by Maria Luis
Air pumps hard and fast into my lungs.
War and hate are what I’ve always known. I’m the man who unburied his mother, the man who felt no remorse in bringing a wounded woman pain. Never in my life has there been a moment of kindness, softness, until Rowena stripped off that bandage and brought her violet eyes to mine. And I want to keep it—God, I want to bend that softness to my will and submerge myself in it, in her, until happiness is as familiar to me as breathing.
“I don’t . . .” Clearing my throat, I smooth the heel of my palm over my right shoulder, squeezing the nerveless flesh. “I don’t know how to love but if I could . . . I would give it to her,” I husk, “I would give her all of me, if I could.”
Guy’s nod is barely detectable.
Without speaking, he makes a start for the door but remembers too late that I’m still propped up against it. He stops abruptly, just out of reach.
I lift my chin, the back of my head glancing off the wood, and bring my gaze to his. “I’ll leave the missing anti-loyalists to you,” I tell him, knowing that he won’t have it any other way, “but Guthram is mine, brother. Don’t touch him.”
“Whatever you’re planning,” he replies, his voice dark, “it’s suicide. You know that, don’t you?”
“I would rather die trying to live than die knowing that I never tried at all.”
39
Rowena
“Blackmail,” Gregory deadpans with his right fist balanced on his knee, “you’re telling me that you want to blackmail the police commissioner—and you want me to join you?”
With his arms linked over his chest, Damien crosses his long legs at the ankles. Behind him, Holly Village’s patroness judges us all from her portrait above the marble fireplace mantle. “Sounds about right.”
Gregory swings his wide-eyed gaze to me before turning back to Damien. “Why the ’ell not? Never did like the wanker.” Slapping his thigh, he releases a maniacal chuckle that makes me squeeze my palms together in my lap. “Sign me up, Priest. I’m yours.”
The corner of Damien’s mouth hitches as he shifts his attention to the redhead seated next to Gregory. “Once upon a time,” Samuel drawls, threading his fingers together between his spread legs, “there was a man who actively tried to avoid all confrontation. That man, in case it’s not obvious, is me.”
Damien arches a brow. “Is that your way of telling me to piss off?”
“It’s my way of acknowledging how far I’ve fallen that I didn’t even bat an eye when you mentioned blackmail.”
“So, you’re in?”
“Damn me to hell and back, but yes.” Samuel hooks a finger over the collar of his shirt, pulling on the fabric as if the conversation alone has him feeling anxious. “We aren’t about to hug now, are we? Because if I’m being honest—”
With a bark of surprise, Samuel goes flying when Gregory’s gigantic fist makes contact with his bicep. “Try to ’ug me and I’ll ’ave more of where that came from.”
Awkward laughter climbs my throat, and I can’t help but tap Damien’s foot with my own. “Is that about how it went when he pushed you from the roof?”
“Too bloody soon,” Damien rumbles but his blue eyes glitter with suppressed humor. He waits until Samuel’s clambered off the floor before leaning forward to prop his elbows on his thighs. “I can almost guarantee that the only reason the hospital hasn’t released Rowena’s name is because they don’t want the PM breathing down their necks. But they will, soon. We need to strike first, while we still can, and I can’t use Holyrood. If the commissioner spots any of us, it’ll be over before it’s even begun.”
I cut a sharp glance in his direction. “And you honestly think that he’ll believe that one of them”—I tip my chin toward Gregory and Samuel—“kidnapped his father from Broadmoor?”
“No.”
I blink. “Then why—”
“Because I’ve already laid the groundwork.” Reaching into his pocket, Damien fishes out his mobile and tosses it to me. “First photo,” he says.
With no passcode to plug into the burner, I find the gallery easily and feel my heartrate spike when the photo loads. “You’ve . . .” Unable to finish the thought, I stare at the grainy picture of Silas Hanover down in the undercroft. Damien’s cropped the image so that there are no identifiable features that might lead Marcus Guthram back to Holly Village, but there’s no mistaking the fact that the former Holyrood spy has been captured. He’s bloodied, handcuffed, and eerily still. “You mean to make him think that we’ve killed his father?”
