Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
Robyn
“ L ock it.” They were the first words Damon had spoken to me directly since I’d arrived, the edge to his voice cutting as deftly through the silence as his knife had gone through the guard’s hand.
Thankfully, there’d been no further mutilation nor more unveiled threats during dinner. Though, every time Uzair’s eyes drifted to me, I felt the ripple of Damon’s tension.
I’d sat mostly in silence, listening to Damon sell himself and the assets of his operation to Shazad and Belmont, and did my best to hide my unexpected awe.
I didn’t think there was anything left to surprise me about my husband, but hearing him outline all of the resources he brought to the table, from the type of trucks and packaging to the mileage and average time it would take to transport the raw drugs provided by Shazad to GrowTech’s laboratories, and even down to who would be driving and how the drugs should be repackaged to go back out for sale…he knew every piece. Every moving part. He was a puppet master who knew the beginning and end to every single string.
“Was that all real? What you told them?” I asked as I turned the lock on the door, though it would make no difference. We both knew Belmont would have keys to enter every single room in the house, and locking the door would do nothing to stop him if he wanted to come in here.
“Of course, it’s real, Robber,” Damon said smoothly as I turned, catching him slide his hat off his head with a sigh. “You don’t get anywhere near these men without something that’s real.”
Pressing my hand to my chest, I felt the knots inside begin to tighten and a sizzle of heat curl like a vine along my spine.
I shouldn’t be impressed by the criminal empire my husband had built. Yet, objectively, it was impossible not to sink into astonishment, to feel my mind crack and split under the enormity of what he’d created with nothing more than the persona he’d assumed.
For the last decade I’d thought of him as a kind of amorphous antihero. The stories of his success, his conquests, the rumors of the phantom-like reach of his empire—they made me believe I understood the complexity and grandeur of his infamy. But sitting next to him, listening to him, it felt like I stood at the base of the pyramids, having heard about their feats of strength and ingenuity and craft, tales of their size and splendor for so long, and realizing none of it compared to the reality of being in their presence, knowing he’d done it all for me.
The Egyptians had built their pyramids to take them to the gods, and Damon Remington had built his empire to bring him back to me .
In all the stories, every hero, ranging from gallant to morally gray, is willing to burn down the world for the woman he loves. Romantic but simplistic, for burning something only takes a single match. But Damon, my husband, he hadn’t burned the world for me, he’d built one.
He’d built an entire empire with neither the government to protect him nor Sinclair to recommend him. With targets on his back from both sides of the law. With nothing but his name, his reputed skills, and not even the slimmest chance of success. And yet, he’d still done it… for me.
And if I hadn’t heard him reveal the breadth and depth of his resources, I wasn’t sure I would’ve ever fully comprehended just how much… just how utterly everything Damon had done to find me and make these men pay.
“Damon,” I murmured as he opened the armoire to hang his jacket, his silence like a weapon the way it arrested my steps only partway into the sprawling suite.
The bedroom was no different than the rest of the house. A shrine to the hunt. To the conquering. To murder.
A chandelier crafted out of antlers hung like a threat over the large pelt-draped bed. Behind the bed hung a huge painting of the killing of an elephant by poachers, and nausea twisted my stomach when I saw the ivory sconces on either side of the bed. And then on the wall opposite the armoire hung the bust of a bison over a small gas fireplace, the animal head far too big for the space it occupied.
But that was the point. There was no style or design to the space; the aesthetic was simply death, and it was fitted with as many icons of killing as possible.
“I’m going to kill him for bringing you here.” Damon finally spoke, his voice as cold as the snow pelting the windows and as pointed as the mountain peaks it covered.
I’d expected his anger, but I wasn’t quite prepared for this. The sharpening of his jaw. The twitch of his lip. The way his gray gaze pierced mine. I’d even witnessed the consequences of it when he’d staked Peter’s hand to the table. Yet all those allusions were like finding tracks in the woods or scratches on trees; evidence the bear existed without ever seeing it.
But now, I saw the beast.
I set my shoulders back and folded my arms. “I threatened Pat at gunpoint to bring me.”
His jaw fired. “Then he should’ve chosen the shot.”
“Damon.” My jaw dropped, and then I snapped it shut. “You can’t be serious, Damon. You shouldn’t be here alone. Not with them,” I blustered, the surge of emotion propelling me toward him. “I can’t believe your plan was to leave me behind. After everything—after last night, I wake up with you gone—without so much as an explanation?—”
“Last night,” he interrupted, holding up a palm to keep me at bay. A growl bubbled as he tugged at his collar, the button finally sacrificing itself with a solemn pop onto the floor. “Last night wasn’t supposed to happen.”
My brows stitched together, piecing what his plan was supposed to be. “You mean you were hoping I’d still hate you when you left this morning. That’s why you wanted me to leave your room last night. You wanted me to hate you so I wouldn’t follow. So, you could come here and martyr yourself.”
“I’m not martyring myself,” he scoffed and slammed the armoire door shut. “I came here to end this. To finalize the deal with Shazad, get the details of their part of the operation, and then bury them with it.”
“If they let you walk away.”
A harsh breath sliced through his lips. “You’ve been talking too much to Pat.”
“Well, what am I supposed to do when he’s the only one who talks to me?” I retorted, banding my arms over my chest and taking another step closer to him.
His eyes sliced to mine—in warning—and then he balled his fingers like he was ready to punch a hole through the wood dresser. “I’m protecting you.”
The way he said it, it was different now. Now, all I heard was the pain and suffering of a man who’d turned himself into some threatening, unrecognizable creature that thrived in the underbelly of the dark so every other monster would be too scared to come close to me.
