Chapter 25: Confessions
The weight was a welcome prison. Beth woke to the solid, warm press of Damien along her back, his arm a heavy band across her waist, his breath a soft, rhythmic tide against her nape. Early morning light, the pale grey of a Manhattan dawn, filtered through the gaps in the blackout drapes, painting the room in shades of graphite and dust. She didn’t open her eyes. She listened to his heart against her spine, felt the scratch of his stubble where he’d nuzzled into her hair.
His lips moved sleepily against her skin, not kissing, just tracing the territory he’d claimed in the night. The faint, aching bloom of a love bite on her shoulder, another at the juncture of her neck. Possession marks.She should have been furious.Instead, a perilous calm settled over her. The static in her head was gone, burned away in the heat of the previous night. Only the truth remained, cold and clear and waiting.She couldn’t get up if she tried. And she didn’t want to.
“You’re thinking too loud,” his voice was a gravelly rumble, thick with sleep.His arm tightened, pulling her infinitesimally closer. “It’s rude.”
A ghost of a smile touched her lips. “You’re holding me hostage.”
“You surrendered.Terms are mine.” He kissed the highest hickey, a soft, deliberate press. “Now spill it. The quiet is worse.”
She drew a slow breath, the oxygen feeling sharp in her lungs. The sanctum of his bed, the rare vulnerability of his sleep-softened hold, it was the only confessional she’d ever consider.
“I never stopped,” she said, the words so quiet they were almost lost in the sheets.He went perfectly still behind her. Not even his breath moved.
“Loving you,” she clarified, the admission hanging in the dim light like a ghost.“I only left because I was terrified of losing you. For real.” She felt him begin to speak, a tension in his chest, and she pressed on, rushing now. “Not to another woman.To a bullet.To a shadow in an alley.To the life. I feared one day you’d just… disappear.And I’d never get a body. Never get a goodbye.Never get any answers.” She swallowed, the old fear a bitter taste. “That’s why I wanted the information networks. That’s why I clawed for my own power.Not to rival you.To find you. If you ever vanished.”
His silence was a physical thing, a weight. When he spoke, his voice was stripped of all charm, all play.It was just raw. “Beth.”
“I know how it happens,” she whispered, turning in his arms to face him. In the grey light, his green eyes were dark, intense, fixed on hers.“Making people disappear. I know because my family does it.”
He didn’t blink. He just watched her, his hand coming up to cradle her jaw, his thumb stroking her cheekbone.A gesture of shocking tenderness that made her throat constrict.
“When I vanished from Paris,” she continued, her gaze locked on his, “I didn’t run to some spa or a girlfriend’s villa.I went home.To Texas. To the Ranch.”
A flicker in his eyes.The Ranch was a myth, a vague reference in old financial sheets. A place she never discussed.“Dove was there.And my uncles, Earl and Clyde. My father’s brothers.” She took another breath, diving deeper. “My mother… she wasn’t a socialite from Dallas, Damien.She was a contractor.An assassin. The best, they said.She was sent to eliminate a business rival—my father. Instead, she fell in love with him.She chose to stay. Joined the family business.”
Damien’s thumb stopped moving.His expression didn’t change, but the air in the room did. It crackled with a new, profound understanding.
“The Montgomery legacy,” she said, the words tasting of iron and old blood.“It’s not just oil and cattle.It’s disposal.Information.Neutralization. The Ranch… it’s not just land.It’s a gravesite.A workshop. The gators and the hogs aren’t just livestock; they’re sanitation. Generations of secrets, buried right there under the live oaks and the barbed wire.”
She watched it all compute behind his eyes. The pieces clicking: her uncanny calm in crises, her strategic ruthlessness, her willingness to walk into his world and not flinch. She wasn’t just a mogul who’d adapted.She was a scion.
He finally blinked, a slow, deliberate shuttering.“And Vega?”
“A potential merger.A dangerous one.My uncles are… traditional. Vega is ambitious.He sees a partnership. They see a takeover.” She looked away, at the sterile perfection of his bedside table.“There’s a ledger. Names, dates, payments for ‘services rendered.’ Going back decades.My uncles keep it.Vega wants it. It’s the seat of power. And I’m stuck in the middle, trying to decide if I want to inherit a throne built on bones.”
Damien was silent for a long moment. Then, a low, rough sound escaped him, almost a laugh but devoid of humor.“Jesus, Beth. All this time.I thought I was the monster under your bed.”
She met his gaze again. “You are. You’re just not the only one.”
He pulled her to him then, crushing her against his chest, his face buried in her hair.His embrace was fierce, almost desperate. “You think I’d ever let anything take me from you?” he muttered into her skin. “You think any bullet is faster than my need to get back to you?”
“It’s not about letting,” she mumbled against his shoulder, clinging to him. “It’s about the world we’re in.Your world.My world.They’re the same world, Damien. Just different neighborhoods.”
He leaned back, holding her face in both hands now, his eyes blazing. “Okay.Okay.Your uncles.Vega. The ledger.” He said the words like he was assembling a battle plan.“You’re not in the middle.You’re with me. And if Vega is sniffing around your family’s secrets, he’s not just your problem anymore.”
The protective ferocity in his voice was a drug. It warmed the cold fear in her marrow.But it also sparked a familiar defiance. “This isn’t your fight to take over.”
“The hell it isn’t,” he said, voice dropping to a dangerous purr. “You came to me.You bled your secrets into my sheets.That makes it mine. You’re mine.” He kissed her, hard and claiming. “So your family business is now my business.”
Before she could argue, his satellite phone buzzed on the nightstand. A specific, urgent rhythm.He broke the kiss, his eyes turning to flint as he reached for it. He listened, saying nothing, his gaze fixed on her.He ended the call.“Jackson. The watcher at the Ranch was freelance.Not one of Vega’s regulars. A specialist in reconnaissance. His employer is unknown, but his last known liaison was with a shell company out of Miami.” He paused.“Miami is Vega territory.”
The calm of the bed shattered. The safe confessional was gone. The ledge she’d talked herself off of now seemed wider, the drop deeper.Damien threw back the sheets, his naked body all coiled, lethal grace as he stood. He looked down at her, the lover gone, the boss in full command.“Get dressed. We’re going to Texas.Today. You’re going to introduce me to Uncle Earl and Uncle Clyde. And then,” he said, a smile touching his lips that held no warmth, only promise, “we’re going to have a conversation with Mr. Vega about boundaries.”
He walked toward the bathroom, leaving her naked in the tangled sheets, the reality of what she’d just unleashed settling over her like a shroud.She had wanted silence.He had given her an army. The problem was, she knew Damien’s idea of a conversation rarely involved words. And the Ranch had enough bones in the ground already.