I couldn’t protect you like I promised but…” He gestures to the envelope. “I can keep one promise.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You can stay at the penthouse as long as you need. Details are in the envelope. Everything is taken care of. You don’t have to worry about anything.”
“Damian, I don’t—”
“I need to go.” He checks his watch.
When he takes a step away, I sit upright and push the blanket from me. “Where?”
He comes back to me, sits on the edge of the bed, and softly brushes hair back from my face. He gives me a sad smile.
“I’m finally doing what’s best for you. What’s really best for you. It’s the first unselfish thing I’ve done when it comes to you.”
He leans closer and I see is the sadness in his eyes. It runs deep. An abyss of it. And I feel the cracking of my heart.
I open my mouth to say his name, to tell him I understand. To say anything at all. But he cups the back of my head and presses his lips to my forehead.
Closing my eyes, I place my hand on his cheek as a tear slips down my face.
This is his goodbye. I know it.
He draws back, hand still on the back of my head. He looks at me for a long minute. And what I see in his eyes breaks my heart in two.
Regret. Sadness. Too much of it.
And me on the outside.
31
Damian
I need to keep my promise. I need to do one right thing.
And as hard as it is, walking away is the only way to do that. But it takes all I have to follow through.
I get up and walk out of the room. Closing that door behind me feels like I’m leaving a piece of myself behind. I think it’s my heart.
Coward.
Tobias falls into step beside me as we make our way out of the hospital.
“I have two of our best soldiers guarding her. She’ll be fine.”
I nod, not trusting myself to speak.
My promise to her, is it a lie? A selfish lie told only to protect myself?
“The Clementis are at the warehouse,” Tobias continues.
Business. I have to get to the business of my revenge. Show my enemies what happens when you cross me.
“Good,” I say, sounding a little harder as I feel the familiar stone walls erect themselves around me. As hard as it is, as painful, I have to keep thoughts of the way I found her at the forefront of my mind. Keep the image of her with that rope around her neck burned on my brain. Feel the weight of her limp body in my arms as I carried her out of that house.
I don’t have to work hard to remember the sensation of my heart twisting when I’d thought I was too late. When I’d thought she was gone.
And I can’t think about how she looks in that bed in the other room. Small and vulnerable and sad. I just have to remember the angry bruises around her throat and be grateful that Lucas was wrong. That I didn’t break her. At least not so much that she couldn’t be put back together again.
This is better for her. Safer. I need to let her go because nothing changes with Lucas gone. My business will be rebuilt. My enemies will not lessen.
This is best for her.
Coward.
“You sure about Valentina?”
Tobias has a very clear black and white outlook on life. You betray me, you die. Period. No second chances. Not reprieves.
He was right about Lucas. My letting him walk away without punishment led to this. Led to a destruction I didn’t imagine him capable of. So yeah, I understand Tobias.
But Valentina is her family. And that’s about the only thing that’s saving his life. I’ll be watching him, though. He goes within a few miles of her, and I will fucking kill him.
“He’s been dealt with.” He’s in the hospital somewhere too with two broken legs, a dislocated shoulder, and several busted ribs. “For now.” He knows he’ll be receiving another beating once he heals just to drive the message home.
Lucas’s plan succeeded, at least in part. Most of my ships are destroyed. Lucas, with the help of the Clementi family and Cristina’s uncle, accomplished that. That I can deal with. I’ve rebuilt out of nothing before. I can do it again.
But that’s not the worst of it.
In the study, I was too focused on Cristina and the fire and my insane brother to process what he’d