Page 92 of The Vow

“I didn’t tell you because it was the only way to keep you safe,” I breathed out, my eyes drinking in every shade and slope of her face. Even when covered in fury, it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. “I couldn’t bring you with me; it would jeopardize Sandrine’s cover story if you did. And I knew if I told you, you’d never let me leave you behind.”

“So, you were just going to hope he left me alone?” A scorned laugh tumbled from her chest. “I hate to break it to you, but the only thing Sinclair wanted to do with me was kill me. To take your wife like you took his.”

My jaw fired off another pulse. “No, I wasn’t going to hope.I was going to get you out—protect you like I promised you I would. Like I told you from the very fucking start that if things went south, I was going to have the FBI pull you out.”

That put a chink in her rage, and I wedged all my weight, all my guilt, all my grief into that tiny weak spot.

“I honored my word to Sandrine, but I called my handler as soon as we left Sinclair’s house. I told him there was an asset in imminent danger and he needed to get to the apartment and get you out.” My throat seemed to close even tighter. “You want to know what I hoped for, Robber?” I demanded and pulled her closer. “I hoped I’d get Sandrine and Daria out of the country. Settled. Safe. I hoped that while I did that, my superiors would come for you. Pull you from the apartment and hide you in a safe house, far away and protected from Sinclair until I got back. I hoped that while I didn’t tell you what was happening before I made the decision, you’d only be in the dark for a few days until I could contact my handler again and explain everything.”

At every pause for breath, I saw how her eyes kept going wider. How the deep green started to shimmer like grass after a hard rain. And how the color slowly began to fall from her cheeks.

“But I wasn’t there,” she said softly, her weight starting to slowly seep against me.

“No. You weren’t,” I growled, excavating deeper into the memory until it felt like nothing short of an autopsy on my shattered heart. “Do you want to know what happened to me that night, Robber?”

I didn’t wait for her to answer. The dam was broken.

“I backchanneled Sandrine, Daria, and me to France, the whole time believing you were safe. Believing they’d gotten you out and I’d be heading back to you within hours—a day at most. The whole time, I made no contact. I couldn’t risk Sinclairrealizing where we were or the FBI swooping in and taking Sandrine regardless of what she wanted or I promised. And as soon as I installed them in a safe house in the French countryside, I turned on the news to learn I was a traitor.”

Her breath caught.

“I learned my handler had been shot—killed in the apartment, and they were blaming it on me. They burned me, Robber. They thought I went too deep into my cover, fell for Sandrine, and decided to usurp Sinclair’s empire,” I said, picking out the facts like they were shrapnel buried under my skin. “But the worst part wasn’t the accusation that I’d killed my handler or betrayed my country, it was that there was no mention of you. Anywhere.”

“Damon…”

Pain tore like talons through my gut. “What do you think I believed after that night? After seeing that the man I’d sent to protect you was dead, and you were nowhere to be found?” I ground out, my hands clenching harder around her arms. “What I believed was Sinclair had gotten to you first. That he’d taken you and then killed my handler.”

“But if he did, then he knew?—”

“That I was a fed—or was working with them? Of course, he did,” I scoffed. “But you think he was going to take that blow to his ego, too? That he’d been duped—not just duped but bested by an undercover agent who’d then absconded with his wife? No. Sinclair wanted to make me out to be a criminal just as much as the government needed a scapegoat for the disaster of one of their top agents turning up dead while another one had disappeared into the wind.”

She shivered, her bottom lip quivering defiantly against my reality. “You could’ve come back—told them the truth. They would’ve believed you—I would’ve vouched for you.”

My face gravitated toward hers just as surely as the pain inmy chest needed her warmth to make it whole. I cupped her cheek, a deep exhale cracking from my broken chest as my head lowered to hers, the last of my confession threatening to tear me in two.

“I thought he had you, Robber. There was no trace of you that I could find, no trace of him, and I no longer had any friends or contacts to look…” I stilled, the beat of my heart sobering like the calm before the storm.

“I heard Sinclair order his men to find and kill me, so I disappeared. Went off the grid,” she confessed, her tongue dragging across her lips. “I was waiting for you to come back…and then I saw the news, too. I saw them say you’d turned traitor.”

“I thought he had you. Thought you’d waited at the apartment for me like I told you, and Sinclair got there before my handler. That he killed him, took you, and went deep into hiding, realizing the feds had been on to him this entire time.” I shuddered, able to relive those darkest moments of my life like they were yesterday. “It was easy to believe the worst when all of the pieces pointed in that direction.”

“Damon…”

“I wasn’t afraid to come back and fight for my innocence, Robber. I knew if I did, I’d never be able to get to you in time…”

A tremor went through her, the warmth of her breath a litmus test for her understanding.

“And if anything happened to you, all the freedom in the world would mean nothing to me.”

Clearing my reputation and damning Sinclair’s were two sides of the same sword. The moment I returned and explained what happened, I would be saving myself as surely as I’d be signing my wife’s death warrant.

Sinclair’s ego would never allow him to keep alive the wife of the fed who’d fooled him. But by staying away, he got amodicum of satisfaction and revenge because he’d forced me into my own personal purgatory, one where no side wanted me. Not the lawful world I’d served nor the criminal underworld I’d never truly been a part of.

“My only choice was to embrace the lie. I became a monster because it was the only way to save you.” I breathed out slowly and rasped, “And let’s face it, Robber, even if I had come back, the things I would do to find you, the rules I would break…I would’ve become a criminal one way or another.”

Robyn drew back, the glitter of her eyes intensified, though no tears dared escape. My wife didn’t cry. She held herself—her pain and anger and vulnerability—behind her armor, and all I wanted was the honor of stripping that from her once more.

Her throat worked over the thick words. “When did you realize he never had me?”

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