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I don’t recognize him. I’ve never seen this dude a day in my life. He’s roughly six feet tall, not terribly muscular but still trim. His hair is brown, eyes blue.

He’s . . . average.

There’s nothing about this guy that stands out. He’s bland. Boring.

Wow, am I just a man snob now because my guy is the hottest one to walk the earth?

Maybe.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” he says.

“Who are you?” I ask as I cross my arms over my chest, mostly so he can’t see the way my hands shake.

There may not be anything special about this guy, but his eyes are full of malice, and I know without a doubt that he doesn’t plan to simply treat me to lunch and send me on my way.

“Obviously, you wouldn’t recognize me. The last time we were together like this, I had a very different face.”

He smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes, and he starts to pace back and forth, as if he’s settling in to tell me a story.

Which is fine by me because that means that I can try to plan an escape out of this hellhole.

Except, with this guy in front of me and Beefcake with the high IQ behind me, I don’t see a way out.

And then what he said clicks.

He had a different face.

“Adam Damien?” The words slip out before I can think twice, and the man stops, turns to me, and now the smile does reach his eyes.

But he lifts his gun and shoots Beefcake between the eyes.

“My men don’t know that name,” he says and winks, as if we’re in on a secret. Then he walks back to the door he came through, opens it, and says, “Clean Matthews up. And I need more hands in here.”

“This is like déjà vu.”

Damien nods and walks over to me, lifting his hand like he’s going to brush my hair behind my ear, but I flinch out of the way, and his eyes harden.

Those I recognize.

He pulls back and slaps me across the face hard enough to send me to the floor, but I refuse to stay there.

I manage to climb back to my feet and glare at him.

“I think that out of all of my girls, you were the most difficult.”

“First of all, none of us were your girls. Second, you haven’t seen difficult yet. And last, what the hell do you want with me? If you’d just stayed gone, you could have lived out the rest of your life, and we would have done the same. It’s been seven years.”

“And yet, Carson and his brothers are alive and running my city, and the cunt that ran away still lives. So much about all of that has to change.”

“What’s up with you and Carson?”

My voice sounds level, but I’m on the verge of a goddamn meltdown. I just need to keep him talking long enough for Carson to find me.

Because he has to be looking for me by now.

“He came from nothing,” Damien spits out. “And I’m the one who gave him a family. My father taught him how to run a business. He owes everything to me.”

I frown. “Carson? Like, Carson St. James. You have the right guy?”