Chapter 21 #2
No. I wish I could tell him the truth, but instead, my heart clutches at those words. I’m sorry. I know he’s not actually apologizing, but the words feel softer than anything I’ve heard before. They mean he cares.
His thoughts are fixated on something else. He seems to want to share something too, but he pauses a few times before beginning, “You’re right. The reason you’re here is not so simple.”
“Does it have something to do with the nanochip?”
He stares at me, and I detect something new in his eyes. Something like suspicion.
“How do you know about that?”
“Logan told me.”
The words are out before I can stop them, and the suspicion vanishes, replaced by cold fury. “What are you talking about? How could Logan possibly have told you?”
His eyes are flashing dangerously, and inwardly, I cringe. These past few weeks, I’d forgotten how terrifying he could be. It’s been a while since he’s shown that harshness from the early days. I look up at him mutely.
I can see his mind working fast, trying to figure it out. He doesn’t, though. His conclusion doesn’t come anywhere near the truth. He really has no idea about Logan’s interrogation while I was drowning in the dark waters of Oakley River. But I’ve grown convinced of that lately.
I had made up my mind early on never to tell Damien what happened.
But in the beginning, it was because some part of me was worried he really was responsible, and I was terrified his reaction would confirm it.
Now, it’s because I believe he cares. Yet no matter how much he does, I’m sure he cares more about Logan.
Logan is his childhood friend. He told me so, and I read it in all the magazines too. I would have given anything to have a childhood friend. If I had, I’m sure nothing could ever have come between us.
I don’t want to make Damien choose, because I’m convinced there would be no choice. Of course he’d take Logan’s side.
I can’t fault him for it. All I can do is cling to the thought that he didn’t know.
And so, the intrusive thoughts have all but vanished.
“I remember he asked you about a chip that first day,” he says. “But you assumed he was talking about potato chips. I guess you put two and two together later.”
He kisses me, and I exhale in relief. His anger has melted.
“Since you know about the nanochip, I might as well tell you.” He hesitates for a long time.
“I’m not sure it’s a good idea. I had decided to keep you in the dark.
Things are already... well, dangerous enough as it is.
But lately, I’ve started to wonder if keeping you in the dark isn’t just as dangerous.
So, I guess...” He clenches his jaw. “Yes, I’ll tell you.
Do you remember the Cole family murder?”
“Yes, sir.” The word is out before I can stop it. I haven’t called him sir since he took a belt to me. He seems pleased, though.
“Well,” he grins, “that was us.”
I blink up at him in shock. He seems to think killing an entire family is funny. By now, I have no doubt Devil has their hands in some pretty shady dealings. To hear they’re involved with murder, though, especially when it’s revealed to me in such a cheerful way, is surprising, to say the least.
“We didn’t plan to kill them all,” he clarifies, as if that makes things fine. “Only Cole.”
“Why?” I breathe.
“Because he was an idiot.”
I stare at him. That can’t be the whole story, can it?
“He discovered some things about us,” explains Damien after a beat. “Nothing too important, just that we weren’t quite as respectable as people had come to believe. Bloody hands, and all that.”
Bloody hands. I shut my eyes, willing the images of my past to stay buried.
“It would have been annoying for us,” he continues, for once not noticing my reaction.
But I guess he’s focused on his own story.
I can tell it doesn’t come easy for him to share it.
“We might have gone to prison if it had all come out. So we paid some people to get rid of Cole. We were not expecting things to happen in the way they did. For the wife and the kids to die as well.”
“You must feel terrible about it,” I breathe.
He snorts. “Not exactly terrible. More like pissed off. It went from being a little story in a town newspaper that we could easily have killed, to a national news item. Now the Feds are interested, so things have gotten a little delicate.”
My shock at his cavalier treatment of the murders turns into fear for him. He’s in trouble. It brings out an instinct in me I never knew I had. I want to protect him. To kill for him, instead of just… well, to kill him.
He reads me and barks out a laugh. “Silly girl. What could you possibly do?”
So much more than you think, is my unspoken thought. But I don’t voice it, and again, he fails to notice.
“Anyway,” he concludes, “the people we hired had one mission apart from killing Cole: it was to take the nanochip which held the evidence that would have caused trouble for us. And which would have given us a motive, and implicated the people we hired to do the job. They were supposed to hand it over to us at the department store after hours. But the handover got intercepted, and we lost the chip. We still have no idea where it is.”
My eyes widen. “And… and you think I have something to do with it?”
“I’m sure you don’t,” he says forcefully. “But not everyone shares my belief. Vale, Igor, even Logan to a degree. Plus, you’re now a target for the people we hired. They no longer have faith in us, and I’m suspicious of them, too. But there was never all that much trust to begin with.”
“So you locked me in here to protect me?” I ask, my heart latching onto that possibility.
He kisses me deeply. “I will always protect you. I was protecting you before I even knew your name.”
He smiles, and I remember how he didn’t even know who I was after he’d kidnapped me. But he was aware of my existence before. He’d been watching.
“You saw me on the surveillance cameras? You knew I was stealing stuff?”
He strokes my hair. “You could never be invisible from me, my little shoplifter. Why do you think no one ever stopped you?”
Right. The thought that he’s been watching me does something to me, and it’s not exactly fear. I feel myself growing wet.
“How long? How long were you watching?”
“About a year.”
My eyes widen even as arousal pools between my legs. I blurt out the question that burns my lips. “Would it have happened anyway? The abduction?”
For the first time, he hesitates. Then he murmurs, “I don’t think so, no. I guess you were right. I’m not that kind of man.”
Unexpectedly, it’s not relief that courses through my veins. It’s a sense of loss.
“But,” he adds, folding me in his arms, “I would have found a way to possess you anyway. You’re mine, and you always have been.”