Unholy Intent

by Natasha Knight

  “I want that phone. It’s my only way to talk to Liam.”

  “And I told you not to lie to me. Start. Again. And remember there’s more I can take away.”

  “Why do you even care? My uncle is just a pawn.”

  “Whose pawn?”

  “Yours. Lucas’s.”

  “Well, you at least got that right. Your uncle is unimportant. Just a pawn, like you said. Which tells me you didn’t call my brother to see your uncle.”

  He reads me like a book. “No, not specifically. But he was there in the car when Lucas came to meet me. I thought we’d just talk at the café, but Lucas said he brought my uncle so I’d leave with him.” That’s half of the truth. I will omit the other half.

  “What did my brother have to tell you?”

  “You don’t answer any of my questions, Damian. I needed answers.”

  “And you thought you could trust him to give them to you?”

  “I don’t think I can trust either of you. Hell, I can’t trust any of you, not even my uncle. Every one of you will use me to get what you want.”

  He doesn’t deny it but remains silent, waiting for me to continue.

  “Do you know what I wanted to ask you about the other night?”

  “What?”

  “I wanted to ask you why you own my house.”

  A blink out of rhythm is all that gives away his surprise. He is the master of schooling his features.

  “Liam has a gift for finding out all kinds of things people don’t want you to know about them,” I say. “That’s what I wanted to ask you about before you humiliated me.”

  “I apologized for that. I can’t go back in time and erase what happened.”

  “No, you can’t. Why did you buy it?”

  His forehead wrinkles and he takes a deep breath in then out before answering. “I don’t know, Cristina.”

  “How can you not know?”

  “Believe it or not, I wasn’t fully on board with what my father did to yours or the way he did it, but I don’t have an answer to your question. When I do, I promise to tell you.”

  I don’t know why I believe him, I do though, and it loosens something inside me. Softens it.

  But I can’t let that happen. I can’t soften.

  I look away from him. I need space. I need to think. To steel myself.

  “Did you tell Lucas about the house?” he asks.

  “No.”

  “Good. Don’t. What did he tell you that turned you against me overnight?”

  “Do you really think he did that all by himself?”

  “I’m trying to do right by you.”

  “Are you?”

  “Yes, I am. Now what did my brother tell you?”

  “He told me about Annabel. About the accident.”

  “I’m sure he painted a pretty picture.”

  “He actually said it wasn’t your fault. He said your dad blamed you, but that you loved Annabel and you’d never hurt her.”

  This seems to confuse him. It absolutely silences him for a long minute at least.

  “Did you think I had hurt Annabel?” he asks appearing genuinely surprised.

  I consider this, then look back at him. “No. Never.”

  “Well, that’s something we can work with.”

  “He said what you want is the foundation, Damian. At any cost.”

  He studies me and when he doesn’t even try to deny what I’m saying, that twisting is back. It’s more like a fist in my chest now.

  “Does your silence mean it’s true?” I ask.

  “It’s complicated.”

  “Like us?”

  “Yeah, like us.”

  I try for a chuckle, but it comes out choked. I need to get out of here and be alone for just a minute. Just long enough to lock these feelings away. Long enough that he won’t see what this is doing to me or how weak I am.

  I get up, turning toward the bathroom.

  “Sit back down. We’re not done.”

  “I’m done. We’re done.” I feel the first sting of tears as I take a step away.

  “I said sit back down.”

  I don’t. I keep moving. And the instant he’s on his feet, I break into a run. It’s instinct. Fight or flight. I always choose flight.

  “I said sit back down,” he says, grabbing my arm.

  The instant he does, a sharp pain cuts through me, and I cry out.

  We both stop, look at where he’s got hold of me, where I’m trying to pry him off.

  “It hurts.”

  He loosens his grip but steps closer, pushes the robe off my shoulder and brushes two fingers over the slightly raised skin. He peers closer.

  “What is this?” he asks. “The skin’s hot.”

  I look at it too, see the little hole the needle left, then try to pull my robe up before he sees it. “It must be a spider bite or something.”

  When he presses on it, I suck in a hissing breath.

  “We need to get it looked at. It might be infected.”

  “It’s fine,” I say, trying to tug my arm free. “It’s nothing. It won’t hurt if you don’t grab me like you did.”

  Commotion in the hallway has us both turning to the door, and a second later, there’s a knock.

  “Damian,” it’s Tobias.

  Damian releases me. I close my robe as he checks his watch, then opens the door.

  Tobias glances at me, then at Damian. “We have a location.”

  “Give me two minutes.”

  Tobias nods, and he’s gone, closing the door behind him.

  Damian turns back to me. “We’ll continue this when I’m back.”

  “No. I’m done. We’re done. There’s nothing to continue.”

  “If you want to sleep in here tonight, that’s fine.” He continues as if I haven’t spoken at all. “But when I get back, you and I will talk. Come tomorrow, you’re in my bed every night. Period.” He walks to the door, hand on the doorknob.

  “You demand everything of me and give me nothing.”

