I shrugged. “When you first told me, that was the hardest part. That was the most painful part. But once that passed, everything died inside me. I didn’t see him the same anymore, and when I confronted him, that was exactly how I felt. It’s like…I stopped feeling everything.”
He stared at his glass of wine as he listened.
“He said being with me wasn’t a ploy to stick it to you. He just didn’t tell me because he knew I would leave him once I knew.”
He took a drink, his eyes still down.
“So, that was it.”
He raised his head to look at me. “I’m sorry I was so harsh with you. I know that you didn’t do any of this on purpose, that he misled you, and that it doesn’t mean you’re stupid.” My protective brother was back, looking at me like his little sister again. “Don’t beat yourself up over it.”
I inhaled a deep breath. “It’s hard not to…”
“Don’t.”
“I feel so stupid for calling him. If I hadn’t, you would have killed him…and he should be dead right now.” Losing my mother when she was so young was already difficult enough. The idea of losing my father in an even more brutal way…disturbed me. Heath almost took away the first man I’d ever loved…and I let him touch me.
“He’ll be dead soon enough.” He watched my reaction to his words.
But I had no reaction. “Did he hurt Dad?”
“No. When I got there, Dad didn’t understand the severity of the situation. You know how he is, thinks everything’s a joke. So, I doubt they did anything more than grab him by the arm.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t know you were sleeping with him.”
“I mean, why didn’t you tell me what happened to Dad?”
He looked down into his glass. “Didn’t want to scare you.”
“Is that the real reason you had him move in with you?”
He nodded.
I closed my eyes as the anger washed over me. Heath had terrorized my family for a long time. “How did this all start?”
“Hades and I were running the business like usual when a psychopath made our lives difficult. His name was Maddox. Balto was the Skull King at the time, but he was at war with someone else that required all his attention, so he didn’t defuse the problem with Maddox when he normally would have. Then he stepped down, Heath stepped in, and things were pandemonium for a while. But once the dust settled, Heath expected me to start paying him a cut of my business. I refused because they didn’t supply the services they promised when I needed them. It escalated from there…” He grabbed the bottle and refilled his glass. “He continued to threaten me, and I refused to pay. After the third time, he ambushed me at a bar. One of his men had taken Dad to a different location. Heath said he would execute Dad because of my crimes. When I gave in and offered to pay whatever he wanted, he didn’t care. He said he was going to kill him anyway…”
I closed my eyes in pain, imagining my father tied up. “How did you get out of that?”
“I’d called Balto right before and asked for help.”
“But why would he help you?” Why would he betray his own twin?
“I saved his life once, so I asked him to return the favor.” He took a deep drink and licked his lips. “If Balto hadn’t honored the request, Dad would be gone. Since Balto was the previous Skull King, he had the right contacts to track Dad’s location, but he was too far away, so he called Hades. And Hades took care of it. Balto came to the bar and made Heath stand down.”
I couldn’t believe the story, couldn’t believe the history that Damien had with the man I’d been sleeping with. “I don’t know what to say…”
“If I had told you the truth, none of this would have happened. I should have told you…”
“There was no way for you to anticipate any of this.”
He continued to drink his wine, his hands resting on the surface of the counter. He was in a long-sleeved shirt with jeans, like he’d gotten off work and went home before he came here. “A part of me doesn’t want the answer, but…how did this happen with Heath?”
I’d never told Damien what Heath did to protect him, but now I didn’t feel any obligation toward him. “When Anna was gone, Heath kidnapped me. He waited until I left the theater before he grabbed me by my car.”
Damien stilled, as if he hadn’t expected me to say anything like that.
“He put me in a cage in his basement, we argued a lot, but then he let me go…”
Damien was still speechless.
“His plan was to have you choose between me and Anna. You could surrender, and he would release me…or he’d kill me. Or you could let me die and keep trying to save Anna.”
He bowed his head and sighed, anger moving into his eyes.
“But he listened to me pray for your safety and decided to go ahead and release me. He told Liam to fight you in the ring instead. That was how that happened.”
Damien stepped back and paced a few steps in front of my kitchen, his hand dragging down his face to his lips.
“We ran into each other weeks later, started talking. He asked me out, and I said no. That kept happening over and over. Then I changed my mind…” I omitted the truth about my captivity by the traffickers because that would be too much for Damien to handle. “It was supposed to be a fling and nothing more, something that was supposed to burn out after a couple of weeks, but it didn’t.”
Damien came back to me, sighing deeply. “Jesus Christ…”
“I saw a different side to Heath. I saw that
