Page 59 of Dragonfly

About me.

“Is that so? Okay. I didn’t expect to have this conversation right after I finally got the chance to fuck my beautiful wife, but if you want to do this now? I can’t think of a better time.”

I can. Never. “Stop this.”

“You started this, my dear. Remember that. Your name is Georgia Ann Gayle. Adorable, by the way, and I finally understand the inspiration behind Savannah. I’ll call you Savannah if that’s what you want, but if you decide to go back to Georgia?—”

I’m already shaking my head.

“Very well. You’re twenty-nine. Your birthday is next month, and if you want to forgo a dinner like this because… well… obviously… I understand. It can just be you and me?—”

Is he fucking serious? “Damien.”

He continues as if I hadn’t said his name. “You were born in Springfield, just like I expected. Your accent was cute, Savannah, but it slipped far too frequently.”

I open my mouth.

“You were in prison,” he says next, and my teeth click shut. “A four-year stint at Madison, and suddenly your comment about someone slipping into your bed at night is crystal clear. It wasn’t an ex-boyfriend you were talking about, was it?”

Somehow Damien has all the fucking receipts about my life, spouting them off as if there’s a book on Georgia Gayle and he read it cover to cover. He’s looking at me like he expects me to provide him some footnotes, but he might regret that one.

I shrug. “I had a store once. Healthy Habits by Georgia. Your gang got me mixed up with their counterfeiting, and I got hit with a four-year sentence. My first cellie wasn’t bad, but then they stuck me with Portia. She’s kinda like you, Damien. She was in prison for white collar crime… embezzlement which was so fucking funny because she had all the money in the world before she fleeced her employer… and she thought her name and her money and her power meant she could rule the prison.”

And she did, too, which makes it so much worse.

He swallows a little, losing some of his cockiness. “And she was the one who…”

From the man who had me sucking his cock the same night we officially met, it’s almost funny that he can’t say the words. “Put it this way, if you don’t like pussy when you go in, you learn to deal. You learn to look out for yourself.”

Damien kicks aside the stiletto, moving toward me before I can even think to get out of his path. His hands land on my upper arms, tugging me toward him. “That’s my job now. You hear me, Savannah? Lo faccio. I do that now.”

His fingers dig into my skin. Not because he wants to hurt me, but because he doesn’t want me to push back, to fight against him, to escape.

But I don’t. I can’t.

I collapse into him, letting him hold my weight at this moment as easily as he did when he had me hoisted and pinned against the wall.

His hands move, cradling my elbows. “Savannah? Are you alright?”

No.

Burying my face into his shoulder, unable to look at him as I make my confession, I murmur, “Fuck it. Alright? You know the truth now. You know everything. You win.”

Holding tightly to my elbows, he moves back, forcing me to look up at him. “What are you saying?”

“You’re right. Okay? I couldn’t… I couldn’t kill you. When you were just the head of the Libellula Family, it was all I wanted. I plotted, right? I planned. The whole time I was in prison, I wanted you dead. I got out? I followed you. I stalked you. I visualized what it would be like to take you out and know that the rest of your gang would be finished. You stole four years from me. I would steal you from them. But then?—

“Then I made you my wife,” he says.

Right. “And you weren’t just the head of the Libellula Family anymore. You’re Damien. You’re Gen’s older brother. You’re Vin’s big cousin. You let Orion shed on your expensive pants. You pay so Liz can run her free clinic.”

Damien scoffs. “You’re making me sound like a good guy.”

I snort. “Oh, no. You’re definitely a bad guy. I mean, you just killed a guy for grabbing me.”

His expression goes dark. “I killed him because you’re mine. And he scared you, my wife. I couldn’t let him do that.”

Because he still is the head of the Family, and betrayal means death. It doesn’t matter that only a few people in that room knew I was Damien’s wife. Technically, he wasn’t doing anything that countless other Dragonflies haven’t done. I was a woman at a mafia function without the mark that said I belonged to one of them. Fair game, right?

---