before it became marred by the disastrous consequences. “So how did I become your casualty?”
My throat tightened. “I was going to help them escape, and in my mind, if I was already blowing the mission, I might as well use my resources—my real identity—to do it. For the information Sandrine could provide, the FBI would’ve been more than willing to protect her and move them both into WITSEC. It wasn’t what I’d been assigned to find on Sinclair, but it was a damn solid second.”
I didn’t know if it was my tone or the look on my face, but something gave away exactly how well that option had gone over.
“She refused…” Robyn’s incredulity made her breathless.
We’d argued many times about involving Sandrine in our mission, Robyn always so sure she would take the chance to get out while I had my doubts. I’d never regretted more being right.
“I thought because she’d come to me for help, it shifted the scales. That she not only trusted me and considered me a friend but needed my help to the point she’d do whatever I suggested because she had no one else,” I went on, a bitter smile stretching my cheeks. “I was an idiot.”
Robyn flinched.
“Maybe she trusted me. Maybe she considered me a friend. But neither held a candle to her concern for her daughter. She point-blank didn’t trust the feds to keep her safe, and there was nothing I could do to convince her,” I rasped, my eyes drawn to the subtle feather of Robyn’s pulse on the side of her neck. “I’ve never had something so gloriously backfire as that night. I offered her the full protection of the federal government, and she turned around and threatened me with it.”
Robyn jerked violently, and this time there was no word to describe the shock on her face. “Sandrine threatened you?”
“She already had a plan, and in her mind, she’d determined it was the only safe one. She said if I didn’t help her, she’d tell Sinclair the truth about who I was,” I continued. “Even then, I still thought I could salvage it. I compromised and said no WITSEC. I countered and said we’d get you, take her and Daria wherever she wanted to go, and then you and I could…get out of this mess.”
In the corner of my eye, I watched Robyn’s hand slide from the bed to her thigh, gripping instead the fabric of her dress as she shook her head. “No,” she croaked, her face blanching. “I read the note, Damon.”
The note…
“I read Sandrine’s note to Sinclair.”
No…
Now I was grateful to have the glass at my back for support, though the realization gusted so strongly I thought it might crack.
“Where? How?” The words barely fit through my locked teeth, my fingers burrowing depressions in the glass where they pressed.
Her scowl dug deeper. “It doesn’t matter how. It matters that I read it, so I know you’re lying to me,” she said, her voice thickening. “I want the truth, Damon. Not just whatever pieces of it make you look like a hero.”
My jaw fired against my cheek. Apparently, she wasn’t the only one who didn’t know what happened that night, but no matter what answers I needed to have, I wasn’t going to get them until I’d staked my own heart on a platter for her.
“That note was part of Sandrine’s plan,” I explained, ignoring Robyn’s strangled laugh of disbelief. “She said if we left, Sinclair would know it was because of Daria—because she’d heard him and thought she could escape. She was convinced Sinclair’s ego was too fragile, and if he believed instead that she’d left him for me, that, while he might hate her and me, he’d be too afraid to hunt them down if they were in my protection.” I let out a tight breath. “He’d already seen how far I’d gone to protect you.”
There was no detail too small for me to notice about my wife. From every molecule of oxygen that passed through her lips to the slightest twitch of her ring finger when I mentioned the statement I’d made by marrying her.
“You want me to believe…it was all part of a plan?” she hissed, the teeth of her anger sharpened and bared. “Did she also tell you that you couldn’t tell me? That you couldn’t come for me? Give me the slightest fucking explanation as to why my husband—the man I loved—had disappeared with another man’s wife?”
“No,” I said firmly, knowing this was the pain—the burden I’d chosen to carry. “That was my choice.”
“Fuck you.”
She stood, clearly aiming for the door, and my heart rammed against the front of my chest. If I let her walk away now, she’d never come back. I shoved off the window and reached her in a few strides, taking her arm and hauling her against me.
“Let me go.”
“You wanted the truth, Robber,” I growled. “If I don’t get to pick and choose the pieces, neither do you.”