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“Jesus Christ,” I whispered, trying to imagine the horror of being that man’s son. I’d thought Oliver was bad. Damien’s father was the fucking anti-Christ. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he said, and I could tell that he meant it. “It was all for a reason. I see that now. Of all the people I could have been in this lifetime, why do you think I came back as Alexi Abramov’s only son? Because only his son would be able to get close enough to do what I should have done the moment he walked through our door.”
The weight of what he was saying felt like two meters of dirt being shoveled on top of a coffin. I suddenly felt powerless, claustrophobic, unable to breathe.
“Damien, no,” I gasped, feeling the station begin to spin. “This is crazy. It’s … it’s suicide.”
Giving me a sad smile, Damien squeezed my hands. “Back in Glenshire, you talked about us being there for a reason, about purpose and destiny. And you were right, angel. I see that now. But getting justice isn’t your responsibility; it’s mine. I caused this war, and I’m the only one who can stop it.”
“No.” I shook my head as tears welled in my eyes, clinging to him, clinging to hope. “No, I was wrong. The past doesn’t matter, Damien. What’s done is done. Let’s just go to Boston, okay? We can go right now. The next train will be here in”—I glanced up at the digital sign hanging above the platform—“two minutes. We’ll take it to Shannon. Get on a boat or a plane tonight.”
Damien simply dropped his eyes to our interlocked fingers, turning them over in his lap.
“Do you hear me?” I asked, my voice growing louder, more panicked. “I just got you back. I can’t lose you again.”
Lifting his eyes, Damien’s face was a terrifying mixture of resignation and indignation. It was probably the same expression I’d worn in Glenshire when he’d tried to talk me out of pursuing my own purpose. And that terrified me even more because, like me, I knew there’d be no talking him out of it.
“You can’t lose me at all,” he said, lifting our clasped hands and pressing a kiss to the freckles on my left ring finger. “We’re forever, remember?”
Tears streamed down my cheeks as I refused to accept what he was suggesting. “No. No. Absolutely not.”
“Go to Boston,” Damien replied. “Write more books. Maybe one about a Russian prince who kills his own father to stop a war with the kingdom of the girl that he loves.” He smiled sadly. “You could call it The Monster of Moscow.”
The headlight of an oncoming train temporarily blinded me as wind whipped through the station, sending my hair flying all around us.
“You’re not a monster,” I shouted over the roaring engine and squealing brakes that were slowing to a stop at our platform.
“No, but there’s one inside of me,” he said. “I feel it crawlin’ under my skin. And I’m finally gonna unleash it on the man who put it there.”
Beside us, a pair of doors slid open with a hydraulic hiss.
“Damien, don’t do this. Please. I don’t care about the past anymore. I don’t care about settin’ things right. If we have to live in the cave for the rest of our lives, I’ll be perfectly happy. I just want to be with you.”
“Ya will be,” Damien said, pulling me to my feet. “Once I finally deserve ya.”
Going from sitting to standing made my dizziness return tenfold. I squeezed my eyes shut as a wave of nausea and full-body shivers crashed over me—a product of shock from a very different nightmare that I hadn’t even begun to process yet.
And Damien used my temporary disorientation to his advantage.
Steering me by the shoulders, he gave me one last lingering kiss before shoving me backward onto the train.
A second before the sliding doors were fully shut.
Launching myself at them, I tried to pry the doors back open, clawed at the seam, pounded on the glass, but it was too late.
The lieutenant was back, and this time, the only person he was going to hurt was himself.
Turning and raising his arms above his head, Damien shouted something in Russian as the train lurched forward. Lieutenant Abramov, Howth, and Wexford were the only words I recognized, but that was enough to know what was happening.
Damien was confessing his crimes.
Half a dozen Russian soldiers descended upon him with guns drawn just before he disappeared and I careened backward through the hellscape that Dublin had become.
The train was quiet.
Damien was gone.
And the only thing I could do about it was slump to the floor, pull my knees inside Kellen’s jacket, tuck my face into the neck hole, and scream until I tasted blood.
