Chapter 66: Meeting you again
The first thing she felt was weight. A pleasant, solid anchor of warmth pinning her to the mattress. Beth stirred from a deep, dreamless sleep, the kind that only came after total exhaustion. Damien’s face was buried in the crook of her neck, his breath a soft, even rhythm against her skin. His arm was a heavy band across her waist, his hand splayed possessively over her hipbone.
She opened her eyes to the grey-gold light of a Texas dawn filtering through the sheer curtains. A faint, tender ache bloomed along her collarbone and shoulder. She didn’t need to look. The memory of his mouth—biting, sucking, claiming—was mapped there in bruises. His own personal seal.
A slow, reluctant smile touched her lips. She lifted her free hand, the one not trapped beneath him, and began to thread her fingers through his dark, sleep-tousled hair. It was soft, contrary to everything else about him. With her other hand, she traced the intricate lines of the tattoo that spanned his shoulder blade: a stylized dagger wrapped in thorns, the Rossi family crest woven subtly into the hilt. His skin was warm, the muscle beneath firm even in sleep. For a moment, it was just this. The quiet. The heat of him. The strange, hard-won peace.
The phone shattered it.
It buzzed and rattled on the nightstand, a frantic mechanical beetle. Damien didn’t jolt. He simply went still. The change was instantaneous. The man went from dead weight to live wire in the space between one heartbeat and the next, though he didn’t move a muscle.
The screen glowed, illuminating a swirl of dust in the air.
SOPHIA ROSSI.
The name was a bucket of ice water. Beth’s hand stilled in his hair.
Damien let out a long, silent breath against her neck. Then he shifted, rolling onto his back and snatching the phone. He didn’t answer. He just stared at the screen as it went to voicemail. The room felt colder.
“Your mother,” Beth said, her voice morning-rough.
“I have eyes, cuore mio,” he grumbled, but there was no real lightness in it. He ran a hand over his face.
“She’s calling early. Or late, depending on her time zone.” Beth propped herself up on an elbow, the sheet pooling at her waist. “You said she’d been asking about me.”
“She’s persistent.” He dropped the phone onto his chest, staring up at the ceiling. “My father mentions a business trip. She hears ‘Texas.’ She puts two and two together and gets ‘that Montgomery girl.’ It’s been her favorite math problem for a decade.”
The old bitterness, long-dormant, coated Beth’s tongue. Sophia Rossi, a queen of Gramercy Park and Old World manners, who looked at Beth and saw a well-dressed barnyard animal. Vittorio, with his cold, appraising stare, seeing only a strategic weakness in his son’s armor. And Claire, the baby sister, who’d perfected the art of the backhanded compliment by age sixteen. ‘Oh, Beth, that’s such a… daring dress. You really can carry off the rustic-chic thing.’
The last Thanksgiving. The porcelain smile on Sophia’s face as she passed the sweet potatoes. The way Vittorio questioned Damien about a shipping container, ignoring Beth’s attempt to discuss the stock market. Claire giggling about some debutante’s scandal. Beth had felt like a museum exhibit: Rare Specimen of Upward Mobility. Do Not Touch.
“She probably wants to know if you’ve come to your senses yet,” Beth said, lying back down, her voice carefully flat. “Or if the country air has finally made me sprout horns and a tail.”
Damien turned his head on the pillow. His green eyes were serious. “She doesn’t get a vote.”
“She thinks she does. They all do.” Beth watched a blade of sunlight cut across the room. “They threw a party when the divorce was final. I’m sure of it. Sophia probably commissioned a commemorative plate.”
A laugh, genuine and surprised, rumbled out of him. He shifted, rolling halfway over her, bracing himself on an elbow. The morning light caught the scar above his brow, the stubble shadowing his jaw. “Fuck the plate.” He leaned down and kissed her, slow and deep, a deliberate act of erasure. When he pulled back, his expression had softened. “You’re not a country girl playing cultured. You’re a goddamn empress playing at being humble. They never saw it. Their loss.”
His phone buzzed again, twice in quick succession. Text messages this time.
He glanced at it, his jaw tightening. “She’s insisting.”
“So answer it.” Beth’s mask of control slid back into place, cool and polished. “Put it on speaker. Let’s give the Dowager Queen her morning audience.”
