13. Four Days Until Bonding #2
He charges at me again.
Damian is bigger up close. The kind of muscle that comes from treating a gym like a second job and having enough anger to make every workout personal. He drives me backward with a heavy shove, and I catch myself before his next punch reaches my face.
“I’m not ready to die.” He throws another punch. I duck under it, but his forearm catches my shoulder hard enough to send a blast of heat down my arm. “I finally have a hot girlfriend.”
The words throw me off for a second, my mind questioning if he really just said that.
He uses the distraction to slam into me, and we hit the floor in a tangle of limbs and overturned cables.
“Congratulations,” I say, shoving him off before he can pin me. I rotate under him, rolling us both until he’s on his back and I have my hands around his neck. Unfortunately, it’s too thick to squeeze properly. I try anyway. “That’s beautiful.”
“I’ve been obsessed with her for years,” Damian says, breathing hard as he pries my hands off his neck. “And now she’s mine.” His fist pistons into my temple, leaving my ears ringing and a trickle of blood running from the corner of my eye.
I catch his arm before he can punch again, but he jerks away and drives an elbow into my side. Pain knocks me off him.
“And,” he says, apparently not finished, “I have a cat who needs me.” He lumbers to his feet.
I squint up at him. “You have a cat.”
“Yes.”
“You’re telling me not to kill you because you have a cat.”
“I’m a cat dad.” He sounds offended that I need clarification. “You can’t kill me.”
I laugh despite myself, wondering why he’s giving me time to stand instead of taking the advantage he earned.
“I’ve heard a lot of men beg for their lives.” I straighten, one hand pressed to my ribs. “You’re the first one to bring up a cat.”
“He’s an asshole of a cat.” He wipes sweat from his brow. “But I love him.”
“That does complicate things.”
Damian’s expression brightens with hope.
“I’m more of a dog person.” I dive under his desk, reaching for my gun.
He swears and charges me, kicking the weapon as my fingers graze the handle. It spins away. He follows, and we both crash into the leg of the chair.
I cock my fist back and let it fly, catching him square in the mouth.
His bottom lip splits, blood bright against his teeth.
Before he can recover, I hit him again in the same spot, putting enough force behind it that his head whips to the side.
He spits blood onto the floor along with something white that bounces once.
We both look down.
“Sorry about the tooth,” I say.
“It’s okay.” He spits again, then checks the damage with his tongue. “It’s just a filling. Easy to fix.”
“Do you get a rush from this?” I ask, pushing myself off the floor to sit.
His blue eyes narrow as he does the same. “From what?”
“This.” I wave between us. “Fighting. Knowing somebody is challenging you and deciding you’re going to win anyway.”
His eyes stay on mine as if he’s deciding whether I deserve an honest answer. “Usually.”
“Usually?”
“Usually I know I’m going to win.” He wipes blood from his mouth with the back of his hand. “That’s what makes it fun.”
“And this?”
He looks around, taking in the blank monitors, the lantern on the floor, and my weapon hidden somewhere under the furniture where neither of us can reach it without giving the other an opening.
“This is less fun,” he says. “You’re Senator Ashford’s son. You broke into my apartment, shut down my weapons, and explained magnetized bullets to me like we were at a science fair.”
We push ourselves up at the same time. Damian takes the far end of the desk, careful not to turn his back on me, and I mirror him from the other side. We circle each other warily through a room that has gone from command center to wreckage in less time than it takes to make coffee.
“What do you want?” he asks, his feet sliding in a side-step. “I have money, but I saw your bank account. You don’t need it. You have power. An army of important people backing you.” His focus narrows in on me. “Still, there must be something you want.”
What do I want?
I glance at the computers, the monitors, the cameras hidden in the corners of the room. “How good of a hacker are you? Exactly?”
We keep the desks between us, still moving. A slow-motion chase.
“Good enough to discover a centuries-old secret society that controls everything from illegal drugs to the price of eggs.” One shoulder lifts. “So, yeah. Pretty good.”
“How about a fake passport?” I ask.
Damian scoffs, “Please. Child’s play. My fake IDs are more real than real IDs.”
I run through the possibilities. “Nah.” I move faster, gaining on him. “People will check. Make sure I killed you.”
“I can disappear,” he counters. “It’s kind of my specialty. I can forge a name no one can trace. Papers that get me through any airport, across any border, wherever I decide to go.” He pauses. “I already sent my girlfriend.”
“And the cat?” I ask.
He gives me a look like I’ve insulted his ancestors. “Obviously the cat.”
I consider that, how he could have disappeared with his girlfriend and cat. Instead, he put himself between them and whoever my father sent. I know that decision because I would make the same one for Laurel.
That earns Damian more respect than a man in his position should get from me, but still not enough. “You expect me to take your word for it?”
“No.” Damian’s eyes move to the broken monitor on the floor, then back to me. “I expect you to let me live.”
“That’s not much of a sales pitch.”
“I’ll owe you a favor.” He holds up his hands, palms facing me.
“A favor,” I repeat.
“Anything you need. One time.” Damian keeps circling, hands raised where I can see them, never giving me a clean line to his body or the gun hidden beneath the furniture. “You call, I answer.”
I assess him, noting how his pulse jumps at his throat, the slight waver of his hands. He’s scared. Not enough to stop fighting, but enough to understand he needs something better than a promise.
I almost laugh.
“You’re offering me a Mafia-style favor because I broke into your apartment to kill you.”
“I’m trying to meet you where you are.”
One favor from a man who found The Order’s locked servers. A man who can create identities, move people across borders.
“What else can you do?”
“Depends on what you need.” Damian steps on a piece of cracked monitor casing. It snaps into smaller pieces under his weight.
“Hypothetically.” I follow him, keeping him inside the light cast by the lantern.
“Hypothetically, I can make records disappear. I can make new ones appear. Dig up information people would kill to keep buried. I can put that information in front of people who were never meant to see it.” His gaze shifts toward the dark monitors. “I can make powerful men very nervous.”
The Order has spent generations building a world where no one can touch them. No one from the outside.
“What happens if I call in the favor?”
I’ve lessened the distance between us, close enough to take him down if I want. But I don’t move. What he says next matters more than proving I can.
“You tell me what you need,” he says. “And I make it happen.”
Ten minutes later I slide into the passenger seat in the van.
“You heard all that?” I ask Thomson.
He nods. “Seems like you made a new friend.”
I hold out the passport, so fresh it’s still warm.
Thomson takes off his glasses to examine it. “Willow Regina Bishop. Twenty-one years old. Santa Barbara, California. Brown hair. Brown eyes.” He hands it back. “Looks exactly like her.”
The engine turns over as I run my thumb gently across Laurel’s photograph.
“You know she won’t take it,” Thomson says. “She’s not going to leave you.”
“I know, and I’d never force her.” I can’t take my eyes off the photo. Brown hair and warm eyes. To everyone else, she may look like any other woman, but to me, she shines. “It’s a parachute. Something she can use if everything comes crashing down.”
I look up as my best friend puts the van in drive and pulls away from the curb, then lower my eyes to the passport again.
The one that can take Laurel away from Ashford University. Away from my father and The Order.
Away from me.