  He pauses, and I hear him exhale, but then he opens the door.

  “At least tell me one thing, Damian. Just one.”

  He turns around and raises an eyebrow, hand still on the doorknob

  “What do you want?” I ask.

  “Be more specific.”

  “You never told me that. What is it that I need to give you for you to let me go? Because if your brother is telling the truth, if it’s truly the foundation, then there’s only one way you can get it and let me go at the same time. And I don’t want to believe you’re monster enough to do that.”

  He stares back at me and his entire body tenses before my eyes. It’s a bigger reaction than I expect.

  That fist in my chest tightens its grip on my heart, squeezing the life out of it.

  This betrayal hurts. Hurts like nothing else.

  Damian closes the door.

  “My brother is a liar, Cristina,” he says more calmly than I expect, given his physical reaction. “He’s manipulating you to get to me. He will do anything to destroy me.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “That’s your answer for every question you don’t want to answer.”

  “Look—”

  “Just explain it to me. I can follow. Please.”

  He considers, steps toward me, then stops. I know he’s made his decision when I hear his sigh.

  “Because he was supposed to have what I have. He was the firstborn son technically, or at least my father chose him because he was bigger than me at birth. It’d be something for him to do. I don’t know. I’m not even sure I was the backup plan. An unwelcome surprise maybe when they realized my mom was pregnant with twins. I think my father hated us both, truth be told. I think my father is only capable of hate. He thought us weak from day one. Holding each other’s hands rather than having them around each other’s throats.

  “Anyhow, he chose Lucas, but Lucas—he wasn’t always like this. When w
e were growing up, he was the gentle one.”

  I find that hard to believe; not that I’d ever accuse Damian of being gentle.

  “And to teach Lucas to be the man he needed him to be, a man like my father is, he made it his habit to hurt me while Lucas watched. It’s more effective that way. Did you know that? To hurt the thing the one you really want to hurt loves.”

  Loves.

  They’ll hurt you to get to me.

  “Until Lucas finally started doing it himself, that is. Until he learned. Do you know I had to comfort him afterward?” He shakes his head.

  “At least when it was my brother doing the beating, I guess you could say he took it easier on me or tried to, and I know he felt terrible. I know it chipped away at him. I think he started to hate himself before I realized what was happening to him.”

  He takes a break, pushes his hand into his hair, and in his eyes, I see he’s miles away. Back in the past maybe. After a long moment, his eyes refocus on mine.

  “For every misstep any of my siblings made, guess who took the punishment? And thing is, Lucas was the creative one. He was the one who got me into the woodworking. He was the softer of us. Always. He wasn’t ever cut out to be the man my father wanted and expected him to be. Never had it in him. Hell, I far surpass him in that area. I’d have made my father proud and I hate myself for that.

  “But something was happening all those years that I didn’t see. Lucas’s resentment of me grew at the same pace as his self-hatred. The accident, the fact that I was driving, what happened to him, Lucas blames me. Thinks it was my revenge for what he did to me even though that’s his own guilt. I never blamed him, not really. I knew who he really was underneath it all.

  “I’m not even sure he wants any of this, but he cannot let me have it.” He takes a breath, then runs a hand through his hair. “And you know what? I still don’t hate him. I wish I did. I try to. I miss him. I miss my brother the way we were before our father made us what we’ve become. But I know it’s too late to get that back because something died inside him the night of the accident. No, that’s not right. It was already dead by then. That accident, what it did to him, it’s what turned him rotten.”

  I reach out to touch him, but he puts up his hand to stop me.

  “Annabel’s death was what pushed us all to the place we’ve come to. And I don’t think there’s any going back. Not for any of us.”

  His gaze shifts to the scar on my face.

  Everything always comes back to that. To that damned accident.

  He reaches out a hand and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. He brushes his knuckles over the scar on my lip and a storm that’s been brewing for a decade darkens his eyes.

  “The end is coming, Cristina.”

  I shudder.

  “And I won’t be able to stop it. I won’t be able to stop the storm my brother is bringing.”

  He drops his hand, pupils focusing on me again.

  “Can’t you walk away? Just leave it all?”

  “That’s the thing. Whatever it is, I need to see it through. Finish it and put the past to rest. Bury it finally.”

  I shudder.

  It’s silent for a long moment before he speaks again.

  “You still want me to tell you what I want? I will.”

  I search his eyes, my heart racing, trying to process everything he just told me. Trying to reconcile this man who feels pain, who feels remorse and sadness, with the monster Lucas accuses him of being, the monster he doesn’t deny being.

  I nod because I believe he’ll tell me now.

  “I lied when I said I would let you go. No, that’s not right. I don’t think it was a lie then. But it’s become one.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You don’t see?”

  I wait, my mouth dry.

  “I can’t let you go, Cristina.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I love you.”

  25

  Damian

  I drive over an hour to fucking Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, to find my brother drinking himself into a stupor in the seedy room of a strip club. One woman kneels between his legs sucking his dick, while two others tongue each other for his viewing pleasure.

