8. Jamison #3
“Or perhaps Harrington.” Damius looked toward the rain-dark window as if considering seating at dinner. “She might enjoy the nightlife there. Music. Theatre. Pretty things for a pretty girl.”
My chest hardened.
“No.”
His eyes returned to me.
One word, said too fast. I felt it the second it left my mouth. Damius did too. The room went quiet around it.
“No?” he asked.
“I’m not giving her to a cousin.” I set the bottle down.
“You have not taken her yourself.”
“She is mine.”
The words came out before strategy could catch them. Raw, territorial and very fucking true.
Damius’s face changed by a fraction. There it is, his expression said. There was the monster under the neglect.
I hated him for finding it.
I hated myself more.
“Yours,” he repeated.
I stared at him, breathing hard through my nose.
Sienna’s face flickered through my mind. Just nodding at me in a champagne dress. I was a stranger she had learned to survive.
Mine.
Damius stepped closer.
“If she is yours, why does she wear a handler’s ring?”
I said nothing.
“If she is yours, why does Harlan see her arrive alone?”
Silence.
“If she is yours, why did she spend your birthday absent?”
My jaw tightened.
“She was injured.”
“She gave you what you wanted.”
The sentence struck too clean. I looked at him.
“A night without needing to deal with her.” Damius’s voice stayed calm.
My chest locked. I had said that once.
Or something close. Fuck. No. Maybe more than once.
I need whiskey before dealing with this.
I need you to stop chirping.
I don’t have time for your shit tonight.
You want attention every time you breathe near me.
The room felt suddenly too small. Damius looked at the blood on my hand. The broken glass cut across my palm now.
“You bleed carelessly,” he said.
“I bleed fine.”
“You frighten her.”
I looked away first. A mistake.
Damius saw that too.
“She’s frightened of everything.” My voice came rough.
“No. She is polite to everything.”
A long silence followed. I hated how accurate that was. Sienna was not cowardice. She was manners trained over fear until even panic said thank you.
Damius moved back toward the window.
“The merger will settle,” he said. “With you, if you remember what you are. Elsewhere, if you continue mistaking avoidance for restraint.”
“You try to move her to Weston, I’ll break his spine.” I glared at him. “I’m not playing your games.”
“You have been playing them since you were born.”
“Then I’m bored.”
“Bored men do not threaten cousins over girls they claim have nothing of value.”
I stepped toward him again.
“Sienna is not going to Weston.”
“Then put your ring on her finger.”
My throat tightened.
“Not the handler’s token. Yours.”
I said nothing.
“Set the date.”
Still nothing.
“Or I will.”
The rain moved down the windows behind him, making Harlan look warped. My city, my house, my fiancée. Everything suddenly felt like it belonged less to me than it had before Damius walked in.
He had a talent for that.
Ownership as violence.
“I need to know what’s attached to her name,” I said.
“No.”
“Grandfather.”
His eyes sharpened.
I had not called him that with respect.
I had called him that like a warning.
He did not mind. Damius Crow enjoyed warnings from descendants. He saw them as proof the line had not gone entirely weak.
“You will learn what is attached to Sienna Bellemere when you stop treating her as an inconvenience you can summon for photographs.”
My mouth curled. “You’ve developed a sudden affection for her?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“She interests me.”
Every muscle in my body locked. What. The. Fuck.
Damius turned from the window.
“She is frightened and still honest enough to answer a question.”
The world narrowed…I stared at him. Putting the pieces together now.
“You spoke to her.”
“Yes.”
“In Harlan.”
“Yes.”
Something violent and black opened in my chest.
Sienna between practices with a good open heart she kept offering to people who did not deserve it.
Damius beside her, asking questions… and watching.
“Stay away from her.”
“There is my grandson.”
The compliment felt was poison. He only said it when he saw himself reflected back.
I stepped closer. “I mean it.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Then act accordingly.”
I wanted to hit him.
God, I wanted to.
But Damius was not a man you hit because you were angry. He was a man you killed because you had already buried every consequence. I was not there.
He walked toward the door. Conversation over because he had decided it was. At the entrance, he paused without turning.
“Jamison.”
I didn’t answer.
He spoke anyway.
“You are not being punished by receiving Sienna Bellemere.”
My hand flexed.
“She is.”
The doors closed behind him.
For several seconds, I stood there in the middle of my living room.
My phone buzzed on the bar.
I ignored it.
Then it buzzed again.
I picked it up, ready to throw it across the room.
A message from Harrison.
You alive?
I stared at it.
Then another appeared.
Emmie says don’t be cruel to Sienna tonight. I told her that’s impossible, but apparently we’re all doing optimism now.
I reached for a cigarette, put it between my teeth. Hating the fact my mind was being clouded with engagements rings.