CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
ATHENA
I’d never considered myself much of an actress. Tonight would be a test of my abilities. I sucked in a deep breath, preparing myself.
“All right.” I nodded. “I’m ready.”
I drank down the rest of the champagne in my glass so I would have alcohol freshly on my breath. Passing the empty glass to Noah, I fell against Damon, grabbing onto him like a drunken, wobbly mess.
He slid an arm around my waist, dragging me along into the house through the open patio doors. I did my best to trip over my own feet, stumbling around without balance. Damon worked harder to keep me upright as we approached the man blocking the staircase.
The man regarded us with narrowed eyes. He wore a fancy tuxedo, his bald head gleaming beneath the chandelier light. Either he worked for the family or he’d been hired for this event. I was afraid he would see right through my charade.
“Excuse me. My girl isn’t doing so well.” Damon began, doing some acting of his own. “I think she had too much to drink. Is there a place where she could lay down while we wait for our ride to pick us up?”
The man barely hesitated before saying, “No, I’m afraid not. Upstairs is off-limits to guests. You’ll have to wait outside.”
Digging deep, I lurched forward, covering my mouth with a hand. “I think I’m going to throw up.”
He automatically took an uncomfortable step back, wary of being sprayed with vomit.
Damon tried again. “Come on now. She’s going to be sick.
I don’t think you want us tying up the main guest bathroom down here.
Just tell me where I can take her before she throws up her supper all over this lovely marble floor.
We have someone coming to pick us up. We won’t be long. ”
I managed to successfully make a dry heaving motion before gagging. That seemed to do it. The man quickly stepped aside, motioning to the stairs.
“Second door on the left. Don’t go anywhere else. Make it fast.”
Since he was watching, I purposely tripped over the first stare, falling to my hands and knees as Damon struggled to hold me upright. He gathered me up in his arms, carrying me up the long winding staircase.
“Thank you,” he called back over his shoulder. “I appreciate this.”
I kept up the act, whining about my sick tummy and how I was going to throw up any second. When we reached the bathroom upstairs, Damon set me down on my feet, closing the door behind us.
“Nice job,” he said. “For a minute there I was afraid you might actually toss your cookies all over me.”
“The night is still young.” I winked before turning to take in the elaborate bathroom. “Whoa. Check this place out.”
The entire room was almost the size of my whole apartment. Black and white checkered flooring spread throughout leading to a bathtub big enough for four. I would have loved to take a soak in a tub like that.
Damon waited a few minutes before flushing the toilet and running the water in the sink. Doing his best to make it sound like he was cleaning up his sick girlfriend.
“We’ll wait a few more minutes, then I’ll check to see if he’s around. If we’re clear, we’ll try to find the master bedroom.” Pulling out his burner phone, Damon fired off a quick text to Noah, letting him know we had made it upstairs.
My adrenaline had begun to pump faster. Now that we were up here about to sneak around searching for the safe, I was flooded with anticipation.
“What do we do if we get caught snooping around?” I moved to the sink, checking out my reflection in the fancy mirror. My pupils were dilated in response to the rush of excitement.
“Pretend we got lost looking for the bathroom, I guess.” Damon shrugged. “We’ll cross that bridge if we come to it.”
Moving slowly, he eased the bathroom door open, listening for any sound in the hall before poking his head out. When he determined that everything was clear, he waved a hand for me to follow.
We moved with careful steps, going in the opposite direction from the staircase. Everything was quiet. The only sound being my frantic breaths. We passed a few closed doors that Damon didn’t stop to bother with. He continued until he reached the last door at the end of the long hall.
He tried the handle, finding it locked. He surprised me by pulling lock picking tools from his pocket, immediately getting to work. “Keep an eye out in case anyone comes.”
I turned to watch the lengthy hallway. The house was so massive that I couldn’t even see the top of the staircase from where we were. Behind me, Damon swore a few times as he worked. It seemed to take forever.
Finally, I heard him say, “Fuck yeah.”
Opening the door, he grabbed my wrist, dragging me into the room behind him before closing the door quietly.
The room was dark, making it hard to see in the sudden absence of light.
Using the screen light from his burner phone, Damon began to explore the room.
I stuck to him like glue, following closely.
A king size bed in a heavy wooden four poster frame sat against one wall in the middle of the room. A sofa set near the window overlooked the backyard. A fireplace next to it. The walk-in closet was big enough to live inside. That’s where Damon headed.
“That was easy enough.” He stood in front of a safe tucked under some blankets in the corner of the closet. Not all that big, it was about a foot long and a foot wide. Whatever was in a safe that small had to be quite valuable.
“What now?” I asked. “You just take the whole thing?”
“Yep. Should be easy enough, as long as we can get out of the house. The best man said there would be a back stairway for emergency use nearby. Nobody should see us.” Damon knocked the blankets off the safe before bending to pick it up.
A shiver crept along my spine, tickling the back of my neck. Something didn’t feel right. Maybe I expected it to be more difficult. However, I couldn’t shake this gut feeling that it wouldn’t be as easy as Damon anticipated.
Unfortunately, my feelings were quickly confirmed.
The bedroom door burst open, slamming against the wall. A man’s voice came next, shouting, “Who the fuck is in here? I’ll blow your fucking head off.”
I let out a little shriek as the groom appeared in the closet doorway, a gun in one hand. He roughly shoved me aside, knocking me into the wall as he rushed toward Damon.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Robbing me on my wedding day in my own house? Who even are you?”