“I mean to make him think that Alfie Barker has almost killed his father and if he wants to see the old man live, he’ll show up when and where I tell him.”
Startled, my gaze jerks up to his. “You’re bringing Alfie Barker into this?”
“He wants freedom,” Damien returns, plucking the mobile from my grasp, “and if he succeeds, then freedom he’ll have.”
“And if he dies?”
Blue eyes shift toward the sofa opposite ours. “If Gregory and Samuel do their job, Barker won’t have to worry about that.”
“Another prisoner on the loose,” Samuel says with a dramatic sigh. “Soon we’ll be down to none.”
A dark chuckle escapes Damien as he pockets the mobile. “A dead Robert Guthram means no Holyrood pension for Marcus when he’s been silently collecting it for years.” He catches my eye. “I’ve already set the bait. Trust me, he’ll show.”
“And you?” Gregory demands. “We do all the ’ard work and you just—”
“We need Marcus feeling like he can appear alone, and Barker wouldn’t even make a toddler nervous.” Damien plants a downturned fist on his thigh, leaning his weight into it. “I’ll play catch and release at Tower Bridge. You lure the commissioner to me, and I’ll handle the rest.”
Samuel leans back to rest his arm across the back of the sofa. “When? Today?”
“Two nights from now.”
Unable to contain my nerves, I tap a restless beat on my thigh. “You’re planning this for the same time that Guy will be at Broadmoor?”
Damien gives me a slow nod. “We need the hospital staffers distracted if Marcus rings them. We take away his options and leave him squirming—it’s the only way.” Despite our audience, he lowers his head to put his eyes level with mine. “It’ll work, Rowena. Believe in me.”
Fear chases me up the stairs an hour later.
I follow Damien down the hall, tracing my trembling fingers over the wallpaper, and still I can’t shake the disquieting feeling that this plan—his plan—is foiled with holes that we haven’t had the chance to uncover. Once we do, it’ll be too damned late to crawl ourselves free.
The bedroom door hasn’t even closed before I blurt, “This isn’t a good idea.”
Striding toward his duffel bag, Damien fists the back of his shirt without a word. His abdominal muscles ripple as he bares the script of Odin’s ravens, Huginn and Muninn, and the hollow of his sternum expands as he reveals the skull and raven inked across his chest. Only once he’s clutching the fabric in one hand does he lower his chin and speak. “You have to trust me.”
My response is immediate: “It has nothing to do with trust.”
“Then tell me what the problem is.”
“Every unknown!” His blue eyes widen at my outburst but I’m already on the move, pacing the length of my room because I can’t . . . I can’t stand still when everything around me is spinning. “Damien, you’re operating on one unknown after another. If the commissioner takes the bait. If he’s foolish enough to follow a man that he doesn’t know down to the Bascule Chambers beneath Tower Bridge. If Gregory and Samuel are able to keep out of sight long enough to see it all through. It’s one risk after another and—”
“You don’t think I know that?” He drops his shirt onto the duffel a second before he turns for me, comes for me, and prowls across the room. “Don’t you think I know that one wrong move and it’ll all come crashing down?”
Unwilling to concede defeat, I stand my ground. “You know all that and yet you’re still willing to place your life into the hands of men who don’t care if you die.”
His nostrils flare. “Gregory and Samuel are your men.”
“They’re men that I pay!” Surging forward, I meet him halfway with a jab of my finger against his chest, directly in the eye of the raven. “I want to believe that their loyalty runs deeper than the money I’ve deposited in their accounts, but this is . . . Damien, this is—”
“This is what, Rowena?” When I don’t answer right away, he catches my finger and presses my hand flush against his naked skin so that I have no choice but to feel the rapid beat of his heart beneath my palm. “This. Is. What?”
Each syllable that falls from his lips is like a round from a rifle, deadly and accurately aimed. I feel lightheaded, exposed. “It’s insanity,” I breathe, lifting my gaze to his, “to think that if it comes down to a matter of who lives or who dies, they’ll choose to save you.”
