Artur might have stolen me from Damien the night of our reception, but Damien’s demons had stolen him from me. And I wasn’t sure they would give him back.

  CHAPTER 21

  DAMIEN

  Waking up locked in my office with my dad, my best friend, and a therapist wasn’t my proudest moment. My head pounded like I’d been struck with a hammer and I—was cuffed to my desk.

  “What the fuck?” I demanded, my voice husky. I tugged on the handcuffs locked around the desk leg, scowling at Jonathan, Dad, and—oh, perfect. Dr. Theodore Korte. The therapist was in his fifties, with silver streaking his brown hair and beard and wear-lines around his eyes. Like always, he wore a severe black suit and crisp white shirt. He was the best therapist money could buy, and I should know; I employed him to help Rose.

  I was honestly surprised she wasn’t here to shout at me, too.

  “The cuffs were all me,” Jonathan said with a deep frown. “I didn’t know what state you’d wake up in.”

  What state I’d…?

  Memories hit with the force of the sledgehammer. Oh god, I completely lost it. I locked my wife in our bathroom, for fuck’s sake.

  I dragged my uncuffed hand through my hair, tugging at the roots.

  “Where’s Vasilisa?” I asked, my voice even raspier. I didn’t look Jonathan in the eye; instead I pinned my stare on Dad. I didn’t like the way he watched me though, with wariness and worry, like he was waiting for me to flip again.

  “She’s fine, Rose is with her,” Dad replied, which didn’t answer my question. “So are a handful of guards and Eli.”

  I sucked in a harsh breath and glared at the cuffs. I wanted to get up, to set my eyes on my wife. Panic began to form, but I shoved it down. I wouldn’t lose my composure again. “I’m not gonna flip. You can uncuff me.”

  “Leave them,” Dr. Korte said when Jonathan moved to unlock them. “Something tells me you’re eager to evade my help, Damien. Again. The cuffs will force you to speak—and listen to me.”

  “I’m fine now,” I sighed. “I’ve been under a lot of stress, and my wife got kidnapped. Anyone would have a minor meltdown after that.”

  “Minor,” Jonathan repeated, sinking into the chair across from my desk when it looked like we were here for the foreseeable.

  Dad crossed to a mahogany cabinet against the wall and got out a half-full bottle of whiskey. How he knew about my secret stash, I didn’t know. “Here,” he said, sitting a glass in front of me and giving me a long, measuring stare. “Drink that, and tell us what happened. All of it. I’m not leaving this room until the doctor says you’ll be okay.”

  I flexed my hands, threw back the whiskey, and assessed the three men. The chances of me getting out of my office without divulging my nightmares was zero. Not even a single percent. Zero.

  “I’d rather not—”

  “Tough shit,” Jonathan barked, watching me with a heavy glare that did nothing to hide his concern. Shit, I was really fucked up if Jonathan was worried. He usually just grunted that I was an idiot and told me to torture someone until I felt better.

  I blew out a breath, staring into my empty glass, and said, “I was fine until those bastards blew up our reception. I turned around and found her gone and I—”

  It was hard to get the words out. I clenched my jaw.

  “You…?” Dad prompted.

  Dr. Korte tutted. “Let the man speak.”

  I gave an experimental tug at the cuffs. “I could use another drink.”

  “I’ll get you one when you finish that thought,” Dad offered.

  “Bribery,” I muttered.

  “Incentive,” he countered.

  “I thought I’d find her dead. If Finch got to her before me—the shit he’s done to people, to women especially…”

  “Like what?” Dr. Korte pressed, his voice mild and neutral.

  I shot him a look that told him that tone wouldn’t work on me, but I answered his question. “He’s a rapist and a killer. He’s made a shit load of money from trafficking, and the girlfriends he loses interest in usually find their way into slavery, too. I’ve lost count of the amount of women he’s responsible for being abused and brutalised. If he got hold of Vasya, especially after she married me instead of him… he’d break her.” I squeezed the glass, my knuckles white. “And leave her in pieces for me to find.”

