Chapter 43
* * *
Emma
Nobody moved.
Nobody breathed.
Damien’s words—cold as death—still rang through the room.
Garrett pushed to his feet, his chair screeching across the floor like a warning siren. “What the hell did you just say to me?”
Damien didn’t flinch. Didn’t rise.
He simply speared a piece of chicken with his fork, popped it into his mouth, and chewed like he had all the time in the world. “I told you to get the fuck out,” he repeated, unnervingly calm.
Garrett’s face mottled red. A vein in his temple throbbed; his jaw jumped. He took a step forward. “Oh, big man now, huh?” he spat. “Mr. Falkirk. Mr. Penthouse. You think that gives you the right to talk to me like—”
“It gives me the right to remove trash from my home,” Damien replied coolly.
My attention flew between them, panic raising the hairs on my scalp.
“Who do you think you are?” Garrett said, taking a step toward Damien.
Candace shot up from her chair. “Garrett, please—let’s just—”
“Shut up,” he snapped, whipping toward her.
She froze.
“This motherfucker”—he jabbed a finger at Damien, spit flying—”thinks he can talk to me like I’m a piece of shit.”
“That isn’t what he was saying—” I tried, but the look he threw me stopped the words dead.
Damien ceased chewing. Moving.
Garrett’s lip curled.
“And what do you think he’s saying, Emma?” he mocked, face twisting with disgust. “Go on. Enlighten me.”
That’s when Damien finally rose from his chair—slow, deliberate—placing himself squarely between us. “Talk to me, Garrett,” he said, whisper-soft. “Not her.”
Garrett sneered, rolling his shoulders like he was trying to shake off the shift in power. “Look at you,” he spat, dragging his eyes over Damien in a cheap attempt at dominance. “You think you’re better than me, don’t you?”
Damien didn’t answer. He simply shifted his weight to his toes, every line of his body coiled tight.
“I’m going to repeat this. One. More. Time.” He lifted a finger without breaking eye contact. “Get out. Now.”
Garrett barked a laugh. “Or what? What are you gonna do, Holt? Call the cops?”
That silence—controlled, lethal—made the room feel smaller.
Dread thudded painfully through me. A familiar childhood terror clawed through me—shouting in kitchens, slammed doors, blame tossed like knives. Tears pricked at the corners of my eyes before I could stop them. I dabbed at them with the edge of my napkin, hoping no one noticed.
Damien noticed immediately. His head snapped toward me, frustration breaking into concern in the space of a breath—expression tightening, posture recalibrating.
“Always the actress, Emma,” Garrett snarled. “Always have been. Poor Emma this. Poor Emma that. You’re fucking pathetic.”
Damien’s gaze slid back to him in a controlled, glacial turn.
“What?” Garrett laughed, throwing his arms wide. “It’s what we’re all thinking.”
What we’re all thinking.
The same phrase he’d used at the antique store.
Damien caught it, too—his shoulders rolling back, posture settling into something cold and lethal. A man done playing nice.
“Such a good little guard dog.” Garrett’s mouth twisted into something ugly. “Does he bark like one, too?”
I didn’t answer—couldn’t.
“You know what,” he said, tapping a finger to his chin. “Since your pussy couldn’t save Elion, maybe you could try the pound next.”
Candace gasped.
The floor dropped out from under me.
But Garrett kept going, rolling in filth like he enjoyed the taste of it. “Although they probably won’t want you either,” he added, voice slithering into something vile. “You fat, ugly—”
“Garrett!” Candace screamed, grabbing his arm.
She barely touched him before her head snapped sideways, violently, horribly fast—the sharp crack of a hand meeting skin splitting the air like a gunshot.
Candace reeled back, clutching her cheek, face white with shock.
“CANDACE!” I lunged from my seat.
She blinked, tears welling instantly, her lip trembling.
Garrett scowled down at her like she’d done something wrong. “I told you not to grab me—”
And that was it. That was the final line.
Damien moved so fast the air seemed to fold around him.
One heartbeat, he was behind me. The next, the world snapped, Damien exploding forward in a blur of motion and violence. Garrett barely had time to turn his head before Damien’s fist cracked into his jaw—a clean, brutal hit that sent him stumbling into the wall with a sickening sound.
Candace and I froze, watching the scene in front of us unfold like a horror movie.
