Page 1 of The Vow

Chapter One

Robyn

Hate was a strong word, reserved for only three men in my life. The first was Bernard Belmont, the man responsible for the death of my parents. The second, Magnus Sinclair, who stole my inheritance and used it to fund international crime.

The third was Damon Remington. The man sitting in my passenger seat, bound and gagged, whom I hadn’t seen in fifteen years.My husband.

I sped away from the Sherwood Garage—a motorcycle garage run by my brothers and their Special Forces unit that was about to be swarmed with a dozen FBI agents and multiple tactical teams. And all because of the man next to me—the most notorious criminal the world had never known.

Damon Remington.

A ghost, they called him. A criminal consultant who traded secrets, intelligence, and connections to the worst of the worst, profiting from being a link in the chain but never getting hishands dirty. Maybe he was a ghost—a fugitive figment living in darkness whom the law could never catch, but I was the only one left haunted.

I was the only one tied to the shadow of a man who’d found me at my lowest, who saw exactly what I needed and promised to give it to me, who let me fall for him—my heart stolen by a phantom who’d disappeared in the light.

I let my gaze slide to him again, not that I needed to. His profile was permanently burned into my memory. It didn’t matter that his dark hair was longer now, the strands having a life of their own the way they waved around his head, the ends curling in defiance; I still remembered how soft it felt in my fingers.

It didn’t matter that his once-straight nose now held the telltale bump of being since broken or that his square jaw cut a little sharper, honed by over a decade dealing in deceit and carving out a criminal empire. I’d never forget the feel of his face in my hands.

His eyes caught mine, twin rounds of silver-gray flint, and I fought the urge to look away. It was more than an urge. It was instinct. A prickling of self-preservation. To retreat from the glittering gaze that sparked heat low in my stomach. An ache I’d buried under fifteen years of anger, resurrected by a single, piercing look. To turn away revealed I had something to hide—feelings other than pure, unadulterated rage. So, I held his stare as a hunter would the eyes of her prey, and when I finally looked back to the road, I ignored the unsettling feeling that Damon had looked at me the same.

He shifted his seat, his tall body trying to get comfortable in the confines of my Mercedes coupe. He was just over six feet but not big and bulky like my adopted brothers, Harm and Dare; the two of them were built like titans, gigantic, well-hewn soldiers. Damon, in contrast, wielded a godlike beauty. Sharpand angled to perfection like a blade of a knife. Powerful but deadly if you weren’t careful of the danger.

And most weren’t. I hadn’t been. One look at those striking silver eyes and dimpled chin, and you’d think his good looks were the only thing criminal about him.

Maybe that was why the FBI hadn’t caught him after all these years.

Damon’s photo hung in the prized first spot on the FBI’s Most Wanted list, the display marking the epitome of irony. The world’s most-wanted criminal was known by the official photo taken for his badge when he was first hired by the Bureau some two decades ago now.

From most-valuable agent to most-wanted villain, Damon Remington plummeted with all the pomp and infamy of a mortal Lucifer, descending from the ranks of those sworn to protect the world from evil into the criminal underworld, and then rising up to become the lord of them all. His Bureau photo was the last good image they had of him, and I was sure Damon probably had a good laugh when they were forced to use it.

Looking at him now, he resembled neither a criminal nor an FBI agent, but rather a vintage James Bond, a chameleon in a three-piece suit and fedora. Always that fedora. The hat had become a kind of trademark of his or maybe just a trick of his trade. No one knew what Damon looked like because of that infamous fedora—a shield that was now clasped in his bound hands, dirty and partially crushed; it had fallen on the floor of the garage while I was interrogating him. A task that had become more physical than verbal until Dare and one of the other guys from the garage, Tynan, had stepped in and held me back.

What did they expect from me?Damon Remington broke me when there was hardly anything left to break. When he knew I was nothing more than sharp shards of a soul who cutanyone who tried to get close. Except for him. I’d let him get close.Too close.Close enough to trust. To fall for. To marry. And close enough to betray me and disappear for the last decade and a half.

Damon made a sound, muffled through the towel I’d grabbed on our way out of the garage and then stuffed in his mouth. A mouth that was bowed on top and drew easily into the smile of a saint, though in private, he’d proven it was only made for sin. That mouth was the weapon I hadn’t seen coming. The way it promised…the way it made me feel…the way it lied.

But I was smarter now. Hardened. I wasn’t the same twenty-two-year-old who’d been so consumed by the devils I knew that I missed the devil I didn’t. The devil whose smile looked like an angel. The devil I’d made a vow to.The devil I married.

Some might call me bitter, but they were usually the ones demeaning any idea of a woman’s self-defense.

I swallowed down a huff of annoyance as Damon’s low grunts persisted like he wanted to tell me something. If he really wanted to speak, he could spit the towel from his mouth. But he didn’t want that. He wantedmeto do it. He wanted me to ungag him—me tochooseto listen to him.

“Whatever you have to say is going to wait until I know you’re telling the truth,” I said, my voice cold.

Hitting my blinker, I gripped the wheel harder and picked up speed, weaving through traffic on the highway to get to San Francisco faster and to my apartment, where I had a polygraph. There wasn’t a chance in hell I was going to trust a single thing out of this man’s sinfully shaped mouth. Fifteen years meant I was prepared for this. Any conversation we had now would be on my terms.

His grunts grew louder. Changed pitch.Changed notes.The moment I realized it was a melody was a moment too late. He was humming Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up.”

My teeth bit down on my curse. I was being Rickrolled by my criminal mastermind husband. And the idea he would pick that song—that message—was too inflammatory for me to keep my calm.

I lashed my arm out and snatched the cloth, snapping, “What is it?”

His perfect lips tipped up on one side, like his smile was bending the rules just for me. “All this time, and you don’t want to take the chance to talk to me?”

“The risk,” I corrected. “And no. I don’t want to talk to you until I have proof you’re telling the truth.”

All he’d ever done—all he’d ever been—was a lie.

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