Chapter 120: Talk You Through
The afternoon sun in the stable yard was a different kind of gold—warm, liquid, pooling in the dust motes that danced in the shafts of light cutting through the open doors. The air here was a living thing: thick with the smell of sweet hay, rich leather, and the honest, musky scent of the horses themselves. It was the opposite of the sterile, jasmine-scented office.
Damien led her to a stall at the end, where a massive blood bay stallion stood with his head hanging over the Dutch door. Buttercup. The name was a joke only the Montgomerys understood.
Beth reached out, her fingers trembling for just a second before they buried themselves in the coarse, warm silk of the horse’s neck. Buttercup let out a soft, rumbling snort, leaning into the touch.
“See?” Damien said, his voice deliberately light. He leaned against the stall door next to her, close but not crowding. “Solid. Real. No cyanide in his feed.”
Beth didn’t answer. Her mind was a humming machine, gears turning with terrifying efficiency even as her body sought the simple comfort of the animal. She stroked the strong line of Buttercup’s jaw, feeling the powerful pulse beneath the skin.
This was her first kill. Not technically, perhaps. There had been threats neutralized, problems dissolved by her family’s hand long before she took the ledger. But this was different. Orchestrated by her. The choice of toxin, the delivery method, the precise theatricality of the revelation. Executed by her word. And now, her second favorite animals on the property—Tank the gator’s considerably less pampered swamp-dwelling cousins—were chomping on a cartel boss’s body while his three men waited their turn in paralysis.
She had spent a decade building walls of respectability, boardrooms and vineyards and charity galas. A clean empire. She had run from this very door, the one marked with her family’s true legacy.
And now she hadn’t just opened it. She’d locked it behind her, sealing herself inside with the darkness. The most triggering part wasn’t the violence. It was the calm. The rightness of it. The ice in her veins hadn’t melted; it had crystallized, sharp and perfect.
“Your hands are steady,” Damien observed quietly.
“They are,” she said. Her voice sounded distant to her own ears.
He watched her profile. The sunlight caught the edge of her cheekbone, the fierce line of her brow. She was the most beautiful, terrifying thing he’d ever seen. “What’s circling in that head of yours, Bethany?”
She finally looked at him, her green eyes holding his. “I’m not the fumbling housewife, Damien. The one you thought you had to protect. The one your family could shove into a corner and ignore. The one who needed you to come home and clean up a messy, crying situation wrapped in a plea of self-defense.”
He stayed silent, letting her lay it out.
“I planned that. I enjoyed the precision of it. I felt nothing when he hit the rug.” She swallowed, the motion tight. “All I can think is… can you really remarry this? It was one thing when you came home with blood on your cuffs. A hazard of your profession. A weight I had to accept. But is it a weight you can accept on mine?”
Buttercup shifted, his hoof scraping the stone floor with a click that echoed in the quiet alley of the stable.
Damien pushed off the door. He moved slowly, entering the stall to stand beside her and the horse. He didn’t touch her. He ran his own hand down Buttercup’s neck, his tattooed knuckles stark against the dark coat.
“You think I fell in love with a fumbling housewife?” he asked, his tone curious, almost conversational. “Beth, the woman I met could dismantle a rival company’s stock offering before lunch and outshoot my men at fifty yards by dinner. The ‘fumbling’ act, you put that on for my family. For me. Because you thought that’s what a Rossi wife should be. Soft. Decorative. It almost killed you.”
He turned his head to look at her. “What I saw in that office today wasn’t some new monster being born. It was you finally taking off a mask you never should have worn. The real you. The Montgomery heir. Samuel and Elena’s daughter. And yeah, she’s ruthless. And yeah, she’s calculating.” His lips quirked, a shadow of his old, charming smile. “Turns out, that’s exactly my type.”
“Damien—”
“Do you think I’m upset?” He interrupted, his voice dropping, losing its lightness. “He threatened our home. He threatened you. He was dead the moment he drove through the gate. The only choice was how. You chose a method that was clever, painless for us, and sent a message so clear his entire organization will feel the vibration. You think that disappoints me? It makes me want to pin you against this stall and kiss you until neither of us can breathe.”
A flush, hot and real, crept up her neck. The ice in her veins didn’t melt, but it warmed, just a degree.
“It’s not the same,” she insisted, though her argument was losing force. “When you do it, it’s… business. When I do it, it feels like…”
“Like coming home,” he finished for her.
The words hung in the hay-scented air. They were true. That was the terrifying, liberating heart of it.
From the tack room doorway, Dove’s voice cut through. “If you two are done with the mutual awe session, the swamp crew reports the buffet is cleared. No traces. The paralytics have worn off the other three. They’re currently in a shipping container feeling very philosophical about their life choices. Question is, do they get a bus ticket to the border or a one-way dive into the same lagoon?”
Beth didn’t look away from Damien. “What do you think?”
He shrugged, his hand still on Buttercup. “They were hired muscle. They saw your face. They heard your voice. They know the debt story.”
“Lagoon it is,” Beth said, the words decisive and clean. She saw the approval, dark and proud, flicker in Damien’s eyes. It didn’t horrify her. It met something in her, step for step.
Dove nodded. “Thought so. Jack’s on it.” She paused. “You good, Beth?”
Beth took a final, deep breath, filling her lungs with the honest stink of horse and hay, pushing out the last ghost of almonds and dying breaths. “I’m good,” she said, and for the first time since Vega took that cookie, she meant it.
Dove vanished as quietly as she’d appeared.
“See?” Damien murmured, his fingers finally bridging the gap, linking with hers against Buttercup’s warm neck. Their hands, one scarred from knives and gunfights, the other recently stained with invisible poison, looked right together. “No cleaning up. No mess. We’re not covering anything up. We’re just… building. On our own terms.”
Buttercup turned his great head and nudged Damien’s shoulder, demanding more attention. Damien laughed, a real, unguarded sound that seemed to startle the swallows nesting in the rafters.
Beth watched him, this dangerous, charming man who understood her down to her newly-acknowledged bones. The fear didn’t vanish, but it transformed. It wasn’t a fear of what she was becoming, but a fierce, protective fear for what they were building—this second chance, this blended empire of blood and legitimacy, this future that was as real and solid as the horse between them.
“Our terms are pretty terrifying, you know,” she said, a hint of her old sarcasm returning, laced with something new, something settled.
Damien turned her hand over, pressing a kiss to her palm. His lips were warm. “Darling, you have no idea.”