Damian I paced the confines of my New York office as i waited for Rosie to arrive. I didn’t want to be here. I wanted to be with Hope. Tony had stayed with her, and I simmered with impatience. Her condition hadn’t changed. Even when she had awakened, she had been distant, unfocused, there but not there. It was as if she had gone to a place where I couldn’t hurt her anymore. I closed my eyes and tried to focus on the task at hand. When I heard Rosie enter, I stiffened. It was all i could do not to rage at her, not to break her skinny neck. It took everything i had to smile and act as though nothing was wrong, as though i didn’t loathe the very ground she walked on. “You wanted to see me?” she said breathlessly. “I did,” I murmured. I let my gaze run suggestively over her body even as my flesh crawled. Her eyes brightened, and her stance immediately became suggestive. “I have only just become aware of the lengths to which you went to try and get my attention,” i said with a chuckle
Hope I was dimly aware that i was being carried yet again. It wasn’t Damian. I was intimately familiar with his touch. For a moment I panicked, and then I heard comforting words being spoken in Greek and then in English. “Rest easy, little sister. You are safe.” “Where are we going?” i asked weakly. “Some place safe,” he soothed. “Damian won’t allow anything to happen to you.” I wanted to protest that Damian wouldn’t do anything for me, but I couldn’t muster the energy. At some point, I heard Damian and i cursed the fact that i immediately felt safer and that some of the panic abated. I felt the brush of lips against my forehead and then firm hands tucking me into bed. Fingers stroked through my hair, and warmth enveloped me. “You are safe,my love. I will never allow anyone to hurt you again.” “Don’t call me that,” i cried. “Never again.” But i held to Damian ’s promise even as my heart screamed in protest. He had lied to me. I couldn’t believe anything he said. And yet i relax
Damian. I watched her leave and cursed. I felt strangled by helplessness. How could i ever hope to make things right between us? She hated me, and she had every right to. I turned to Tony, who had also watched Hope go, a frown etched on his face. “What brought you here in such a hurry?” I demanded. Tony reached into the jacket of his suit and pulled out a folded newspaper. He tossed it onto the table in front of me . “This did.” I opened it and immediately cursed in four languages. On the front page was a picture of Hope being carried by Tony on the day she had run from the apartment. Underneath were pictures of me and of Rosie with a story outlining the soap opera saga that highlighted every single facet of my relationship with Hope. I threw the paper across the room with vicious force. “It had to be Rosie. None of my men would have spoken to the press.” Tony nodded his agreement. “Since you had her arrested for her theft and her duplicity in keeping the ransom demands from yo
Hope. I stood in the bedroom, staring out the window with unseeing eyes. Nothing Damian did at this point should hurt me, but he still had that power over me , much to my dismay. “Hope .” I swung around to see Damian standing in the doorway. He looked tired, his features drawn and his eyes worried. There was something else in his expression. Sadness and...fear? He started forward, a little hesitantly. “We need to talk.” I tensed then braced myself for what I knew would come. His repudiation of me. I turned my face away but nodded. Yes, we needed to talk and get it done with. His fingers curled around my chin, and he gently turned me to face him. “Don’t look like that, Hope. I do not like to see you so sad.” “Please,” i begged. “Just say what it is you want to say. Don’t draw it out.” He lowered his hand to capture my wrist. His thumb brushed across my pulse, which jumped and sped up at his touch. “Come, sit down.” I let him lead me over to the bed. He eased down besides me
Hope I woke up tired and picked up my phone. It showed six missed calls. All from Isabella, my sister. After my memory returned, i remembered she had given me her number. I tried to call her Last night but it went straight to voice mail. I looked at my phone, no texts showed, but voice mails after each one. “Hey, Hope. Call me when you get this.” “Checking in, Hope. You there?” “Um, I’m feeling like a stalker. You can’t still be mad at me. Hell, you can be whatever you want. Shit, I would be pissed. Okay, please don’t be mad at me.” “Fuck.” Effie’s voice in the background, then my sister again. “No, honey, mommy didn’t say a bad word.” I smiled. “Hope, if you don’t call me back right now, I’m getting in my car and driving over there!” “Fuck. I’m on my way!” I checked the time of the messages. The last one was from about an hour and a half ago. Which meant she would be here any minute. I pocketed the phone and ran out the door. On my way down the stairs, I heard a voice I recog
Hope. We walked outside and away from the house toward the swimming pool. “How is he? When no one’s around, I mean?” “Bossy.” I couldn’t tell her about earlier. About any of it. “And gone, mostly.He just got back from wherever he was, actually.” “He looks at you like he wants to eat you alive.” He scared me, but I didn’t want to say that out loud, and not to Izzy. “I can’t figure him out. He is horrible one second, then nice. Almost…caring. Like he gives a shit what I feel or think.” I picked a single dandelion growing in the otherwise immaculate lawn. “But then he is a jerk again, and then he disappears.” “Is he making you…” she hesitated. “Sleep with him?” She nodded. “Not yet.”I lied “Good. Are you able to come and go?” “I don’t know. Not on my own, I think.” “Okay, that’s fine. I’ll just come get you. If he wants to send someone to follow us, we’ll deal.” “It doesn’t matter, Izzy. I’m stuck here.” “Luke and I…We are not going to sit back and let them have everything. L
Damian. Growing up, I had loved coming to the house in the Adirondacks, but that felt like a hundred years ago. Now, as we neared the property, Hope sat beside me in the car, everything about her tense. She looked beautiful in the cream colored dress I had chosen, her auburn hair piled high on her head, dark eye makeup accenting the almond shape of her whiskey colored eyes. I touched her knee as we pulled up to the security gate. She startled. “You will be fine. I will stay with you.” She nodded, but the tension kept rolling off her. I hated this. Knew as I waved to the guard and pulled around back to the garage that she was here to be shown around, shown off, a token of my father’s of my family's triumph. I also knew my father had not forgotten what she had done. He would punish her for it, and I had a feeling he would do it tonight. I just needed to keep her reined in nice and tight. After parking the car, I climbed out and met Hope on her side. “I feel sick.” I slid her h
Damian. I took my jacket off and hung it over the back of a chair, then loosened my tie, unbuttoning the top buttons of my dress shirt before it choked me. All the while, my eyes remained locked on hers. I walked toward her, rolling my right shirt sleeve up as I went. I wondered if she knew what was coming, what had to happen now. Why the room adjacent to ours became suddenly so quiet, as if there wasn’t an audience just beyond the doors to bear witness. I reached for the buckle of my belt and undid it. That was when she understood. She made to rise, but I was too close and caught her halfway up. “Make this easy on yourself,” I whispered, wondering if those in the other room heard the swoosh of my belt as I yanked it from its loops, pulled her up out of her chair, and pushed her to bend over the table that had yet to be wiped down. “Damian ,” she began. “Quiet.” I shoved her dress up to her waist. She struggled, but I held her flat and pushed her panties down so they slipped from