  Dad got up and poured me another drink without a word, his hand falling on my shoulder, bruising in its grip.

  “Like Adina and Willow,” he said quietly, his low volume doing nothing to hide the roughness of his voice.

  “I keep seeing them,” I admitted, only for him to hear. The words burned on the way out. My skin tightened over my skull. “But Vasya’s there with them, murdered and—”

  I cut off the graphic details. He knew what had happened to his wife and daughter, and he didn’t need the vivid reminder.

  “How am I supposed to look her in the eye?” I asked, scrubbing a rough hand over my face. “Every time I look at her, I see her fucking corpse. And I locked her up. She must think I’m a controlling bastard.”

  “She knows something’s wrong. Talk to her.”

  The advice was hard to swallow. How could I talk to her when I couldn’t bear to look at her—out of fear of seeing her dead but also guilt? The guilt spiked through my lungs, through my heart, making it hard to breathe, to move, to function at all.

  “That’s good advice,” Dr. Korte said, watching me closer than I’d have liked.

  “I’ll talk to her,” I sighed, taking a drink and barely feeling the burn. “Am I free to go now?”

  The doctor raised a grey eyebrow. “You haven’t begun to discuss what led to what happened today. Why don’t you walk me through it? Start at your wedding reception.”

  I groaned, letting my eyes fall shut, but I opened them swiftly at the images of blood and gore behind my eyelids. “Fine,” I relented, and began to talk.

  If it would get rid of the nightmare visions stalking me, I’d talk about it.

  CHAPTER 22

  VASILISA

  Iturned the key over in my hand, my teeth worrying at my bottom lip.

  “I’m right outside the door,” Jonathan reminded me before he left me in the living room, he and Kavan the last to depart after Rose and the therapist. My husband was struggling so badly he needed a therapist. What kind of wife was I to not get him help before now? It shouldn’t have taken him locking me up and passing out from stress for me to realise how bad things were.

  I knew they were bad. I knew he was having a hard time getting over me being kidnapped. He could barely stand to open the door, for fuck’s sake. Guilt chewed me up and spat me out, and I rubbed my thumb over the sharp edges of the small key. It wouldn’t happen again; I had Dr. Korte on speed dial, and he promised to be available whenever Damien needed him.

  It was stupidity and ego that made me think I could help Damien alone. I might have been his wife, might have loved him to the ends of the Earth, but I had no qualifications in mental health care.

  “Why are you nervous?” I whispered to myself. The sun had set an hour ago, but I sat in the dark, staring at the living room under the yellow glow of street lamps. I couldn’t deny that I was nervous. Not because I worried Damien would lock me up again, but—what if I did something and set him back? What if I threw him into another episode? The very last thing I wanted was to hurt him.

  Eventually, after a spirited pep talk, I pushed to my feet and slowly crossed the hallway. I would have liked to have the twins at my side, but Kavan locked them in their playroom when he got here and other than coming out for meals and water, they’d been snoring on the massive beds Damien got for them.

  My chest tightened; I expelled it with a sigh, my eyes on the door to Damien’s office. I didn’t know how I’d find him, if he’d be the Damien who killed a hundred people for me or the Damien I’d known this past month. But standing here was only delaying the inevitable, so I twisted the handle and opened the door, my heart thudding hard at the sight of him typing at his computer, his movements fierce and powerful.

  He was okay, in one piece, and when he glanced up at me it wasn’t a vacant expression on his face. It was devastation.

  “Damien.” I left the door open and hurried across the room, my chest hurting, eyes stinging fiercely.

  “Vasilisa,” he said evenly.

  “No my queen?” I didn’t expect that to hurt so much. He used my name all the time, I reminded myself as pain twisted up my chest, but this time it felt intentional. A lump burned in my throat.

  He typed three more words and pushed the keyboard away, but he didn’t quite look at me. “I wasn’t sure you still wanted to be my queen.”

  “Always,” I breathed, crossing the rug with more confidence. He still wanted me; he just worried I didn’t want him. “Sorry it took me so long, I—”

  “Don’t come closer,” he rasped, pain in his black eyes.

