Chapter Nine #3
"Then he means it as a threat, not a warning.
" Damian released her hand only to drag his own through his hair, a gesture she'd never once seen from him, too undone to be the composed man who negotiated his own kidnappings over an intercom panel.
"I was three hours into convincing Harlan Reyes to testify in a room full of men who'd very much prefer he stayed silent, and Julian sent someone to test whether he could reach you before I'd even finished making my case.
That's not opportunism. That's a man showing me exactly how much of my own timeline he intends to control from here. "
"Did it work? Reyes?"
"It worked." Something flickered across his face, grim satisfaction bleeding into the fear still sitting close beneath it.
"He'll testify. Which means Saturday was supposed to be the day Julian lost the room, cleanly, on my terms, in front of witnesses he couldn't buy his way around afterward.
" He looked at her, something raw and furious moving behind the mask's edge.
"He's decided to make sure Saturday never gets that clean.
He wants me choosing between finishing what I started in that room and running home to protect you, and either choice costs me something he's counting on. "
"So don't choose."
He looked at her properly then, something sharpening in his expression. "Meaning?"
"Meaning finish it. Whatever's left of it.
Don't hand him the version of Saturday where you run home and prove his point for him.
" Her voice shook slightly, but she didn't let it stop her.
"I'm safe. Mrs. Voss locked this place down before he got three sentences into his threat.
You said yourself the plan only works if you finish it properly.
So finish it. I'd rather be frightened for one more day than watch you hand him exactly the outcome he's engineering. "
Something moved through Damian at that, complicated and slow, twelve years of instinct visibly warring with whatever calculation her words had just forced into motion.
Mrs. Voss, still at the counter, said nothing at all, though Sienna caught the small, approving tilt of her head, the kind of look that suggested this was precisely the answer she'd have given herself, if anyone had thought to ask.
"You understand what you're asking," Damian said finally, low. "I go back into that room, and every hour I'm gone is another hour he could try something worse than a voice on an intercom."
"I understand it. I'm asking anyway."
He crossed the last of the distance between them and kissed her, hard and brief and entirely unlike the deliberate patience of every kiss before it, more a punctuation mark than a question, and when he pulled back his forehead rested against hers for one long, unsteady breath.
"I have people coming within the hour," he said.
"Real security, not the two of us and a locked gate.
You don't leave this house, you don't answer that intercom again no matter whose voice comes out of it, and you stay exactly where Mrs. Voss tells you to stay.
Those aren't rules this time, Sienna. I need you to understand the difference. "
"I understand it."
"I don't think you do, not entirely, so let me be plain about it.
" His hand came up to her chin, tilting her face to his with a precision that had nothing tender in it despite the touch.
"If Mrs. Voss tells you to go to that room and you hesitate even a moment to argue about it, she has my authority to make the decision for you herself, however that needs to happen.
I told her as much this morning, before any of this happened.
I would rather you hear it from me than be surprised by it later. "
Whatever she was hoping to find in his face didn't arrive. There was only the same quiet, settled certainty she'd seen across the desk two days before. "You're allowed to be angry with me about that. I would simply rather you be angry and safe than free to argue with me and dead."
"I understand that too," she said, quieter, something in her drawing inward and staying there.
"Good." He pressed one more kiss to her forehead, brief and fierce, before stepping back, already reaching for the jacket he'd shed somewhere on the way in, the composed, dangerous calm sliding back over him like something he was putting on along with the fabric.
At the doorway he stopped, looking back at her with an expression she hadn't seen from him before — something that looked almost like awe, tangled up with fear he wasn't bothering to hide anymore.
"Twelve years," he said, "and I never once let anyone close enough to be used against me like this.
I keep waiting to regret that you're the exception.
" His mouth curved, faint and unsteady. "I still don't. Even today.
Even with Marcus's voice still sitting in my chest like a fist. Remember that, whatever happens before I finish this. "
Then he was gone, the front door closing with a heavy, deliberate finality, and Sienna stood in the kitchen with Mrs. Voss and two cups of cold tea, listening to the engine fade down the drive and understanding, with a clarity that hadn't been there this morning, that Saturday had already started — three days early, on a Tuesday, in a kitchen with a brass intercom panel — and that whatever came next, she was done being someone it simply happened to.
She was going to be ready for it instead.