And it made my heart ache. All its broken pieces were nothing more than a mirror of the man who broke himself to save me.
“Damon, these men hate you. Belmont hates you for taking out Sinclair and the rest of his organization, and I’m sure Shazad doesn’t have good feelings for the man who destroyed his arrangement with Sinclair all those years ago.”
Frustration smoked from his lips before he turned away and hung his head, his hand cupping the back and curling into the taut muscles. “Most of the people I do business with don’t particularly like me, Robber. It’s the way of the world—of this world.”
I took the opportunity to move closer, and the second I did, his gaze whipped to mine, and the argument we were having fractured with the electric pulse of want.
Last night had been something, but it wasn’t everything. It was a taste after a decade, and for two people who were starving, I couldn’t understand why he’d only held me as I slept, but now I did.
He knew he was leaving in the morning, and he knew what I said was true—that there was a chance he might not come back.
“I promised I would end them all for you,” he rasped .
I went to him. The air separating us rioted in the heat that volleyed between our skin. “At the expense of your life?”
“If it’s the price of my redemption, Robber, then so be it. It’s no less than what you deserve—” His voice broke, but then the deep drag of his inhale repaired it. “After everything they’ve done…after everything I’ve put you through…”
I lifted my hand to his cheek, feeling his jaw muscle tap against my palm. “And if it’s not what I want?”
He took my hand and lifted it from his skin, the blanch of pain on his features like he’d just pulled a knife out of his flesh. Holding my hand between us, he ran his thumb along the ring I’d replaced on my finger.
“Isn’t it?” He punctuated his question with the mark of his lips to my knuckles, heat cascading like wildfire along my arm and then flushing down my body.
My tongue felt heavy, the weight of fifteen years and a tumult of emotions paralyzing the powerful muscle for a prolonged second.
“I don’t want my justice to come from your sacrifice. I want…” My breath trembled, and it amazed me how vulnerable I became for this man. How I was so strong and sure for all these years, and then a single touch, a single kiss, and the idea that his plan this entire time was to sacrifice himself for my vengeance, and all my fortitude melted like ice under a flame. “I want you, Damon. At the end of this, I want my husband.”
He blanched like I’d struck him, and then he released my fingers and pulled his own through his hair, fisting the waved strands and tugging at their seams.
Wasn’t this what he wanted? All this time…all the things he said…
His arm fell to his side, his expression hardening into stone. “I’m going for a walk. Lock the door behind me. ”
Pain lanced my chest like a wrecking ball of razor blades had smashed into it.
For weeks now, all he wanted was for me to hear his truth. For me to start to forgive him. For me to let him back in. And now, the moment I did, he wanted to walk away.
“So that’s it then? You’re just going to leave again?” I didn’t even bother to hide the acidic mixture of hurt and anger in my tone or the way it swelled when my voice wasn’t enough to even temper his stride. “You’d rather roam a house full of men who’d love to murder you than be here…with me…with your wife.”
That finally brought him pause. Damon turned his head in slow motion and rasped, “I’m trying to protect you.”
It was clear the sentiment had defined him so deeply for so long, he didn’t know how to loosen his hold on it…or its hold on him.
“Yes,” I mocked, curling my fingers—the ones he’d kissed—and brought them to my aching chest. “That’s all you want—all you’ve ever wanted. To protect me without caring what I want.”
The cords of his throat roil against the fabric of his collar. “You were right, Robber. What you deserve is to be free of me. Free of the threats my world has created. You deserve the fullness of a life that being married to me has kept from you.”
“So, you don’t want me?” I choked out the words, feeling whiplash from the sudden change in him.
Damon snarled as he regarded me, his eyes the very deepest midnight pierced by only a shard of silver. “You’re my wife, Robyn.” The tenderness of his voice is simultaneously shocking and strong. “I will want you until my heart no longer beats. Until my skin is dust and my name is nothing more than a footnote to history. I will want you until the end of this life and in whatever happens beyond. ”
I squeezed my eyes shut to chase away the burn of tears. “And still, you’re leaving.”
“Because I need to protect you.” A stillness came over him. “Because I’ve realized no matter what I do or who I kill, you will never be safe as long as you’re mine.”
My anger threatened to char my skin, and it should’ve kept me from going closer to the man who kept burning me, but it didn’t.
“Don’t leave.”
His groan quaked his entire form. “I have to. Another taste of you, and I won’t be able to let you go.”
I followed him to the door, my hand reaching for his shoulder.
“You deserve better, Robber,” he said in a low voice, keeping his head facing the door like even one more look would sink his restraint. “You’ll realize it once this is over. Once I’m gone. You’ll move on and realize I was right.”
The lock clicked open, and the truth exploded from my lips.
“I love you, Damon.” I sucked in a breath, my fingers tightening on his shoulder. Or maybe it was his muscle swelling against my hold. “Even when I hated you, I never stopped loving you.”
He spun then, so quickly, the rush of air made me teeter backward, but only for a split second before his palms claimed my face. His hard exhale scorched my cheeks like a flame, and his gaze tracked every twitch and shiver and movement on my face.
“You’re my husband, Damon. Mine.” I echoed his words back to him. “No matter what you do, I will never let you go.”
His gaze was wild. Feral as it bored into mine, the true depths of his possessiveness finally visible.
“Robber…” he ground out, his breaths coming in chaotic bursts.
“Don’t ask me to stop loving you,” I said huskily, my last confession hurtling over the ball in my throat, “because I will never stop. I will never stop loving you.”
Something raw broke through the steel of his chest, a sound of anguish and surrender just before the sweet savagery of his mouth crushed mine.