  I froze, my stomach plummeting in a nauseous swoop until he breathed, “You should stay far away from me.”

  “Fuck that,” I muttered and straightened my shoulders, closing the distance between us. Close enough to touch him, I brushed dark gold hair out of his eyes and leaned down for a kiss.

  “Vasya,” he whispered against my mouth, a strain in his voice, pulling the cords of muscle in his neck taut. “I hurt you—”

  “Scared me,” I interrupted, dropping myself on his lap and holding him tightly. The world seemed to settle back on its axis when his arm came around me, his scent filling my lungs, the warmth of his body pressed to me. “There’s a difference between hurting me and scaring me. My dad hurt me for years, and he did it out of anger and a need for power and—I think deep down he might have hated me. You locked me in the bathroom out of fear, Damien. It’s not okay, and if it ever happens again I will make good on my threat to shoot you, but it’s different.”

  I’d spent half my life fearing fists and kicks, braced for pain, used to pain. Damien could have turned his strength and power on me at any point today, but he didn’t. His panic clashed with my unease at being cooped up for so long, and like chemicals, those two emotions didn’t work well together. We exploded. After thinking about it for hours, I decided it was inevitable.

  “And all things considered,” I said, trying to catch his gaze and failing, “today could have been a lot worse. We didn’t break the door this time.”

  I waited for him to smile, for light to enter his eyes, but his gaze shuttered, his eyelids closing for a long moment.

  “I fucked up by locking you up. Nothing will absolve that guilt.”

  “You listened when I used my safeword.”

  “You forgive me,” he realised, his voice hoarse with emotion, eyes dull with pain.

  “I forgive you,” I agreed, running fingers through his hair and relieved to finally have him back to myself, to be able to touch him again now everyone had gone, and now I’d got up the nerve to come and speak to him. “Damien, I—I’m so sorry. I should have listened when you said you couldn’t handle us sitting on the balcony. Something like this would have happened no matter what, but I didn’t help. I made it worse.”

  That was why I’d hesitated in the dark for so long.

  “None of today was your fault,” Damien argued, his eyes closing, torment cutting lines into his face. “It’s only partly about your kidnapping. I—fuck, it’s hard to talk about this.”

  “You don’t have to,” I soothed, brushing a kiss over his cheek, my chest full of pain and sympathy.

  He shook his head, opening his eyes to meet mine, tumultuous with a dozen different emotions. “I’ve been ordered by Dr. Korte and Dad to talk to you. And … I want to. I just don’t want to put the weight of my problems on you.”

  “They’re already there, Damien.” I kissed him again, a knot unwinding in my chest when his hand rose and slid into my hair as he kissed me back, lips moving in gentle brushes over mine. It was the softest kiss we’d shared. “I’m your wife. I take your problems as mine, like you take mine as yours. You never once hesitated when you learned about Finch; you just started planning his death. So tell me who I have to kill, Saint, and consider it done.”

  He groaned, grazing his fingers down my jaw to stroke my pulse. This time he kissed me fiercer, rougher. “I love you so much it kills me. You’re right. And I don’t want to face any of this without you. Well.” He paused, shadows moving through his eyes. “I’d rather not face it at all, and pretend everything’s normal.”

  “Not an option.”

  “I know.” There was the smile I’d hoped for earlier, small and wry but there all the same. “It seems my family won’t let me. And if you can stand to look at me after I locked you away like a controlling barbarian—”

  “I can.”

  “Then I can force the words out. An explanation is the least I owe you. I notice you have a key in your possession but have yet to unlock my cuffs; I assume you’re leaving me locked up until I get this off my chest.”

  I stroked his bearded jaw with the backs of my fingers. “You assume correctly.”

  His eyes lightened a shade. “Not going to force me to talk at gunpoint?”

  “Maybe if you’re well-behaved,” I joked, earning a raspy laugh from my husband.

  “It hurts to look at you,” he admitted quietly. “And to touch you. Partly because of the way I treated you, and the fact that any sane woman would run a hundred miles away. I’m a walking red flag at this point.”

