Chapter 43 Chapter 43

Chapter 43 Chapter 43
~ Elena’s POV
"Bye bye, sweetie pie."
The words left her mouth like a lullaby, soft and almost sweet, and for one suspended second I thought I understood exactly how it felt to watch your own death arrive wearing someone else's smile. Liz's finger curled around the trigger. I didn't breathe. I didn't move. Somewhere behind me, Marco's hand tightened on my arm as if he could pull me out of the path of a bullet that hadn't even been fired yet.
Damian moved before she could finish the thought.
I didn't see it so much as feel it, the air shifting, a blur of black fabric, and then Liz's scream as her wrist bent backward at an angle that made my stomach turn. The gun clattered to the marble floor and skidded somewhere into the dark. By the time my mind caught up with my eyes, Damian had her locked against his chest, one arm crushing hers behind her back, his own weapon pressed flush against her temple.
"Tell them to drop their guns," he said. His voice wasn't loud. It didn't need to be. "Now, Liz."
She was laughing. Even with a gun to her skull, even with her arm surely screaming in its socket, she was laughing, breathless and delighted, like this was the most fun she'd had in months. "You always did have good reflexes, manny." But she lifted her chin toward the men flanking the hall, and one by one, I heard the metallic clatter of weapons hitting the floor.
I don't know where she'd found so many men. That was the thought that lodged itself sideways in my brain even as my heart tried to climb out of my throat, an absurd, useless thought, but it was easier than looking at the murder that had almost happened in front of me.
The main doors burst open a second later, and Leon came through them with a wall of men at his back, too late to matter and clearly aware of it. Marco made a sound of pure disgust beside me. "You're late," he snapped. "You owe us. Big time."
Leon didn't argue. Damian shoved Liz forward, and she crumpled to her knees on the marble, still smiling up at him like none of this had cost her anything. Marco crossed the room, plucked her gun off the floor with two fingers like it disgusted him, and nodded once at Leon's men. They hauled her up by the arms and dragged her out through the same doors she'd come in through, her laughter trailing behind her long after I could see her face.
I stood there. Frozen. Trying to process the fact that Damian had just walked toward a woman aiming a gun at my chest as if it were nothing, as if his own body meant less to him than mine did. It should have felt like relief. Instead, it felt like something had cracked open in me that I didn't have a name for yet.
He turned to me before I'd found my footing, and his hand closed around my wrist… not gently.
"Why did you leave the room," he said. It wasn't a question. It was an accusation wrapped around my bones.
"You locked me in a hole in the wall and told me to disappear," I hissed, yanking my hand back, though he didn't let go. "Forgive me for not being thrilled about it."
"You could have died."
"You could have died too, in case you missed the part where she had a gun pointed at your head—"
"Elena."
"Don't Elena me, I—"
I didn't get to finish. He bent, hooked an arm around my waist, and hauled me up over his shoulder like I weighed nothing at all.
"Damian!" I slammed my fist against his back, twisting, kicking uselessly at the air. "Put me down, I swear to God—"
He didn't. He turned to Marco as if I weren't currently pounding on his spine like a furious child. "Get everything back the way it was. All of it. Tonight."
"On it," Marco said, and I caught, even upside down, the flicker of something careful cross his face before he looked away from us both.
My brows furrowed as Damian carried me the entire way to our room. Down the stairs, past the shattered glass and the smell of gunpowder still hanging thick in the air, past staff already sweeping up debris like this was simply Tuesday in this house, and I complained the whole way, threatened him with every consequence I could invent, and he didn't say a single word back. Not one. He only shifted his grip when I squirmed too hard, like I was an inconvenience he'd already decided to ignore.
~ In Our Room
He locked the door behind us and threw me onto the bed. I bounced once, glared up at him, and jabbed a finger in his direction before he could take a single step closer. "Don't you dare."
He didn't move. He just stood there, arms folded over his chest, dark eyes pinned on mine, and asked again, quieter this time. "Why did you leave the room, pup."
I looked away. My jaw locked. I wasn't going to answer that, not when the real answer was so stupid and so raw that saying it out loud would hand him something I wasn't ready to give.
He crossed the space between us anyway. One hand braced beside my head on the mattress, the other tilted my chin back until I had nowhere left to look but him.
"Why."
"Go ask Liz," I snapped, the words tasting bitter the second they left me. "Since you clearly wanted to be alone with her so badly."
Something shifted in his face. Understanding, maybe. Or satisfaction. His mouth curved, slow and knowing, and I hated him for it… hated that he'd found the soft, humiliating center of me so easily.
"Jealous," he said, like he was tasting the word.
"I am not—"
He kissed me before I could finish the lie, and it wasn't gentle. I shoved at his chest, twisted my face away, told him to stop against his mouth, and he didn't listen to a single syllable of it. He never did.
~ The Next Morning
I woke to sunlight slicing through the curtains and my whole body aching in places I didn't want to examine too closely. Marks bloomed along my collarbone, my hips, my throat, evidence he hadn't bothered to be careful with, and I groaned into the pillow at the sight of them. Since I was on my period, he hadn't gone further than that, but he'd clearly made up for it in other ways, relentless in a manner that left no part of me unclaimed.
I sat up, mortified, gathering my shirt off the floor, and in doing so managed to wake him. He caught my wrist before I'd even stood, pulling me back down onto the bed beside him, nuzzling his face into the curve of my neck like a man who had never once been told no and didn't intend to start now.
"Stay," he murmured, voice still rough with sleep.
"I need a shower," I said, pushing weakly at his shoulder, and eventually, grumbling, he let me go.
~ After a While
I came out of the bathroom fully dressed, towel-drying my hair, already rehearsing the argument I planned to have with him about locking me in walls, when I found him sitting on the edge of the bed, shirtless, elbows on his knees.
And Marco standing in the doorway.
Marco, who never looked anything but composed, who'd stepped over a body last night without blinking, Marco looked like he'd seen a ghost.
Damian's jaw was a hard, tight line, like he already knew what was coming and was bracing for the weight of it.
"What..." I said slowly, my hairbrush forgotten in my hand, "...is going on."
Neither of them answered right away. And in that silence, I felt the floor tilt beneath me, the same way it always did, right before Damian's world reached out and pulled another piece of the ground out from under my feet.
Then Marco spoke, and the words that came out of his mouth shattered whatever fragile peace I'd woken up with into pieces I wasn't sure I'd ever be able to put back together.