Page 114 of The Vow

“Explain,” I demanded flatly, tired of his games.

Belmont tipped forward, his knuckles digging into his desk.

“He didn’t appreciate your…tone last night at dinner.”

I bared my teeth, and a snarl might’ve slipped out. “I didn’t appreciate him eyeing my property.”

“Yes, well, now he doesn’t trust you.”

Translation: He wanted something else from me.

I stuck my hand in my pocket, letting the fall of my jacket hide the way it curled into a fist.

Every nerve—every sense—was on high alert. If I were alone here, I’d tell him Shazad could go fuck himself and the deal was off. But I wasn’t alone, and I was pretty damn positivethat as soon as Belmont’s man closed me in his office, he’d returned to his post outside my and Robyn’s room.

“This is a very dangerous game Shazad is playing, Bernie,” I said low, but if I didn’t play along, Belmont wouldn’t hesitate to draw my wife into this game. Business arrangement or not, his line of questioning was now the unspoken knife he held to my throat.

Belmont huffed. “Well, I can’t say it was my idea. I’m just the messenger, Remington, and I want this finally done as much as you do.”

Belmont was the one with the most at risk. Shazad already had a billion-dollar heroin empire. Expanding into North America was an investment, but one that certainly wouldn’t hurt him if he didn’t make it. Belmont, on the other hand, had a legitimate corporation that was slowly crumbling under the weight of his criminal attachments as Robyn and her brothers and I brought them all to light.

“I’m not a circus monkey, Bernie. I don’t jump through hoops to make deals, and I’m certainly much less inclined to do so now,” I said, my tone clipped with annoyance. “But by all means, Bernie, please entertain me with what else Mr. Shazad would request of me.”

I feigned my blasé demeanor. The man I’d been—the monster I’d created—would’ve listened to the request, laughed, and then taken a body part from Belmont as the price for his insolence and delivered it to Shazad before walking away from this deal entirely.

No one pulled a bait and switch on Damon Remington.

But that wasn’t an option now.

Belmont dropped his gaze for a second, surprising me with the change in his demeanor; he genuinely didn’t want to make this ask, and it made me all the more intrigued.

Whatever it was, I could get it. Money. Drugs. Weapons.Contacts. I didn’t like to be taken advantage of like this, but at the end of the day, it didn’t matter because this was the end of the road for me.

As soon as I had the details on their ends of the deal—concrete information on where and how and when Shazad was bringing his drugs into the country and then which of GrowTech’s facilities would be distilling and refining the drugs into something more potent and toxic…as soon as I had that, I was walking away from this.

From everything except her.

“Spit it out, Bernie.”

When he looked at me again, there was hatred in his eyes. The smallest sliver of enjoyment coursed through his veins to present Shazad’s demand.

“Uzair wants one night,” he said, “with your wife.”

Chapter Thirty

Damon

Iwanted to kill them. Belmont. Amir.Uzair.I wanted to kill them all and mount their fucking heads to the walls of this house. A museum—mausoleum to those who dared to take my wife from me.

I wasn’t sure what was worse: Belmont daring to ask me to whore out my wife or that I’d had to pretend to consider it.

Fury burned holes in my veins, my body turning into a mesh of seeping madness.

For a white-hot second of rage, justice—the legal version—was overrated. My freedom was overrated. Everything short of killing them in the most painful of ways and then taking Robyn with me was overrated.

But the consequence of that choice extinguished my violent instinct in an instant.

To end them and flee with my wife would resign the rest of her life to the shadows.Hiding. Running.Everything she’d been doing up untilthis point.

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