He studied her for a beat, then nodded. He swiped the screen and accepted the incoming video call, propping the phone against the lamp on his nightstand.
Sophia Rossi’s face filled the screen, perfectly framed by an elegant silk scarf and a backdrop of what looked like a sun-drenched conservatory. Her hair was a flawless champagne blonde, her makeup light and perfect. She was a beautiful woman in her sixties, every detail crafted to convey effortless grace.
“Figlio mio! You’re alive.” Her voice was warm syrup, tinged with a faint Italian accent worn smooth by decades in New York. “I was beginning to worry. You don’t call.”
“It’s 6 a.m., Mama,” Damien said, his own voice smoothing into a familiar, charming cadence. He was a different man here, a performance for an audience of one. Beth watched, fascinated and faintly sick.
“For you, perhaps. For me, it’s time for coffee.” Her eyes, sharp as tinted glass, darted, trying to see beyond the frame. “You are at the hotel?”
“Something like that.”
“And you are alone?” The question was a delicate knife.
Damien’s arm, still slung over Beth’s waist, gave a slight, possessive squeeze. “Not exactly.”
Beth took that as her cue. She shifted, making sure the sheet was securely tucked, and leaned in just enough to enter the camera’s view. She gave Sophia a smile that showed exactly the right number of teeth. “Good morning, Sophia. Or should I say, good afternoon?”
For a fraction of a second, Sophia’s perfect composure cracked. A flicker in the eyes, a tiny tightening at the corners of her mouth. It was there and gone, replaced by a wider, more brilliant smile. “Bethany! What a lovely surprise.” The lie was so elegant it almost sounded true. “You look… well. Texas agrees with you.”
“It’s home. It tends to do that.” Beth kept her tone light, conversational. She could play this game. She’d been trained in boardrooms by sharks far more dangerous than Sophia Rossi.
“So I see.” Sophia took a delicate sip from a porcelain cup. “I was just telling Damien he’s been missed. Your father has questions about the Genoa accounts, caro. And Claire is asking about you. She’s planning her wedding, you know. The florist is causing una crisi, a real crisis.”
“Tell Claire I said congratulations,” Beth said, before Damien could speak. “And to fire the florist. Any vendor who causes a crisis before the marriage even starts isn’t worth the stress.”
A beat of stunned silence. Sophia blinked, momentarily derailed by the practical, unsentimental advice. Damien coughed, covering a laugh.
“Yes,” Sophia recovered, her smile thinning. “I will tell her. Practical as ever, Bethany.” She turned her laser focus back to her son. “We expect you back soon, Damien. This… diversion… has been long enough.”
Damien’s playful mask slipped, just at the edges. “My business isn’t finished.”
“Ah, your business.” Sophia said the word as if it were something distasteful she’d found on her shoe. “Your father and I hope it concludes… neatly. Without any unnecessary complications.” Her gaze flicked to Beth again, a clear, cold dismissal. “Ciao, bella. Take care of yourself.”
The screen went black.
The room was suddenly, profoundly quiet. The hum of the air conditioner seemed too loud.
Beth lay back, staring at the ceiling. The warmth of moments before was gone, replaced by a familiar, cold hollow in her chest. She’d spent years building a fortress of success to keep that feeling out. It had taken Sophia Rossi sixty seconds to pick the lock.
“Well,” Beth said, her voice eerily calm. “She hasn’t changed.”
Damien threw his phone onto the far side of the bed as if it were toxic. He turned, gathering her against him, his body a wall of heat against the sudden chill in her bones. “Ignore her.”
“I do,” Beth whispered into his skin. But it was a lie. She couldn’t. The ledger in the study downstairs was a problem that could be solved with money, violence, or leverage. Sophia Rossi was a problem that existed in the architecture of his life, in the blood in his veins. A problem Beth had run from once before.
He held her tighter, his mouth against her hair. “You’re my complication. The only one I want.”
But as she closed her eyes, Beth saw not the swamp or the ledger, but a dining table set for twenty, her own reflection staring back from a commemorative plate, forever on the outside looking in. The war wasn’t just in the desert. It was in drawing rooms and on phone screens, and she was only now realizing she’d have to fight on every front.