Page 97 of Damaged

Look what this has taken from me. This was a mistake. I can’t hold on to an empire and care for this woman so deeply at the same time.

It was always one over the other. I wasn’t a fool before. I knew feelings were nothing but a liability in this world. And like a cruel joke, this was proved to me the second I let my heart latch on to her.

My business here is mostly concluded. The NYPD want me to stop by the precinct for another in-person interview, but my lawyer could easily stall them. The footage is obvious. A hog-tied girl. A knife-wielding robber. Still, there’s a litany of bureaucracy that comes with killing someone, no matter how justified it is.

But I could go back to Lake George already. I could forget New York and walk through the front door and strip Sophia naked. I could carry her up to bed.

Forget the company. Forget The Society.

But that’s exactly my problem, isn’t it? I grimace as I get into the back of the Mercedes.

“Back to my apartment, Lucas,” I say, sighing, and lean my head against the seat.

“Very good, sir.”

I bite my thumbnail while we drive. I’m behaving like an animal. There’s no collected, computer-like control of my faculties. Or my decisions. I’m not in control anymore. My rational brain reaches one conclusion. One that my heart has been attempting to suffocate.

It’s Sophia that I have to forget.

Sophia

It doesn’t take me long to start enjoying myself at James’s lake cabin. Or should I call it a mansion? I’ll go with lake cabin mansion.

The aesthetic isn’t exactly rustic enough to call it a lake cabin, even if there is a pair of moose antlers in the living room.

The place has a speaker system in every room, and it only took me ninety minutes to find the fancy stereo and connect it to my phone’s Bluetooth. I’ve been blasting music, drinking wine, and looking at life with glass-half-full eyes.

James will be back, I tell myself. Soon enough.

I’m distracted anyway. Something strange started happening this morning. My Instagram has gotten hundreds of DMs, but the bizarre part is that some of them have beenjoboffers. A few art galleries want me to be theirbrand ambassador. All with no requests for a resume. In this new social media world, the fact that I already worked in the art world and an action shot of me in a heist went viral were credentials enough.

Most of the job offers are crap that I wouldn’t be much interested in. Some seem like scams. But one catches my attention.

A woman named Melissa, who works for Claude Bernard, a seventy-something-year-old eccentric billionaire, messaged me asking if I’d like to run the social media during his next treasure hunt.

Claude Bernard is famous in artifact circles. After he got his family inheritance, he bought a research vessel and an island in the Bahamas.

For thirty years, he’s been searching for sunken Spanish galleons in the Caribbean that are loaded with jewels and silver.I don’t think he’s turned a profit, but that job, literal treasure hunting, is a dream come true.

It would involve going to sea with his crew of twenty and posting social media content about the daily operations. So it’s a no go. Because I don’t want to be away from James.

I still start doing my due diligence. I look at their current Instagram to see that Bernard does have some serious people onboard. PhDs who can make a whole lot more money working for an eccentric billionaire than a university.

His crew is mostly young. It does look like fun, but of course this is the curated online images. Two dozen people at sea probably makes for a lot of petty squabbles.

Treasure hunting on the high seas, but I only play with the idea for a moment. What if James and I start to date?

It seems… likely. Maybe not a sure thing with how hot and cold he can be, but still. After our sex this morning… After how he saved me last night… I can’t picture being without him.

He left his dress shirt here, and I, like a psychopath, have been stopping by his hamper to smell it every so often.

Yes, it’s a little shameful.

But the shirt doesn’t smell like armpits. I don’t have a dirty laundry fetish. If that’s a thing.

It still smells of his cologne. A refined scent of fresh lumber and black pepper. It reminds me of him. It reminds me of safety, and when I take a long-enough whiff, my heart drums and my vision blurs. But that might also be from the lack of oxygen because I’m inhaling an alcohol-based cologne for so long.

Worth it.

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