8. Jamison #2
My guards were beyond the hall. Not close enough to hear, but close enough to die if Damius decided the morning needed drama. His own men stood somewhere in my house, probably offending my security system by breathing.
I stepped around the bar.
Damius did not move.
“Do not come into my house and talk about her voice.”
“Why? You do not value it.”
My jaw clenched.
“She doesn’t come with anything of value,” I said.
“But her grandparents did attach something to her.”
“What?”
He turned away.
“No.”
I followed him two steps. “What the fuck does that mean?”
“It means you speak with confidence about contracts you have not earned the right to read.”
“I earned the right when you shoved the merger into my hands.”
Damius looked back over his shoulder.
“You were given access to the public ledger, debt schedule, and the marriage enforcement terms.”
“What else is there?”
Silence.
Fucking, old bastard. My pulse kicked.
“What else is attached to Sienna?”
Damius walked toward the windows again.
I hated him then.
Truly hated him.
But not in the automatic way all Crow grandsons hated the old man who taught them pain before mercy. In a personal way. Because he had placed Sienna in the room between us and then closed his hand around information I didn’t have.
“Answer me.”
“I do not answer heirs who have disappointed me.”
I laughed.
“Oh, that’s rich.”
His gaze stayed on the city.
“Why the fuck are you in Harlan and not in Villain haunting my cousins?”
“I came to Harlan because disappointment has become expensive. And, Nikolai is getting Kingston ready for school.”
I stopped. The sentence was so absurdly casual, so disconnected from the threat sitting under every word before it, that my hangover missed a step.
“What?”
Damius adjusted one cuff. “Kingston’s dormitory required crest approval.”
I stared at him.
“You left Villain because of a dorm room?”
“I approved the Villain crest for placement over his bed. The school objected to the dimensions. I overruled them.”
Marcel was going to fucking furious when he found out. I rubbed a hand down my face. Blood dragged faintly over my cheek.
“I haven’t had enough to drink to deal with this kind of mind-fucking so early.”
“Clearly, you have had too much.”
“Did you seriously, break into my house to discuss my fiancée’s lack of upgraded jewelry.”
Damius turned then. He had given me one strange glimpse of the old monster doing family logistics, and then the monster returned.
“This merger is to be settled. You will listen.” His voice remained calm. “The Bellemere debt has sat under Crow mercy for too long. Harlan interprets delay as weakness. The Bellemeres interpret your reluctance as leverage. Sienna Bellemere interprets your neglect as rejection.”
Something hit my chest. Rejection. Why did that bother me. I tried to hide it. Except he saw everything.
He moved closer.
“You may tell yourself you are noble because you did not touch her at eighteen. But you have kept her in public purgatory for three years.”
The words slid under my skin.
Public purgatory.
Sienna in foyers, waiting. Beside bars, smiling at waiters I threatened. At tables, asking for my hand because I never gave it first.
Now she just nodded.
“You know nothing about what she interprets.”
“I know enough.”
“From your sources?”
“Yes.”
“Your sources tell you when I fuck someone but not what’s in a private debt attachment?”
His eyes cooled. I had pushed too hard. Good. I wanted blood from him too.
“My sources tell me she no longer asks for your hand.”
The cigarette had burned low between my fingers.
I had forgotten it. Ash fell onto the floor.
“They tell me she no longer uses the childish name.” his voice lowered.
“Do not.”
“They tell me she stands beside you in silence because she believes you hate the sound of her.”
“Stop.”
“They tell me you made her useful as camouflage and then punished her for breathing.”
I moved before I thought.
One step.
Damius’s eyes lit with something old and satisfied.
I stopped myself because giving Damius a reaction was exactly what he had wanted. To know if there was blood under the indifference.
There was.
Fuck.
There was.
I turned away, reached for the bottle, and drank straight from it.
“You’re here to threaten me,” I said.
“I am here to clarify consequences.”
“Same thing.”
“Sienna Bellemere is to be married into Crow blood.”
“She will be.”
“When?”
I said nothing.
The silence stretched. Damius looked almost bored.
“When?” he repeated.
“After I decide.”
“No.”
I turned my head slowly.
“You have confused delay with control. That ends now.”
I laughed without humor. “You going to drag her down an aisle yourself?”
“If required.”
My grip tightened around the bottle. The image came too fast. Sienna in a wedding dress. Damius’s hand on the terms.
No.
Not like that.
Damius watched my reaction with the patience of something ancient.
“Perhaps I was wrong choosing Harlan.”
I smiled coldly. “Perhaps you were.”
“Perhaps Sienna would appreciate Weston instead.” He tilted his head.
The bottle lowered.
Damius continued. “He has always enjoyed soft, pretty things. Less discipline than you, but a more polished smile.”
“Weston is a fucking parasite.”
“He is a Crow.”
I scoffed. “A crow that thinks with only his cock.”