I tried.
I couldn’t.
Everything dissolved into grainy static as the voices surged.
Somewhere behind the noise, Damien’s voice changed—no longer gentle. Focused.
“Joseph, it’s Damien.” A clipped pause. “I need you now—yes, now.”
The room tilted again. My knees bent, but Damien caught me, lowering us both to the ground carefully.
“Channel seven,” he barked. “End it.”
Then the reporter’s voice filtered through the room, “We’ll be back with more breaking news right after this quick commercial break.”
The TV snapped to black.
But the silence only magnified the voices.You did this. They’ll lose everything because of you. You don’t come back from this.
Damien’s words broke through again. Fainter. More distant this time. “Phil, I have a job for you.”
Then the world went black.
Chapter 39
***
Damien
I’d never felt more useless in my life.
Tears.
Guilt.
Emma’s shame was so sharp it felt like the air itself was cracking open around us.
And the voices—those vicious, relentless voices she fought until her strength burned out and exhaustion finally dragged her under, they echoed in my mind as well.
But I had one thing she didn’t.
Certainty.
This would go away because I would make it so. Whatever it took.
Phil was already involved.
My fixer.
My shadow.
The man whose methods Emma could never discover.
I’d only needed him a handful of times over the years—but when things required solutions without mercy, he was unmatched. And now, with Emma fragile and trembling in ways she never should have been, I didn’t need morality.
I needed results.
This morning I’d used the power she’d placed in my hands: the weight of a dominant’s command.
