Damien's POV “She’s dead,” Katarina said to me after I asked her what had happened to Lauren and where she was, and her tears were flowing freely as she looked at me and gave me a pleading look. I was perfect at detecting lies, but it was hard to know what this one was. One thing I knew was that it couldn’t possibly be true. Lauren could not be dead. Things just didn’t work that way. “Stop messing around, Kate. This is not something you should be joking about. If you think for one second that I’m not going to pull the trigger, then you are surely mistaken,” I informed her, but that was just my way of letting her tell me the truth one more time so that it would sink in as it hadn’t. “None of this would have happened if you truly loved me, Damien,” she sobbed, but I didn’t care about any of that. “I made a small mistake that could have been fixed if we had just talked, but you walked away from me without listening to my side of the story.” “Katarina!” I
The screams that shot out of Katarina’s mouth were enough to deafen me as she held on to her right leg, which I had shot and was now bleeding against the tiles of my living room, but they were enough to assure me that I had hurt her as badly as I had meant to. “That’s not even nearly as close to the pain that you put Lauren through when you did all the things you did to her and her mother. Did you think she died on impact when you hit her with the truck?” I asked. My mind reeled with the images of Lauren struggling to breathe as pain overtook every part of her after being hit by the truck that Katarina had been behind the wheel of. “Ah!” she yelled, shaking her head as tears streamed down her face. “You cannot do this to me! You have to take me to the hospital!” “Tell me one thing, Katarina,” I said through her screams that I no longer wished to hear any more now. “You said you didn’t mean to kill her, and you only wanted to cause her some injuries,
Damien's POV “If you’re going to kill me, just go ahead and do it,” Katarina hissed in pain, grabbing onto her leg and squeezing it as a way to reduce the pain. “The more you tell me to kill you, the less I want to do it. If you prefer to die, you should know that I’m not going to give you that satisfaction,” I reminded her. She shook her head, taking deep breaths just as I stood up and took her hand to force her to stand. “Would you still like to get married to me? This is why you did all of that, after all,” I told her. Her eyes flew towards the glass of alcohol I had in my hand before looking back at me. “I think you’re drunk. Maybe you should sleep this off. Things don’t have to be like this between us. I’m sorry for everything I did, Damien. I’m going to do everything I can to find her body so that you can give her a proper funeral. Forget the wedding, I don’t need to get married to you.” “Begging is not going to change anything, K
Damien's POV “Send cars out to track the trucks. If you find them, don’t let them get away,” I commanded the men, who immediately went into cars and drove out to find the perpetrators. Seeing Lauren’s mother in front of me somehow fueled my anger towards Katarina. I had the sudden urge to walk into the house and end all of it once and for all, but all I could do was bend down by her body and stare. “I’m sorry that this happened to you,” I apologized, taking her arms and setting them beside her properly. “I couldn’t be there to find you in time, and I couldn’t protect your daughter the way I had promised to.” “If there’s one thing I’m sure of, it’s the fact that the people who did this to you and Lauren are not going to get away with it,” I gave her my word. I carried her into the house and set her on one of the couches, calling out to the rest of the guards who had not left in the trucks to prepare a befitting funeral for her. “Katarina,” I sai
Damien's POV “What did he do? I could help you talk to him, I promise,” Katarina suggested as she stared at the gun that was pointed at her head in fear. “He diverted my goods, worth hundreds of millions, to his port. I don’t know what he’s trying to achieve with that, but if he’s making those silly moves, it’s leading me to believe that he has Lauren’s body and is just trying to pretend.” “He doesn’t. I know for a fact that he doesn’t have Lauren’s body. He wouldn’t lie to you and have you keep me here,” she argued, seeming to have trust for someone who didn’t exactly care about her all that much. “Tell him about it. Tell him that I have little patience left and will do it if he doesn’t send my goods back while you’re still on the food. Maybe he’ll show you how much or how little he cares about you in your last moments.” Her hands trembled as she dialled Santino’s number and put it against her ear. “Santino, this is Katarina,” she told him.
Damien's POV I concluded that it would be better and much easier to tell Darla about Lauren in person than if I did it over the phone – I could let her know how important it was for her to keep quiet about it – so I didn’t argue when she told me that she was coming to the house. “You can come, Darla. There’s something important I want to tell you as well,” I told her, hanging up the phone and coming to the reminder that I was drunk. Picking myself off the floor, I staggered to the living room to place my head on the headrest of a couch to prepare myself for the conversation I was about to have with my sister.~ “Damien!” It suddenly felt as if I had been suctioned into a new life as I opened my eyes to find Darla looking at me with confusion on her face. “Did you drink the whole bottle of this?” she asked, raising the bottle of vodka to my view. I could barely give her an answer as I held on to the bridge of my nose to stop my head from explod
Damien's POV“You cannot enter this area, sir,” the two uniformed and armed men standing at the entrance of the street informed me as they stopped my car from getting through. “What does that mean? As far as I know, I have been here before without you two in the way. What’s going on in there that’s so special?” I asked with a frown, wondering if the police had managed to find Lauren before I did. The last thing I wanted was to get the police involved in that case. They were more incompetent than I knew, and they had a way of royally messing everything up and turning the blame away from their direction. “This is private property now. It has been bought, and nobody but the owner is allowed to get in until it is redeveloped and put on the market for regular citizens,” the second one told me, sounding even more annoyed at me than the first one. “I’m not here to cause any trouble. Just let me in. I have something important that I lost here, and I would like to—”
Damien's POV I didn’t know if I wanted to ask the two guards in front of me what the whole hurry and concern was all about, or if finding out on my own would be a better choice. “What is this all about?” I asked, sticking to the first option I had as they led me in the direction of the small, private cemetery, where the dead members of the Goldberg family were buried and they had wanted to bury Lauren’s mother. I watched the two guards look at each other as if silently discussing which one of them would break the news to me. “It doesn’t matter who speaks and who doesn’t. Just tell me what the hell is going on,” I commanded. Without stopping, one of them said to me as we got to the entrance of the cemetery, “I don’t think she’s dead, sir.” My brows drew closer to each other, and my heart skipped several beats. I walked past them and hurried my steps until I got to where one of the guards was holding her up and getting her to stand on her feet.