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My escape is finally complete. There is nothing left for me here but painful memories and shattered illusions about a man I can never fully know.
I disappear into the night, leaving Damian’s secrets behind for good.
20
DAMIAN
The night’s stillness is shattered by a frantic pounding on my door. I startle awake, my heart pounding as I glance at the clock—six a.m.
“What the fuck?” I growl, throwing off the covers, snatching the gun that always sits on my nightstand and stumbling to my door, my eyelids still heavy. There had better be a goddamn good reason I’m being woken up so goddamn early. I had barely gotten to sleep before this.
The door bursts open before I even have a chance to open it and Edo rushes in, white as a sheet, his whole body trembling with shock.
My mouth suddenly dries. The last time I saw Edo this rattled, it was when my parents and sister were murdered. “What the fuck is going on, Edo?” I demand, my heart racing.
“It’s Alexis,” he gasps, his eyes wide. “She’s gone.”
Those words snap me fully awake. “What do you mean, she’s gone, Edoardo?” I ask, my voice rising in pitch.
Before Edo has a chance to respond, I’m pushing past him and racing down the hallway. I slam against the door, growling as I remember she locked it. Fuck this shit. I should have done this last night when she refused to talk to me.
I kick down the door, and it breaks, falling down with an almighty crash. Stepping into the cold room, my worst fears are confirmed. The window is open, a rope ladder swaying in the cool morning breeze. On the dresser sits a folded note, a pen acting as a paperweight.
With trembling hands, I snatch up the note and unfold it, my eyes rapidly scanning the words.
A torrent of emotions surges through me—devastation, fury, and fear for her safety. I crumple the note in my fist, my jaw clenched.
“Edo, get everyone up!” I bark. “I want a full manhunt for Alexis. She’s to be brought back immediately, no questions asked.”
Edo roars out orders and the house springs into action. Nat storms into the room, her eyes blazing.
“This is your fucking fault,” she spits, getting in my face. “If you had been fucking honest with her from the beginning and hadn’t allowed that fucking bitch to nearly kill her, she wouldn’t have felt the need to escape!”
The crumpled note falls from my trembling fist as the full weight of Alexis’s disappearance crashes over me. My chest heaves with ragged breaths, a vein pulsing at my temple as white-hot fury courses through my veins.
I don’t fucking need a lecture from my sister.
“Shut the fuck up, Nat!” I roar, whirling on her. My hands clench into white-knuckled fists, aching to lash out and destroy something. “You think I wanted this? You think I didn’t do everything to keep her safe?”
Nat stands her ground, eyes blazing with righteous anger. “Safe?” she spits. “You call taking her out—when Edo TOLD YOU NOT TO—and running into Scarlett, who fucking tries to attack her, and then you do nothing to protect her, safe? No wonder she ran!”
“I was protecting her!” My voice cracks with raw emotion. I rake my hands through my disheveled hair, my heart pounding a frantic staccato in my chest. Images of Alexis alone, cold, frightened, assail my mind, each one more terrifying than the last. My breath catches as another image of Alexis being captured by The Brotherhood and sold to an unnamed pervert runs through my mind.
I want to vomit.
Nat’s derisive snort snaps my focus back. “From what? Your obsessive need to control her? You’re so fucking selfish, thinking only about yourself and not what’s best for the woman who is being fucking hunted down by The Brotherhood to be sold. You’re no better than her fucking foster parents.”
I lunge forward, hands outstretched as if to wrap around her throat. But Edo quickly steps between us, his bulky arms straining to hold me back.
“Damian, this isn’t fucking helping! We need to focus on finding Alexis. Stop fucking fighting with Nat!”
The ringing of my phone cuts through the tension like a knife. I wrench free of Edo’s grasp, breathing heavily while glaring at my sister, and snatch it up, my uncle’s name flashing on the screen.
What the fuck does Uncle Vinny want so early in the goddamn morning?
“What?” I snarl, clenching the phone so tightly my knuckles turn white.
“Is that how you talk to your uncle?” Uncle Vinny’s gruff voice filters through the phone. “Mario’s getting antsy. Wants to know how the search for Alexis Hartley is going.”