  I don’t want to think about what I’m touching as I step into the private room.

  “They don’t have strip clubs in the city?” I ask.

  “Brother,” he says, lifting his bottle of tequila in greeting. “Thought you might drop by.”

  The room is the size of my walk-in closet. Mirrors make up each wall and the lighting is Red Light District red. A whore’s red.

  “Grab one,” he says, gesturing to the girls who have their tongues in each other’s mouths. “I’d offer you this one, but her cock sucking skills are superior. He glances down to the naked girl who’s currently swallowing his dick. He winks at her and she closes her eyes to get back to work.

  Women like this, I never get the draw. I don’t think I could even get it up if this is all that’s on offer. I wouldn’t want to.

  “Out,” I tell the girls.

  Tobias signals for two soldiers who enter and take the girls sucking face by the arms and haul them to their feet.

  “Hey!” one says, stumbling over someone’s foot.

  “Hold on. They did good work,” Lucas calls out as he swallows more tequila. “Here, girls.” He hands them each some money from the pile of hundreds on the small table beside him before they’re removed.

  “Get her out, too,” I tell Lucas.

  He looks down at her. “Come on, sweetheart. You can finish me off after my brother’s given me a talking-to.”

  She places her hands on his thighs, gives him one final suck, then slowly stands, waving her ass at me as she bends forward to kiss my brother deeply.

  He reaches for several hundred-dollar bills and hands them to her. “Don’t go far. I’m going to need to fuck something when he’s done. I’d like for it to be your face,” he says with a slap to her ass.

  “You always had a way with the ladies,” I tell him as the girl leaves.

  “She’s no lady.”

  “Got that right.”

  “I think she’d fuck me if I didn’t have a face left at all. I like girls like that. Easier than the ones who run away screaming.” Any joking vanishes from his expression.

  Tobias leaves. I know he’ll stand just outside while I talk to Lucas.

  “Drink?” he asks, gesturing to the bottle as he puts his dick away.

  Taking it, I drink a swallow. Quality is okay, not great. Probably the best this place stocks. But I know when he’s drinking tequila, it’s bad. He used to do it when we were younger too. Tequila hits him harder. I guess he needs the oblivion.

  I think about what I told Cristina. About everything I told her. I’ve never spoken a word of that to a soul. Not once. No one knows about how we grew up.

  Taking a seat, I rest my head against the back of the tall bench.

  “How did we get here?” I ask.

  “We were always going to get here,” he says, sounding remarkably sober. Maybe there isn’t enough tequila in the world to send him into oblivion at this point. “Heard what you did to the Clementi brothers.”

  I went old school but kept my word to their father. They’re alive. Each only had one kneecap blown out. And they got to choose which one.

  “You here to do the same to me?” Lucas asks, turning to me. “Or worse?”

  I’m surprised. I guess I expected him to deny his involvement. And when I look at him, in his eyes I see what I used to see when we were younger. Especially at the beginning when he finally took over beating me while our father watched with pride in his eyes.

  Pain. And fear. But more pain.

  I reach for the papers that I’ve folded into three and tucked into my jacket pocket. I set them on the table beside the money.

  “You supplied the drugs.”

  “That’s not accurate.”

  “You put up the money to d
o it.”

  He swallows three gulps of tequila. Again, no denial. I get the feeling he’s tired.

  “Does Father know?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Matters to me.”

  “No.”

  “What did you tell the Clementi brothers to get them to agree?”

  “Told them the truth. You’re not interested in moving drugs, but I am, and there’s money in drugs. Considering my position, I needed a trustworthy player.”

  “You mean a gullible one.”

  “Most people are gullible.” He pauses, never taking his eyes off me. “They hate you, Damian. They think you take more than your fair share.”

  “I take the risk. The ships are mine. What was your intention? What did you expect or want to happen?”

  “The feds would have received an anonymous tip.”

  Well, at least he doesn’t lie.

  “You realize that would ground the fleet at the very least and for quite a while. Feds are already chomping at the bit to put us out of business.”

  “Us?”

  “The family. Like it or not, you are a part of this family.”

  “But you’re the boss.”

  “And that burns you up.”

  “Interesting choice of words.”

  “How much did you pay Cash to get my wife into your car.”

  “Your wife walked into my car of her own free will. And before you ask, she called me. Not the other way around.”

  “How much?”

  “Not enough for what you did to him, I’m guessing.”

  “Is there anyone else? Any other traitors I should know about?”

  “You cleaning house?”

  I don’t answer.

  “I’ll let you figure that out for yourself,” he says. “Let it be a surprise.”

  “It doesn’t have to be this way between us, Lucas.”

  “What other way can it be, Damian?”

  I take the bottle from him and drink.

  “What happens now? We going out back? The alley here is pretty suitable for the kind of work we do.”

  I put the bottle down.

  Shit.

  “I deserve it, don’t I?” he asks, not quite looking at me anymore. “I beat the shit out of you. Repeatedly. When you were powerless. I can fight, at least. Tables are finally turned. Bet you’ve been waiting for that.”