Abandoning the safe, Damon stood up in time to block the gun as the groom swung it toward his face. “Your worst fucking nightmare if you put your hands on my girl again. I didn’t come here to kill you, but I’m open to the possibility.”
“Don’t make a move. The police have already been called. You tripped a silent alarm, you goddamn idiot.” His arm shaking, the groom jerked back, aiming his gun at Damon.
The police? I didn’t think my adrenaline could pound any harder. Sucking in heavy breaths, I did my best to keep from passing out. Clutching the wall as I tried to stay on my feet.
The mention of the police spurred Damon into motion. He tackled the groom to the floor, grabbing for his gun arm. The two of them wrestled around on the floor of the large closet, each fighting for control of the gun.
I may have only seen this kind of thing in the movies but it never ended well. Not knowing what to do, I stood in the closet doorway, watching in horror. Should I go find Noah and Dom? Make a run for it?
There was no way I could leave Damon behind. Watching him take a punch as he fought desperately to tear the gun from the groom’s grasp made me sick. I couldn’t stand the thought of anything happening to him.
That’s the moment I realized how much had changed between us. At some point, I’d stopped loathing him. Forming some type of actual feelings toward him instead. Feelings that were affectionate. Possibly even more than that.
When the gun went off, I screamed. There was a moment of shattered stillness that followed. My lungs momentarily stopped working. Everything that mattered hung in the balance. In that one delicate second when I had no idea who’d been shot.
As Damon shoved himself off the groom, I almost collapsed in relief. He was fine. Blood spread across the middle of the groom’s white shirt, the gun fallen to the floor at his side.
Damon paused long enough to use one of the blankets to wipe his prints off the gun. Then he grabbed my hand, dragging me along behind him as we ran from the room. He took care to wipe down the bedroom door handle with his sleeve on the way out.
“We don’t have much time,” he said, glancing up and down the hall before steering me down an intersecting corridor that would take us further away from the main staircase. “There should be a back exit this way.”
He pulled his phone out as we ran, managing to remain calm enough to call Noah. All he said was, “Get out. Now.”
We came to a small narrow staircase that took us back downstairs and into a porch with a door that brought us out on the side of the house. I wasn’t sure how I managed to run in the heels I wore. Sheer adrenaline fueled me. Somehow, we made it back to the car.
Damon sped away, leaving the street before the police arrived. “I’m going to let you out in a few blocks. It won’t be long before the cops are right behind me. I can’t let them find you with me.”
I did a double take. “Are you kidding? You’re going to dump me out on the side of the road?”
“I am not letting you go down for this, Athena. Don’t fucking argue with me right now. I’m doing what I have to do to protect you.” There was no room for argument in his tone.
Damon took erratic lefts and rights, weaving his way away from the crime scene. Once we left the rich neighborhood, he pulled over to let me out. When I didn’t immediately get out of the car, he leaned across me to shove my door open. That’s when the sound of sirens in the distance could be heard.
“Go, Athena,” Damon barked. “Now. Before they catch up.”
I cast a frantic glance down the street behind us. “I can’t leave you alone.”
Gritting his teeth, Damon cast his eyes skyward, as if silently praying for strength. Then he roughly shoved me out of the car, sending me tumbling onto the sidewalk. I caught myself with both hands splayed on the concrete, pain shooting through one wrist.
“Get up and run,” he shouted. There was a split-second of hesitation before he said softer, “I love you.”
Then the car door closed, and he was gone with a squeal of tires.
With Damon’s words reverberating in my ears, I shoved to my feet and ran. My wrist ached from the fall. Still, I was grateful it hadn’t been an ankle, especially in these stupid heels. What had I been thinking when I chose them?
In a residential area I didn’t recognize, I kept moving, hoping to find my way to an area where I could potentially hide out in a business of some kind. When the sirens grew louder, I ducked down behind a large electrical box on the corner until the noise faded away.
Would they find Damon? What would happen if they did?
The thought of losing him made my stomach twist. Maybe I didn’t have it in me to be with a man who lived such a life. At the same time, I knew that I didn’t want to go back to life without him.
Dammit, when had this happened? How had I not realized that I was falling for him? Instead, it had taken potential disaster to hit me over the head with it.
Holding up my long skirt, I ran from street to street, hiding out in back alleys and backyards whenever a car came along. The sun had set a while ago, casting me in darkness. Only the street lights provided a glow to light my way.
Because I knew we had been going on a job, I didn’t bring my phone.
That left me with no way to contact anyone to come get me.
I needed to make my way to a public place where I could make a call.
Enough time had passed that I was starting to wonder what had happened with Damon.
Shouldn’t he have come looking for me by now?
When I finally turned the corner and saw lights indicating a row of businesses up ahead, I breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe I could use the phone in a coffee shop. My pace slowed, my legs and ankles throbbing with each step.
I blinked back the sudden swell of tears that filled my eyes.
Now that the immediate danger was over, I was overwhelmed with emotion.
In my mind, I continued to see that moment when the groom lay there still and bloody.
As thankful as I was that it hadn’t been Damon, I didn’t want that for anyone. This had all gone too far.
I was about to enter a late night café when a black Mercedes pulled up beside me. Someone called my name.
I turned to find Noah in the driver’s seat, Dominik in the passenger side. Never had I been so grateful to see familiar faces.
All but falling into the back seat, I said, “God am I glad to see you guys. Where’s Damon? Is he okay?”
Noah paused a moment before turning around to meet my eyes. “He’s been arrested.”