Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Damon
“ M r. Belmont, I have Mr. Remington.” The guard from earlier stepped into Belmont’s office, announcing me as though Belmont wasn’t the one who’d asked for the meeting.
I waited in the hall, my face a mask of playful patience, my mind still stuck on my wife’s beautiful face.
“Yes, bring him in.” Belmont sounded like he’d shared too many cigars with the Shazads last night.
I didn’t wait for the guard to usher me in before I strode around him with a smirk.
“Bernie,” I drawled, barely dipping my chin to the man sitting behind the desk.
He didn’t frown like he usually did at the nickname. That wasn’t a good sign.
“Mr. Remington.” He cleared his throat. “I take it you slept…well.”
“I always sleep well, Bernie.” I strolled to one of the leather wingbacks in the room and took a comfortable seat. “So, what do I owe the pleasure of this private conversation? Or is Shazad joining us?” I flicked my watch on my wrist. “I’m happy to move up these discussions. I’m a very busy man.”
Looking up, I found Belmont staring at me. Assessing. His fingers propped into the ruddy folds of his face like he had all the time in the world to think.
A chill trickled through me.
I let the half-smile drain from my face. “I don’t like to waste my time, Mr. Belmont.”
That seemed to trigger him. He dropped his hand and sat forward.
“Neither do I, Mr. Remington. Neither do I.” He linked his fingers on the desk. “You know, I have to say I never realized you were a married man, Mr. Remington.”
The chill turned to an arctic frost. Hard and cracking and frigid. It tensed every muscle and slowed my breaths into a very tightly measured meter.
Belmont shouldn’t be bringing up Robyn. Even if her presence was unexpected, I’d made it very fucking clear last night she was off-limits.
“Few people realize much about me beyond how much I can do for them. Wondering too much more is usually bad for business.” My voice crackled with the threat.
“It’s surprising to learn that a man with your prestige and…reputation is married.”
I fought to not reach across the desk, grab his fountain pen, and jam it through the rolls in his neck. That would give away exactly what I needed to conceal: exactly how much Robyn meant to me.
“Is this about last night?” I turned the conversation on him and linked my hands in my lap. “Because I thought I made my position clear. I don’t tolerate anyone touching what belongs to me, and your man was a little slow on the uptake,” I said and rolled my shoulders in an easy shrug. “It’s all right. I understand the nice suit and winning smile tempt people to disrespect me. To throw the proverbial stone and see if it will take down my Goliath.” I emitted a low, forced laugh and then abruptly stilled.
The line I was walking was so thin, it might as well have been invisible. Making them understand that Robyn was off-limits but without letting on that it was because I was in love with her.
Sometimes, there was no difference between strength and weakness except the lighting under which it was viewed.
“Sometimes you have to make an example and put their insolence on display,” I said and jerked my chin to the rhino head mounted behind Belmont’s desk. “You understand what I mean,” I cajoled and added, “Don’t worry, I won’t hold it against you, old sport.”
“I do understand… I do.” Belmont sighed and scratched his chin. “Still surprising to me that of all the rumors—of all the tall tales of the exploits of the great Damon Remington, none have ever even whispered about a wife.”
Because I’d done everything in my power to make sure they whispered about something else.
“Why are you so concerned with my wife, Bernie? She’s not the one who’s going to facilitate this operation and make you obscenely wealthy.”
His palm landed with a thud on the desk. “Just very curious.” His fat fingers drummed with an unsteady coordination that made me think he’d probably paid someone to kill all the animals hanging around his house, unable to do it himself. “All three of us are.”
So that was it .
They didn’t trust me because of Robyn, and Belmont’s curiosity was festering like an infected sore.
Though I was their very best option to complete their mutual expansion, that didn’t mean betraying me didn’t have its benefits, too. Especially if my motives were muddied by the presence of my wife.
I rested calmly back in the chair like there wasn’t a threat suspended from every breath I took. I needed some other way to assure them that Robyn wasn’t a piece in this game. Alluding to her as a piece of property hadn’t done the trick, but maybe…
“I’m a businessman, Bernie. I make alliances when it suits me…and break them when it doesn’t,” I drawled slow, an explanation and a threat all rolled into one. “That shouldn’t be so hard to understand, especially for Mr. Shazad. From what I hear, he’s been trying to secure a marital alliance for his son for quite some time.”
A wife as property and a marriage as a business transaction. They were concepts that Belmont and the Shazads should be able to grasp.