  “I’m not sane, and you’ve always been a red flag. Lucky for you, I’m colourblind when it comes to flags, so you’re a pretty carnation pink to me.”

  His answering laugh was stronger this time. He dipped his head and kissed my cheek, lingering for long moments. I swore I could feel his smile etch itself on my skin.

  “You’re determined to rid me of all my burdens, aren’t you, Vasya?”

  “I am.”

  He sighed, the sound a release of pain—or a fear I’d walk away from him at this first sign of him being less than perfect. He should have known better.

  “Keep talking,” I encouraged, glancing at his computer and frowning at the email—normal—and the paused video of a greying-haired man in a sharp navy blue suit strangling a man several years younger than him—normal for a Marshall I guess?

  “Leverage,” Damien explained without prompting. “I’m calling in favours to find Finch’s hiding place. Figured the least I could do after this morning was kill the last threat to you.”

  “I’ve been thinking about killing him, too,” I admitted, sliding my hand around the back of his neck and stroking his weak spot with my thumb. He let out a long breath, melting under me. “This looks more like blackmail than leverage,” I pointed out dryly.

  “Semantics.”

  “Now, talk to me, Damien. I’m here, I’m listening, and I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Or uncuffing me,” he drawled.

  I stayed silent and kept my eyes on him, waiting for him to open up, which he did with a hesitant sigh.

  “When you were taken, it raked up a lot of things I thought I’d dealt with, processed, and healed from.” He dropped his eyes, his mouth a thin line. “I was wrong.”

  “That’s where the nightmares come from,” I guessed quietly.

  He nodded, scraping his teeth over his bottom lip before he begrudgingly continued, “I told you my sister and mum were killed. I didn’t say—I was the one who found them.”

  “Damien,” I breathed, frozen in surprise and deep, slicing pain for a moment before I threw my arms around his shoulders and hugged him tightly. “Oh, god, and then when I was taken, I told you what Finch had threatened to do to me—of course it raked up losing your mum and Willow.”

  My mind jumped from thought to thought, horror blooming inside me, spreading further and faster. I held Damien so tightly, enraged with protectiveness. I might have been small and physically weak, but there was nothing I wouldn’t do to protect my husband.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  He was quiet for a long moment, his uncuffed arm wrapped around my back, pressing me tight to him like he needed the closeness as much as I needed to offer it.

  “I didn’t want to go back to that place. Talking about it, thinking about it—I’m right back there, bursting into a shitty little house owned by the Whitlock family. I can smell it, the stink of the place fucking branded on my nose and—I don’t want any of it to touch you. I want to keep you pure, keep our marriage untouched by this poison.”

  “I can handle it, Damien. I watched my dad shot my mum in front of me when I was a kid, and if I can handle that, if I can remember it and not completely break, I can hear what happened to your family. What happened to you.” I turned my face to kiss his cheek. “Keep talking.”

  “I hate that you went through that, especially with your piece of shit brothers as your only support.”

  I rested my head on his shoulder, his words making my eyes burn. I’d grieved alone. Mum had been the one who loved me, who was gentle and kind and took care of me. Without her, I’d learned to take care of myself, and only appreciated when I got older how wrong that was. Only truly realised how bad that was when Damien showed me what real love was, and how unfaltering and unconditional support should be.

  “I’ve got you now,” I replied, and any pain I might have felt at lacking a biological family never formed. I’d been alone for years; losing Dad, Artur, and Mark only brought relief, not grief. “And your family.”

  “Our family,” he corrected, kissing my temple.

  “Damien,” I chided gently. He was so afraid to bare his tortured soul that he was taking every distraction.

  He inhaled a long, slow breath. Haltingly, he resumed his story. “They were already gone when I found them. They were… no one should die the way they did. In pain, violated, knowing someone they loved had gone through the same hell they had. Mum would rather have taken on a whole firing squad by herself than let anyone hurt one of us. It must have—must have destroyed her, what they did to Willow.”

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17