Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 64501 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 323(@200wpm)___ 258(@250wpm)___ 215(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64501 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 323(@200wpm)___ 258(@250wpm)___ 215(@300wpm)
Fighting back and rejecting this idea does not even cross my mind, not now in this moment. There is something too dark and too cutting about Damion for me to focus on anything but him and the warning bells he’s setting off in me. “What does that mean, Damion? Until he’s dealt with.”
“Either he kills you, Alana, or I kill him. There’s no other outcome.” He leans forward and knocks on the window. The SUV halts almost instantly, and before I know what he plans, he exits the vehicle, and Adam climbs inside. I’m baffled and blown away, confused, and out of sorts.
I reach for my door, and when I attempt to exit, Adam says, “We don’t kidnap people, but if that’s what it takes, Damion will do just that to keep you safe. Don’t make him go there. He believes you’re in danger, and so do I.”
I rotate to face him. “He needs to put space between us to keep his father from coming at him. What part of that can’t you see?”
“Do you even know the man you love, Alana? Because space is not a good thing for him right now. He’s out of his mind. He’s in the wrong headspace, and you’re the only person who’s going to keep him out of jail. He will kill for you. He already would have if I hadn’t checked him. But killing for you is the only thing he feels he can do right for you at this point.”
“That’s not true,” I whisper, twisted in knots at this point, tears burning my eyes.
“His father killed your father. He believes you hate him, and while I told him that’s not true, whatever happened in the last few minutes convinced him I’m wrong.”
My breath is labored, a painful ache of emotions tightening between my breast bones. “Can you please get out and ask him to get back in?”
“He got in another vehicle, and he’s gone, Alana.”
I snatch my phone from my purse and dial Damion, but it goes straight to voicemail. My chin sinks to my chest, his rejection driving home how mine must have felt. I chose to shove him away to protect him. He knows that. He said he knew moments before. I glance at Adam. “Where are you taking me?”
“To a safehouse.”
“Will he be there?”
“I don’t know.”
“If I’m the only one who can keep him out of jail, please help me get him there.”
“That’s the plan, but based on what I just saw in him, that may take a few hours.”
It’s not the answer I want, and I sink into the leather of the seat, accepting of the protection and more alone than I have ever been in my life. And I think Damion feels the same way. Worse, I did this to us.
Chapter Five
Alana
Savage drives us out of the city toward New Jersey, which means I’m quite possibly, once again, leaving Damion behind. Only this time, it’s his choice, not mine, though I doubt he’d see it that way. I’m the one who pushed him away. I’m the one who said no more.
Unless, of course, he’s traveled ahead of us, but I don’t know that I can count on that actually being true. I think of all that has happened these past few days and how out of my own mind I’ve been until Damion jolted me back to myself a few minutes ago. It’s funny how one can wallow in such pain that it owns us and everyone around us. There is no room for anything but the destruction it creates. We feel nothing else, certainly not compassion for those we love, because we have become the pain.
I once said Damion owns me.
But it’s the pain of losing my father that’s owned me these past days.
No, I amend firmly, in my mind. It’s not the pain that’s owned me. It’s something darker and harder. Somehow, pain has transformed into bitterness, anger, and a need for revenge, and those things have been all-consuming. Thanks to Damion, I know now that those cutting emotions are more dangerous than even the greed that West Senior openly owns—more destructive, too. That brutal combination drove me away from Damion under the façade of protecting him.
Maybe it was a façade. I don’t know. Maybe I’m being too hard on myself to that point.
I love Damion, and I do very much want to protect him, but the reality here is, if I’m being honest with myself, that I never believed he’d simply accept what had to happen to remedy his father’s ways. He’d never have allowed me to throw myself on the sword and risk myself to bring damaging attention to his father. And I didn’t want to wait to trap his father. I didn’t want to allow logic to own a place in my decisions, and Damion would have made me step back and think.