As if the words have struck him, Damien’s hand inadvertently flinches around mine. Against my palm, the raven breathes, hard and fast, with every sharp inhalation that Damien draws into his lungs. When he finally speaks, his velvet timbre is mockingly cruel. “You seem to have the answer for everything, love. So, you tell me . . . I’m a wanted man without options—what do I do?”
Say it, Rowan. Just say it.
White noise floods my ears, drowning out the sound of my heart thudding frantically in my chest. “Choose me.”
The flame in his blue eyes burns with unholy fire. “No.”
His powerful frame spins away before I can press my case, and my words hit the rugged expanse of his back: “Whether you like it or not, Guthram is going to see my name on the register at Broadmoor. Today, tomorrow, the next day, it’s a matter of when not if. At least this way, we do it on our own terms.” When he says nothing, I fight the urge to grind my teeth. “Damien, I’m the logical—”
“I almost lost you!” he roars, wheeling back around to face me, inked shoulders heaving. His hands are clenched at his sides, those muscular, denim-clad legs spread and prepared for battle.
Thud-thud. Thud-thud. Thud-thud.
Madness.
My feet stay rooted to the rug but my body sways like a delicate flower caught in a tempest. I fight for air and feel my hand press heavy against my heart. It beats wildly. It beats with ferocious need. It beats to the rhythm of this man who has stormed his way into my life and unleashed chaos on every broken fragment of my soul until I’m nothing but a mosaic of want, need, hope.
The hope propels me forward now, one foot in front of the other. “You weren’t supposed to care.”
“But I do. Fucking hell, Rowena, I do.” Those calloused hands descend upon my shoulders, intending to pull me close, but I duck under his arms to the melody of a harsh breath slipping past his lips. His blue eyes track me, stalk me, a god unwilling to let his sacrifice slip from sight. “I’ve only known the fear that I felt today once before,” he expels roughly, that hand at his side flexing like he recalls the moment even now, “and to know that I sent you in there—that I believed, for even a second, that Robert’s health had nosedived like Marcus said it had, and that we had a solid chance . . .” He gives a vicious shake of his head that sends his dark hair falling over his forehead. “It doesn’t really matter what I thought, does it? Because you’re not going to Tower Bridge.”
He twists away.
I bend at the knees, blinking away the dark streak that chases across my right peripheral, and swipe the knife poking out from his duffel bag. Five swift steps return me to his unsuspecting back, one deep inhale carries my arm up high, and then I touch the tip of the blade to the ragged scar that stretches across his right shoulder blade.
He doesn’t even flinch.
Testing him, I graze the fingers of my left hand gently over his muscled oblique. His shoulders instantly shudder, and his dark head falls back as he lays a hand over mine, gripping me tight . . . And all while I keep the knife pressed against that scar.
The seconds tick by.
One.
Two.
Three.
It’s not until he turns that he spots the glint of steel. When he does, his entire body goes rigid. “What are you doing?”
“Proving a point.”
“And your point is what? That you plan to stab me?”
“No,” I whisper, careful not to prick his scarred flesh, “it’s that I’m standing here on the side that I know you can’t feel. It’s you having to trust me that I won’t stab you in the back—that I won’t let you down when you need me most—even when your guard is still stacked like a fortress. It’s me begging you to take a chance.”
A vulnerable shiver visibly chases down his ridged spine. Then, gruffly, “What do you want?”
The hope unfurls, twining between my legs, looping around my waist, until I cave to its demands and give him the truth: “I want you to see me.”
One moment I’m in control and in the next, the knife has clattered to the rug and my back is against the wardrobe and Damien’s naked chest is flush with mine. He presses one hand to the wood beside my head in a move that’s eerily reminiscent of the night that he came to take his revenge.
The similarities begin and end there.