“Yes.” His mouth mangled in some expression I didn’t care to decipher. “Have to say I’d love to hear what it was that Mrs. Remington brought to the table. Aside from her beauty.”
My hand gripped the armrest, and I cursed myself when his gaze darted to the crack in my calm.
“Is there a reason you wanted to talk to me, Bernie? Or was it just to try and pry into things that don’t concern you?” I stood and adjusted the cuffs of my sleeves. “Because while I’ve been a good sport with quite a few of your juvenile power plays, I’m frankly getting a little bored of them. So, I’m more than happy to walk away from this deal and continue dismantling your empire piece by piece, if you’d prefer.” I paused and let out a mocking laugh. “Actually, I don’t care what you’d prefer. Finish the deal on your own. I’m no longer interested. ”
I didn’t even toss a glance in Belmont’s direction before heading for the door.
It was a daring move. A Hail Mary. To risk everything we’d done, everything we’d come here for at the drop of a hat, but I didn’t have a choice. His questions about Robyn…they cut too close to comfort, and I wasn’t lying when I’d told her I would do anything and risk everything to protect her. Even this.
Even my chance at penance. My freedom from the country I’d betrayed. And my opportunity to finally have a future with my wife.
“Shazad isn’t satisfied,” Belmont called, his tone sour.
I stopped and turned, making a sound of disbelief. “I’m sorry. I could’ve sworn I just heard you say Shazad isn’t satisfied not only with the opportunity to finally expand his business into North American markets, a guaranteed success by working with me, but with the very generous gift I’ve given him.”
His lip twitched as though he were about to say something else but held back. Shit.
“He’s not satisfied anymore.”
“Explain,” I demanded flatly, tired of his games.
Belmont tipped forward, his knuckles digging into his desk.
“He didn’t appreciate your…tone last night at dinner.”
I bared my teeth, and a snarl might’ve slipped out. “I didn’t appreciate him eyeing my property.”
“Yes, well, now he doesn’t trust you.”
Translation: He wanted something else from me.
I stuck my hand in my pocket, letting the fall of my jacket hide the way it curled into a fist.
Every nerve—every sense—was on high alert. If I were alone here, I’d tell him Shazad could go fuck himself and the deal was off. But I wasn’t alone, and I was pretty damn positive that as soon as Belmont’s man closed me in his office, he’d returned to his post outside my and Robyn’s room.
“This is a very dangerous game Shazad is playing, Bernie,” I said low, but if I didn’t play along, Belmont wouldn’t hesitate to draw my wife into this game. Business arrangement or not, his line of questioning was now the unspoken knife he held to my throat.
Belmont huffed. “Well, I can’t say it was my idea. I’m just the messenger, Remington, and I want this finally done as much as you do.”
Belmont was the one with the most at risk. Shazad already had a billion-dollar heroin empire. Expanding into North America was an investment, but one that certainly wouldn’t hurt him if he didn’t make it. Belmont, on the other hand, had a legitimate corporation that was slowly crumbling under the weight of his criminal attachments as Robyn and her brothers and I brought them all to light.
“I’m not a circus monkey, Bernie. I don’t jump through hoops to make deals, and I’m certainly much less inclined to do so now,” I said, my tone clipped with annoyance. “But by all means, Bernie, please entertain me with what else Mr. Shazad would request of me.”
I feigned my blasé demeanor. The man I’d been—the monster I’d created—would’ve listened to the request, laughed, and then taken a body part from Belmont as the price for his insolence and delivered it to Shazad before walking away from this deal entirely.
No one pulled a bait and switch on Damon Remington.
But that wasn’t an option now.
Belmont dropped his gaze for a second, surprising me with the change in his demeanor; he genuinely didn’t want to make this ask, and it made me all the more intrigued.
Whatever it was, I could get it. Money. Drugs. Weapons. Contacts. I didn’t like to be taken advantage of like this, but at the end of the day, it didn’t matter because this was the end of the road for me.
As soon as I had the details on their ends of the deal—concrete information on where and how and when Shazad was bringing his drugs into the country and then which of GrowTech’s facilities would be distilling and refining the drugs into something more potent and toxic…as soon as I had that, I was walking away from this.
From everything except her.
“Spit it out, Bernie.”
When he looked at me again, there was hatred in his eyes. The smallest sliver of enjoyment coursed through his veins to present Shazad’s demand.
“Uzair wants one night,” he said, “with your wife.”