Page 15 of The Vow

“Well, the alternative was unnecessarily painful to be far away from you, Robber. In case you needed me.”

I was strong. Determined. Angry. But I wasn’t bulletproof. And there were only so many hits of his feigned chivalry I could take before survival became more important than stoicism.

I didn’t know if I gasped or laughed or choked or all three,but I stepped away from him then, shoving distance between us with a shake of my head and denial on my tongue.

“Bullshit.”

“You said it yourself,” he drawled casually, flicking open the buttons of his jacket and shrugging it off his shoulders. “It would be foolish for a traitor to live in the backyard of the country he’d betrayed.”

“I meant the part where you thought I would ever need you,” I said, gripping the back of a chair and digging my fingers into the fabric even as I smiled. “That, you’d have to be certifiably insane to believe.”

Damon stilled. I knew better than to think my words affected him; he was simply preparing for the next best way to strike.

Lowering the fine silk jacket, he ran his hand across it like he could rub out the wrinkles of being beat up in my brother’s garage. I noticed then that his hat was gone. My gaze flicked back to the front door, widening slightly at the sight of the massive hat rack built into the wall to resemble a piece of modern art. At least two dozen of Damon’s fedoras in various fabrics and colors dotted the functional masterpiece.

“You went after a lot of dangerous men, Robber. Men who wouldn’t hesitate to harm you and make you disappear.” Damon’s voice drew my attention back to him.

“How do you—” I snapped my jaw shut, earning me a sly grin from his perfect mouth. One that kindled heat between my thighs.

“You don’t think I kept an eye on you? Especially when I realized what you were doing? How risky it was.” His full mouth fell into a serious line, the tenor of his voice dropping even lower. “It was genius though, I have to admit. Rescuing abused women. Taking in those who wanted their own taste for revenge. Creating your little network of spies. Maids. Bellman.Cooks. Cleaners. Uber drivers. The homeless. You always said no one ever saw those people. That the access they had to information was unparalleled.”

Somehow, without me asking, he managed to fill in pieces of the giant pit of time that spanned between when I’d loved him and when I’d loathed him. First, revealing he’d had a home here for almost that entire time. And now, telling me he did it to be close to me because he knew about my vigilante crusade for justice.

While I would’ve loved nothing more than to spend the last decade and a half solely on my mission to destroy the half dozen men from Sinclair all the way up the chain to Belmont, it wasn’t feasible or possible. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was revenge. There were too many pieces—too many players and layers that had to be systematically dismantled. Men—criminals—that had gone into hiding. Changed their names. Surgically altered their appearances. Moved to foreign countries. It was a marathon to make them pay, not a sprint.

While pursuing them, I came across a lot of strong women who’d been abused or taken advantage of like I had. Women who wanted to be trained to help me—to ensnare other powerful, evil men so they couldn’t hurt anyone again. So, I trained them. My very own band of merry mercenaries. Between them and my brothers and the men from their unit, I had two sharpened sides of a secret sword of justice.

“Of course, I’ve kept an eye on you, Robyn. You’re my wife.”

Once more, I ignored the gravel that possessiveness brought to his voice. I wouldn’t let him see how it rattled me. How my chest tightened to know he’d been so close and my stomach fluttered to hear he’d been protecting me in his own twisted way.

That didn’t matter.

It couldn’t matter—wouldn’tmatter.

No one admired the hunter who protected the carcass of his kill. And that was what I was. A trophy wife. A bust to hang on his bedpost. One more woman who’d fallen for the greatest criminal of all time.

“That makes you a stalker, not a spouse,” I deadpanned, fixing him with a bored expression.

“We’ll see.” His confidence was one more crime to add to his list of transgressions, but I wouldn’t take the bait.

Damon could think whatever he wanted, but my need for him went only as far as getting to Belmont. Beyond that, I wanted nothing more than my dear husband arrested.For better, for worse, and forever.

“Why are we here?” I demanded, welcoming the change of topic like a shock to my system. “What’s your plan? What’s our next step to getting to Belmont?”

He folded his arms, his muscles stretching the fine fabric of his shirt. Muscle memory took on a different meaning around him; it wasn’t my muscles remembering a sequence of actions but my memory recalling the feel of his muscles around me. Holding me. Pining me. Urging me.

The pull of my body to his was like a magnet working in its own field, impervious to the reality of just how terribly Damon had betrayed me.

“I’ll tell you the next step when it’s time for you to know it, and that time isn’t today,” he said and then reminded me in a harder voice, “You agreed.”

My shoulders tensed.Rule number two.“Fine. Then when will this great reveal occur? Approximately?”

His jaw flexed. “A few days.”

A few—“There’s no reason for me to stay here for days doing…nothing.”

“I can think of a few things we can do to pass the time.”

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