Page 47 of Call You Mine

My face pales, my lip quivers, and my insides burn in anger. Kara and Liza stare at me with wide eyes and mouths gaping open.

How? Why? So many questions run through my mind. How does he know where I am? Better yet, how the hell did he get Kara’s phone number?

“Holy fuck, I’d say that worked.” Kara drops onto one chaise, her face pale except for a hint of pink tinting her cheeks.Is that a blush on my lesbian friend incited by Damon? The power of that man's voice needs to be studied, bottled up, and sold for the highest price.

“That was hot, even if it’s also a little terrifying he somehow figured out where you were, let alone found Kara’s phone number. Who is this guy again?” Liza asks, coming over to join us on the couches beside the window looking out onto the street below.

She stares at me awaiting my response, with an equally worried expression on her face.

“Is he a cop or something? Or is he in the CIA? Mafia maybe?” Kara asks.

My stomach drops at the mention of organized crime. She doesn’t know how close to home that hits. Damon may not bepart of that world, but I am, and it’s true what they say. Once you’re in, there’s only one way out.Death.

Enzo’s taunting text messages come back to the front of my mind. This is not good. If Damon could track my whereabouts so easily, then it’s obvious Enzo probably already knows where I am, and worse, who I’m with.

“You were right about Damon,” I tell them, walking over to the window, looking down at the streets like I did that night. Only this time I’m behind glass and hundreds of feet closer to the ground yet the same panic and worry laces my thoughts. “He definitely is the possessive, “Touch what’s mine and you’ll die”, type.But he’s also a stubborn bastard. The,“You may not be mine, but you won’t be anyone else’s”,kind.”

“I don’t know, Princess,” Kara says, mocking the nickname Damon called me by. The one I equally despise because of his intended meaning, but love because deep down I know it means so much more. “This seemed different. He seemed genuinely ready to lay his claim.”

“On a possession he thinks someone else is about to take. That isn’t romantic, it’s insanity.” Insanity I’m all too familiar with.How had I not seen it before?

Damon may not be a psychotic serial murderer like Enzo, but with me, he wants the same thing. To own me, control me. He may not have outright said it, might even claim he doesn’t want that from me, but that’s what he needs in a relationship.

It’s how they raised him. The way the demons inside him changed him.

I open the thread of unread texts he sent before his phone call.

Damon: Don’t play games with me, Princess.

Damon: I swear to God Wyn, if that fucker is there with you, I don’t care who he is to you. I will fucking murder him for touching what belongs to me.

Damon: And don’t you fucking doubt it. You, Wynter Servite, belong to me.

Chapter Thirteen

DAMON

I’ve spent most of my life angry—at the world, my absent father, my mother for ruining herself and leaving us to fend for ourselves. Angry at everyone who was better off than I was. The way I they raised me twisted my perception of the world at an early age and I’m fucked because of it.

How could a kid, broken so early in life, ever heal when there was never anyone around to be an example of what I should have been?

I felt contentment throughout the madness. The last few years at the Grayson’s were tolerable. After Scarlett and Jade joined the rest of us at the house, I had someone to rely on when things got so bad I needed to be pulled out of the darkness. That was Scarlett for me. The one person who tethered me to the real world. Not the place my demons would drag me to at night when the world was silent yet my mind was raging with noise. Noise that I once used to drown out everything around me yet it became so unbearable I craved silence.

That’s when I made it my mission to create my silence, separating myself from the world around me.

I stayed clean, hating it was drugs that stole my mother away from us. Other than alcohol and weed, I stayed away from all the other bullshit. Fighting was my outlet of choice. It wasn’t the idea of beating someone black and blue, to the point they were near death, it was that I’d end up just as bad. The pain felt real. And for a guy who couldn’t feel anything but darkness consuming him daily, it was what I needed to feel alive.

Not to mention I was good as shit, so yeah, the money came in handy to a punk ass who had none. I’d realized early in life I sought control. Needing to control every aspect of my life was exhausting, but it was necessary in order for me to function properly. The moment something spun out of my control, was the moment I lost my shit. Hate to say it happened often.

When I started working at Kingsman, I found a new way to numb the pain and stay in control—one which didn’t require me to continue slamming my fist into anyone. Exercising both pain and dominance over others became my coping mechanism—my newest obsession.

But it fucked me up more than I was.

It fed a different beast inside me—one I didn’t even know existed. A savage who only came up to the surface when she was concerned. He ached for her, craved her, and when she wasn’t his to take, the only thing he could do was try to replace her. Though there was no replacing her. She was one of a kind—a true rare gem who shined so bright he could see her through all the darkness. Yet she wasn’t his, she never would be.

At that moment I believed I was satisfied with that idea, but turns out I wasn’t. Wynter was mine, and in order to claim her, I needed to listen to the beast within.

Which is why I’m sitting here, parked in front of some girly boutique that houses a photography studio on the second floor. I can’t help but think of how bad things have gotten.

---