Chapter 98: Meeting Your Wife
The faint, grey light of a Jersey dawn was just beginning to bleed into the room when Beth opened her eyes. Damien was already awake, propped on one elbow, watching her. His gaze was a physical weight, tracing the lines of her face, the swell of her lips, the sweep of her lashes against her cheek. There was no playfulness there now, no calculated charm.Just a stark, waiting intensity.
He didn’t speak. He just lifted a hand and brushed a strand of hair from her forehead, his fingertips lingering on her temple.Her heart thudded, a slow, heavy drum against her ribs. The memory of his plea—Marry me again—hung in the space between them, more tangible than the silk sheets.Last night, in the heat and the ruin, she’d deflected. Ask me again in the morning.Morning was here.
She shifted, turning fully onto her back to meet his eyes.The air in the room felt charged, thin. She took a slow breath, the scent of him and sex and expensive linen filling her lungs.This was the ledge. The one she’d avoided for a decade.
“You asked me a question,” she said, her voice sleep-roughened.
“I did.”
“Before you get an answer,” she said, pushing herself up to sit against the headboard, pulling the sheet with her, “you need to know who you’re asking.”
A flicker of confusion crossed his face. “I know who you are, Bethany.”
“You know versions.” She looked down at her hands, the manicured nails, the absence of a wedding band.“You met the Columbia grad. The Texas runaway pretending she didn’t have a past, soaking up the attention of a handsome guy in a Queens sports bar. You married that girl. She was real, but she was… edited.”
She looked up, forcing herself to hold his gaze.“Then you met the Corporate Mogul.The one you created, in a way. The divorcee who built a fortress out of spite and ambition, who swore she’d never need anyone again. You’ve been dancing with her for the past month.”
Damien remained silent, his expression unreadable now, a mask of polished stone.He was listening, really listening.
“That’s not who you’d be marrying.” She drew her knees up, wrapping her arms around them.“You’d be marrying the Fixer’s daughter.Bell. The one who’s going to take over her dead father’s legacy one day, whether she likes it or not.”
She let her native cadence seep in, the one she usually ironed flat in boardrooms. The Texas drawl softened and twisted by her mother’s Russian rhythms. “So here it is, Damien.The full picture.I’m Texan and Russian. This accent,” she said, letting it thicken, “it’s a mashup. I work to keep it quiet, but it comes out when I’m tired.Or angry. Or drunk.”
A faint, wry smile touched his lips.He didn’t look surprised.
“I laugh too loud.I smoke when I’m stressed—proper cigarettes, not those elegant little things. I drink whiskey neat, and I can out-drive most of your men on a dirt road, and out-drink them at a bar.I love spiders.And scorpions. Fascinating creatures.Efficient.”
She saw his eyebrow twitch.Good.
“I fly to Colorado every three months to play chess with my mom in a supermax visiting room. It’s a hell of a way to spend a Saturday.” The statement hung, brutal and honest. “I love my red-bottom heels, but I will kick them off and run barefoot through a garden if the mood strikes. I will get on a table and dance with my sister Dove to George Strait until the bottle’s empty and the sun comes up.I am stubborn as a goddamn mule. And I don’t want you to hate your family. I know you love the hell out of them, the messy, dangerous, loyal lot of them.”
She finally paused, her chest tight. The list felt like stripping off armor, layer by layer, until she stood there, exposed. Not a socialite, not a mogul.Just a woman with a complicated heart and a legacy of shadows.
“So,” she finished, her voice dropping to a near whisper. “Knowing all that… the real, unedited, inconvenient version… can you still marry her?”
Damien didn’t move for a long moment.Then, slowly, he sat up. He reached out, not for her face, but for her hand.He took it, turning it over, tracing the lines of her palm with his thumb. His touch was deliberate, almost reverent.“The accent,” he said, his own voice low. “I’ve heard it.When you were half-asleep once, years ago. You muttered something in what I thought was nonsense. Sounded beautiful.”
He brought her palm to his lips, kissed the center.“The smoking. I found a pack of American Spirits in your old jewelry box after you left.Kept it.”
He kissed her wrist.“The drinking. Bellamy, I’ve seen you put a six-foot-three enforcer under a table. It was the sexiest thing I’d ever witnessed.”
He moved to the inside of her elbow, his breath warm on her skin.“The spiders.There’s a terrarium in the west sunroom. Had it built last week. Thought you might want a place for… fascinating creatures.”
Beth’s breath caught.He’d been planning.Not for the mogul, but for her.
“Colorado,” he continued, his lips brushing the soft skin of her upper arm. “I’ll fly you there every month if you want.I’ll sit in the damn waiting room. I’ll learn chess.”
He finally lifted his gaze to hers.The green of his eyes was dark, endless. “The table-dancing, barefoot, stubborn-as-hell woman…” He shifted, closing the distance between them until their faces were inches apart. “That’s the only woman I’ve ever wanted to marry.The only one I’ve ever loved. The edited versions were just you hiding from me.From us.”
He cupped her face, his thumb stroking her cheekbone. “You asked if I can marry her.Bethany, I don’t want to marry anyone else. The full picture is the only one I see.”
He didn’t ask again. He didn’t have to. The question was there, alive in the space between their shared breaths, in the pressure of his hands on her skin, in the devastating honesty of his words.
She leaned forward, closing the last inch.Her kiss was her answer.Soft, deep, a seal. It was a promise, a surrender, a beginning.When she pulled back, her forehead rested against his.
“Yes,” she breathed into the quiet.A shudder went through him. A full-body release of a tension he’d perhaps carried for ten years.He didn’t shout, didn’t celebrate. He just wrapped his arms around her, holding her so tightly she felt his heartbeat syncing with hers.After a long while, he spoke, his mouth against her hair. “We’ll have to tell the family. They’ll be insufferable.”
“Your mother will start planning a wedding fit for a Medici,” Beth murmured, a real smile touching her lips for the first time.“Our wedding,” he corrected, his tone leaving no room for argument. “And it won’t be in a church.It’ll be at the ranch. Under that big Texas sky you’re always going on about.”
The simplicity of it, the rightness, stole her breath. Home.Not his fortress, but her wild, open land. Where she could be both—the mogul and the fixer’s daughter.His partner.
“There will be threats,” she said, the practical part of her mind clicking back into gear.“The Vitellis. The Feds.Your… associates.”
Damien’s arms tightened.“Let them come. They’ll be dealing with both of us now.” He leaned back, looking at her with a fierce, possessive pride.“Bellamy Montgomery-Rossi. Sounds like a force of nature.”
She kissed him again, because words failed. The future stretched before them, not a gilded path, but a rugged, dangerous, beautiful trail they would blaze together. She had walked back into his arms, into the fire, and this time, she had no intention of walking away.
The morning light grew stronger, painting the room in pale gold. Somewhere in the compound, the world was waking up, with all its schemes and dangers. But here, in this room, there was only the quiet certainty of two souls, finally, irrevocably, coming home.