Page 26 of Damian
It wasn’t the first time. Morgan thought she was subtle, ducking her head, fumbling with that recorder of hers like it was suddenly fascinating. But she wasn’t subtle at all. Not to me.
I shifted in the chair by the window, gaze sliding over the room like I was only checking angles, but inside, every instinct locked onto her. Damn, I was hard.
She looked away too quickly, cheeks coloring, but the damage was already done.
Bloody hell. She’d been watching me.
And worse — I liked it.
I told myself it was harmless. Natural. She’d been through hell, she was clinging to the one constant in the room. But deep down, I knew it wasn’t just that. The way her gaze lingered wasn’t just fear looking for reassurance. It was curiosity. Awareness.
My chest tightened, heat crawling low as I tried to shove the thought back where it belonged. I was a soldier. A protector. She was a civilian, fragile and stubborn andbloody reckless. She was also the sister of a girl we still hadn’t brought home.
But none of that stopped my pulse from quickening when her eyes found mine again.
I leaned forward, bracing my arms on my knees, breaking the stare before I did something stupid. River was humming under his breath, Cyclone typing quietly — neither of them paying attention, but they didn’t need to. They’d already noticed enough.
I clenched my fists, forcing myself to focus on the mission. Hemsley. Caldwell. Holloway Trust. Luthor. That was the battlefield.
And yet, even as I recited the names like a litany, the image of Morgan curled on that couch slipped through the cracks. Her hair falling loose around her face. Her eyes steady despite the fear. The way she whispered Ruby’s name like a vow.
She was dangerous in ways I’d never planned for.
And the more I tried to ignore it, the deeper she rooted under my skin.
31
Damian
The farmhouse clock coughed out the hour—late, but not late enough for sleep. Outside, the sky was a bruised smear, the kind that promised rain or trouble (sometimes both). Inside, the team sorted through paper and chatter like a band of men trying to sew together a map from torn edges. My eyes kept returning to the couch. To the way Morgan folded her knees under the blanket, voice low and steady into that recorder, like she was stitching herself back together, phrase by fragile phrase.
I told myself to be tactical. That was what I did. Tactical thinking had kept me alive, kept a dozen others breathing. But there’s a part of you that’s not wired for checklists—some borrowed thing left behind in childhood, or maybe found on a mission when a kid looked up at you and expected a hero. That part of me tightened every time Morgan breathed.
River pushed a chair back with a scrape and rattled through a list of surveillance hits. Cyclone flicked links across his screen like a conjurer throwing cards. They were good at this—too good. I watched the way River’s mouthworked when he tried to hide a grin at a useless lead; Cyclone’s fingers never stopped.
“Dam?” River asked, jerking his chin toward my rifle. “You done staring into the fireplace or you planning to light it yourself?”
“Not funny,” I said, but the edge of sarcasm softened. “We have a location cluster in Caldwell County. Hemsley’s signature traffic up north like he’s moving runners. Holloway Trust still shows transfers to shell accounts—two weeks old, but active. Luthor—” I stopped. Saying names felt like blessing them with life. “Luthor’s name’s clean for now. But Hemsley’s been sloppy. Sloppy leads to mistakes.”
River folded his arms. “Sloppiness is the gift that keeps on giving. You want to go look?”
My jaw loosened. The answer lived in my fists and in the unspent heat behind my ribs. “We go tonight,” I said. “Small team. Quiet. Cyclone stays on comms. River you shadow me. I’ll take—” I hesitated, because we weren’t just a team of soldiers; we were a fractured family. There were rules and loyalties. “Take Raven’s feed. Grab the van.”
Cyclone nodded, already toggling channels. River rubbed his jaw and then, unexpectedly, slid a glance toward the couch. “You want me to bring her?”
Every muscle in my body clenched like a spring. It was the practical question—Morgan’s knowledge, her recorder, the contacts she’d scraped together. But it was also the stupid, dangerous part: the part that wanted her close so I could feel less like I might break.
“No,” I said before I was ready. The word tasted wrong. Protective instinct and command protocol braided together and told me to put her somewhere safe, and the right thing, the professional thing, felt like barring the door. “She stays. If she comes, she gets in the way. If she stays, we get her back. Same result either way.”
Morgan’s throat made a small sound—half laugh, half exhale. She’d been listening. Of course she’d been listening. She always was. She folded up the recorder like a talisman and slid it into her jacket pocket.
Her fingers trembled when she gripped the fabric. “I’ll stay put. Promise. Don’t worry about me.”
Her promise felt like a confession. I wanted to tell her that would not be enough. I wanted to tell her that my head would be somewhere else the whole time—even with my rifle, even with the operation—but the real answer was borne on something quieter. “Good,” I said, because my voice is trained to be short. “Lock the doors. Battery on the phone. If we need you, we call.”
She nodded. Her eyes met mine again, gray and raw.
Before I stood, my hand brushed the wooden arm of the chair—an anchor. River watched. Cyclone watched. I shouldered my kit, checked the mag as if that would steady me. It didn’t. What steadied me, strangely, was the sight of Morgan folding the blanket tighter around her knees, like she was wrapping herself in a flag.
