“I’ll tell you…” she says slowly. “If you agree to take Eivor out.”
I scoff. “We’re already discussing that, Rosalie. If that’s all you wanted…”
“No. You have to promise me that you will kill him,” Rosalie demands. “He’s my uncle and…I shouldn’t want him gone, but I do. I’m so sick and tired of living under his dictatorship. He’s losing it. He thinks he can take out whoever he wants, whenever he wants, but he’s slipping. We don’t have the manpower to go up against you, the Tulos, and whoever else he’s pissed off. It needs to end.”
I watch as her breath quickens and her eyes grow glossy too.
“I’ll take him down,” I say as I step closer to her. “I promise.”
She nods. “And I’ll help you rescue Damian.”
“Rescue?” I say quickly, “Where is he, what’s going on?” My heart is drumming in my chest all of the sudden.
“I don’t know where he is, but he let Eivor and the guards take him. He didn’t even fight them off.”
“What?” I say confused. “I don’t understand why he would do that.”
“I think he was trying to protect me. All the guards had guns. It would’ve been a blood bath if he fought back there at the house,” Rosalie explains.
My hands ball into fists. “We have to find him.”
“We will,” she agrees. “I lied to Eivor. I acted like I was angry at Damian for the affair, and that I wouldn’t help him, but I just needed an excuse to stay behind and get to you.”
I step closer to her and place my hand on her shoulder. “Thank you.”
“Don’t get me wrong, I am angry—it’s confusing and weird, but…,” Rosalie admits and shrugs away from my touch. “…at the same time, I’m kind of glad.”
“Glad?” I ask her.
“You’ve seemed miserable, and I don’t want that for you. I don’t want that for me. If Damian can make you happy then…that’s for the better, because I sure can’t.”
“Oh, Rosalie,” I say with a sigh. “It’s not about you. I’m just really fucking gay.”
She snorts and puts a hand over her mouth. “Of course you are,” she agrees. “I knew that. I just thought…maybe we could make it work somehow. I guess I didn’t think we had a choice, but now I know we do.”
“When Eivor is dead, we can annul this thing,” I tell her. “You can marry Julian, or whoever else you want.”
She steps closer to me, her brow furrowed. “You can too. Neither of us will have to agree to marry someone for the sake of our families again. Because I swear, if I hear about Carmine trying to force you into another marriage, I’ll beat his ass myself.”
I smirk at her. “I believe you.”
But then my expression falls as I remember Damian.
“We need to figure out how to find Damian.”
Rosalie nods. “If he’s still alive.”
“Let me get this straight, you want to borrow how many of our men to go on a rescue mission for Damian?” Carmine asks as we stand in the boardroom. “Not to mention at least a fourth of our guard crew has left because they worked for Eivor first and me second. I can’t spare?—”
“We can spare six guards; I know we can,” I tell him. “Plus, there’s no way Eivor is going to stage some kind of attack while he’s still got Damian on the hook. He’s trying to get information from Damian so that he can force us to back down quietly. We’ve got time.”
“But not much,” Rosalie adds. “The guards he’s got interrogating Damian aren’t known for being the patient kind. When they feel like he should be dead, he will be.”
Anger climbs my spine and I struggle not to storm out of the room right here and now and just go after Damian myself.
Carmine purses his lips and takes a step to the side, pacing along the edge of the table for a moment.
“If I let you do this…and you don’t come back from it—” he starts, but I cut him off.