“Don’t you think that I see you?” he growls, his lips coasting over mine as he frames my face and forces me to meet his glittering gaze. “Rowena, I can’t unsee you. I see you on your knees, ready to die. I hear you in my fucking head, the panicked gasp that left you when Guthram ripped off the brooch. I saw you. Terrified and pressed up against that wall, and I knew”—his fingers scrape the wardrobe as a ragged breath fills his lungs—“Jesus, I knew then that I would stop at nothing to find you.”
Tears sting the backs of my eyes. “Damien—”
“I don’t know how to . . .” With a tight swallow, he smooths his thumb over my bottom lip and dips his head to taste me. The kiss is brief, the kiss is sweet, the kiss is soul-shattering in its complete and utter simplicity because Damien presses his forehead to mine and breathes, “There’s no point to being free if there’s no sunshine waiting for me on the other side.”
My hands tremble as a dangerous wish thrums to life within my heart.
To love and be loved.
To feel its heat in my veins and its courage in my bones.
Rising on my toes, I clasp my hands on either side of Damien’s hips and brush my mouth over his. And then I pull back to let him see all of me, as no one has before: “I am not the damsel in distress, and I’m not some princess waiting for her prince.” When he parts his lips to interject, I cut him off with a hard, silencing kiss. “I’ll walk through darkness with you and I’ll dance in the pits of hell at your side, but I will never be the woman who stands back and waits to be saved. You take me as I am, Damien, or you have none of me at all.”
Anticipation teases up my spine. Gooseflesh kisses my skin. Strong fingers grasp my chin, angling my head so that all I see is him—the strong jaw and the soft lips and those blue eyes that gleam with want and need and hope.
“An ultimatum, Miss Carrigan,” he purrs, his breath hot on my lips. “Am I all out of choices?”
“Unfortunately,” I whisper, breathless, “you are.”
A dark, wicked smile curves his mouth, and then he lowers his head and presses that wicked smile to my ear, and he vows, “Then I’ll take you, Rowena. I’ll take you as you are and I’ll take you until you have nothing left to give, and then I’ll do it again for as long as you’ll have me.”
40
Damien
War arrives under the cover of darkness.
“You bloody bastard,” Robert Guthram snarls, thrashing in my grip as I push him down the shadowed stairwell, “You’ll pay for this. Do you hear me? I’ll make you—”
One sweep of my foot against his and he trips, his shackled wrists unable to break his fall. He lands face-first on t
he concrete steps with an audible crunch of snapping cartilage. Feeling Rowena’s gaze on my back, I drop to my haunches and eye his crumpled frame with contempt. “You were saying?”
The metal handcuffs clank noisily as he tries to crawl away.
Predictable.
“You had your chance to speak and you chose silence.” I close my fingers over the back of his shirt, fisting the material to put an end to his labored fumbling. “You killed an innocent woman for personal gain. You aligned yourself with a traitor. And, as if all that isn’t enough, you turned your back on Holyrood.” My knee lands on the center of his spine and I lower my head close to his. “You’ve been at Broadmoor for ten years, Guthram, but I’m sure you remember what happens to those who betray our oath.”
With a grunt, he twists his head toward me and bares his teeth. “Piss off.”
“Actually, the correct answer is death. Turns out my ancestors weren’t so keen on second chances.” Beneath my weight, he squirms for freedom but I don’t let him have even a scrap of hope. “You live because I let you. You breathe because I have use for you. Do you understand me?”
“What I understand is that you’re a damned fool—”
His bloodied nostrils flare angrily as I fit a length of rope in his mouth. Aside from the muted drip of water hitting the steel accumulator tower to our left, the darkened stairwell falls quiet. With a quick jerk of the cord, I tie the rope at the back of Guthram’s skull then close a hand around his arm to haul him to his feet.
“Move,” I growl.
The damp air grows more oppressive the further we descend below Tower Bridge and the River Thames. Wide concrete steps become narrow metal rungs that audibly vibrate under the rubber soles of my boots. Pearls of moisture cling to pipes fitted against curving brick walls. A glance past the metal balustrade reveals only the pitch-black cavern of our destination.