“You can’t do that!” Taylor screeches.
“Shut up, Taylor!” My voice shakes, but I force the words out. “I’ll go.I’ll go!” My hands scramble to pull my shirt up, to cover myself. “I’ll go,” I repeat, my breath heaving, my eyes wet with tears.
Joel backs off, leisurely leaning against my desk. “That’s what I thought.”
I look down at his knees, unable to face him. I can’t lift my eyes. He folds his arms over his chest and chuckles at me.
The door creaks open. Damian steps back in, black garbage bags clutched in his hands. I don’t look at Joel. I don’t look at my father. I look at Damian.
Would he have stopped Joel if he had been here? I search his face, desperate for any reaction, any sign that hesaw me. But he doesn’t look at me at all.
Joel waves his gun in Henry’s direction like he hadn’t just been a living, breathing person minutes ago. “Bridger, grab the bags and get rid of it.”
Then his attention snaps back to me.
“Damian, take Lucky upstairs. Get her dressed and go. I’m giving youtwo days.”
Two days? It’s only a seven-hour flight.
Before I can ask why, Damian clamps a rough hand around my arm and yanks me toward the doorway.
“Don’t,” he growls.
Shivers rack my body as I step over Henry’s corpse, my knees buckle, my gut wrenches, but Damian keeps pulling me forward,dragging me through the dark kitchen and into the front of the bakery. “Show me where you live,” he says, voice low, controlled.
I walk out of The Frosted Spoon and open the door to the upstairs apartment. I dart my gaze up and down the street, looking for anyone who could help me. When I first rented this place, I thought it was great that it was separated from any of the other apartments above the stores along the rest of the block. Now, not so much. The road is dead empty. I need someone to see me and call for help.
“Go on, go up,” he murmurs at the bottom step. Every fiber of my being screams at me to fight. To run. To do something.
Instead, I step onto the first stair, just enough to make myself taller, and spin to face him. He’s still taller. Stillbigger. But I don’t care. “You’ve never seen me before? You don’t know who I am?” I seethe. Maybe if he had told Joel he knew me, things would have gone differently. Maybe Joel wouldn’t have touched me the way he did.
“You didn’t want to exchange names, remember?” Damian says flatly.
My chest tightens. “You could have stopped him.”
His expression darkens. “I warned you I wasn’t the kind of guy you wanted any part of—and youdidn’t care.” He steps onto my stair, closing the distance. I back up two more, moving higher.
“Did you know who I was?” My voice shakes with anger. “Did youfuckme to get to my father?”
Damian’s nostrils flare. “Believe me, I had no fucking clue you were that idiot’s daughter. If Ihadknown, I wouldn’t even have fucked you with someone else’s dick.” His growl vibrates through my chest as he climbs the last steps, backing me against my apartment door. “Open it.”
“Can we just talk?” I beg.
He looms over me. “Open. The. Door.”
I press my back into the wood, my mind scrambling for a way out. “Look, Damian.” It’s the first time I have said his name out loud, and I hate that I like how villainous it sounds. “I can’t go to Vegas. I need to be here to open The Frosted Spoon.”
He stares at me, unblinking. “The what?”
“The Frosted Spoon, the bakery. I?—”
A sharppinchpresses into my side. Cold. Hard. My breath stalls.
Damian’s voice is calm. “Don’t make me cut you open to get you to do what I ask.”
I swallow, my pulse thrumming in my ears. “I had nothing to do with that money. I can’t just give up my?—”
A sudden prick of pain. A slow bloom of warmth.