Garrett’s hand clawed for balance, expression stunned with disbelief—but Damien didn’t give him a chance to recover.
He grabbed a fistful of Garrett’s shirt, yanked him upright, and dragged him down the hallway, Garrett’s heels scraping uselessly against the floor as he tried, and failed, to brace himself.
Then they disappeared. A door slammed.
For a split second, everything went horribly, impossibly quiet.
Then came the first hit.
A heavy, meaty thud. A choked gasp. Something clattered—maybe a chair, maybe Garrett’s body.
Candace flinched so violently her shoulder hit mine.
“No—” she whispered, voice cracking, hands shaking so hard her bracelets clinked.
Through the wall, Damien’s voice cut through the muffled chaos—low, feral, not the man either of us knew.
“You come to my house—”
Another impact.
Garrett’s strangled cry answered it.
“Insult my woman—”
A slammed body.
A curse swallowed by drywall.
My lungs locked.
Candace pressed a trembling hand to her mouth, tears spilling over.
“How fucking dare you.” Damien’s voice shook with rage, each word vibrating through the floorboards.
A scraping sound—Garrett trying to crawl, or maybe just breathe.
“How dare you put your hands on a woman—”
Another brutal collision.
Candace sobbed.
And I sat there, frozen, nails biting crescents into my palms, listening to a man I loved break someone else in the next room.
“You piece of fucking filth.”
His voice dropped to a terrifying whisper. The kind that promised he wasn’t done.
The kind that promised Garrett would leave this apartment a different man than he walked in.
Candace’s knees buckled. I grabbed her, the two of us clinging to each other in the middle of Damien’s immaculate dining room while violence tore through the walls. Neither of us moved.
Neither of us dared exhale. Then—“I’ll fucking kill you for this.”
“STOP!” I screamed, the sound ripping up my throat so violently it shredded the air.
Everything went still. Horrifyingly still. A silence so absolute it rang.
Then
A door creaked open. Slow. Heavy.
Footsteps… No—a dragging sound scraped down the hallway. Something—someone—was being pulled.
Candace dug her nails into my arm, body shuddering.
A thud hit the floor. Sickening. Final.
Everything in me stopped. For the briefest, most gut-wrenching moment, my mind betrayed me.
Then the sound shifted. A groan. Feet scrambling.
Garrett screamed, “Candace!” Another ragged inhale. “Get your ass over here—we’re leaving!”
Candace jumped so hard she nearly toppled the chair behind us.
Garrett’s voice came again, cracked with pain and fury—no less monstrous than before, but alive. Very much alive. “Now, Candace! Move!”
She stepped toward the hall on shaking legs.
And somewhere deeper in the apartment, Damien’s breathing—low, fast, dangerous—broke through the ringing in my ears.
“She’s not going anywhere with you,” he growled.
Garrett’s eyes snapped between Damien and Candace, pupils blown wide, face twitching with something ugly and electric.
A welt had already ballooned along his cheekbone, skin split at the brow, a thin line of blood tracking toward his temple—anger and humiliation warping his whole face into something feral.
Candace took a step toward him, arms outstretched.
Then another.
Then another.
“No,” I gasped, grabbing her hand—yanking her back into my arms. “Candace, don’t.”
She trembled uncontrollably, her voice shattering in the small space between us. “Let me go, Emma,” she whispered, voice so broken it barely existed. “Everything will be fine.”
“No,” I said again, fierce and terrified. “No, it won’t.”
Because I saw it—the shift in Garrett’s expression. The cold calculation. The pivot of a predator who’d been cornered and now sought the weaker link. Not peace. Not surrender. Strategy.
He took one step toward her.
Damien blocked him instantly. ”If I have to repeat myself again, Garrett…” His voice was barely human. “Even Emma won’t be able to stop me.”
Garrett lurched back a step—then another—his bravado collapsing under the weight of Damien’s stare. A strangled, panicked sound tore from him as he spun and bolted toward the foyer.
He slammed his palm against the elevator button.
Once.
Twice.
Three frantic jabs—like he could force the doors open through sheer desperation.
The elevator numbers crawled upward with agonizing slowness.
17…
24…
31…
Candace let out a tiny sob beside me.
When the doors finally dinged open, he shot inside so fast he nearly tripped.
He didn’t look back.
Not even once.