Page 59 of Savage Knights (Princes of Devil's Creek 3)

As they climbed the staircase to the second floor, Luca muttered, “That explains a lot.” He moved forward, as if he were about to go after them.

I clamped my fingers around his wrist. “Let them go. Give them the night to deal with this on their own.”

“But we need to know what Fitzy said to them,” he pointed out. “Our lives could be in danger.”

I shook my head. “Did you see them? They’re not okay. And if they thought our lives were in danger, they would have warned us. Let them have some time to process.”

My heart ached for both of them. I wanted to run upstairs and throw myself into their arms. Tell them everything would be okay. But it was clear they needed to be together, with none of us getting in the way.

Not even me.

We sat on my bed and didn’t speak. Damian was a man of few words, anyway, so it suited us just fine. But I couldn’t sit still, needed to vent my frustrations.

Damian moved his hand to my knee to stop me from shaking. I turned my head to look into his green eyes, which were a little glassy.

“It’s over, D,” I said to break the silence. “We waited years to get revenge. So why doesn’t it feel the way I thought it would?”

His lips thinned into a straight line. He hadn’t spoken more than a few sentences since we got into my car and drove to The Hamptons. Even after Fitzy’s heart stopped beating, he just stood there, staring at the old man.

I called a guard into the room. He didn’t suspect us of any wrongdoing and handled everything according to my grandfather’s request. He had a death plan, which we carried out perfectly.

“He led us to believe The Lucaya Group killed our parents,” I muttered. “Why? I still don’t get it.”

“Because it was easier to blame a known terrorist organization than admit what he’d done.”

“He killed his daughter.” A single tear slid down my cheek. “He fucking killed our parents just so he could drive down the price of the stock.”

It was always about the money with my grandfather. He was the richest man in the world, and now I understood how he had amassed so much wealth.

“He hated my dad.” Damian squeezed my knee for support. “Yours too. Maybe he didn’t know our moms would be on the flight.”

“They were supposed to be at my recital,” I whispered.

Like a dam breaking, the tears flowed out of me, my entire body shaking. I rested my head on Damian’s shoulder and fucking cried like a baby, letting out everything I’d held in for the past fifteen years. Fitzy punished us when we cried about our parents. Locked us in his basement and turned out the lights.

We learned quickly that feelings got us in trouble. So we shut them out, pretended we didn’t feel anymore. After a while, we stopped feeling anything, not even our pain.

“He wouldn’t kill his daughter, right?” I lifted my head from his shoulder, tears streaming down my cheeks. “I just can’t… I don’t understand.”

Damian swiped the pad of his thumb beneath my eyes. “She defied him. Spent two thirds of her trust fund to start Atlantic Airlines. He never supported her decision. And he also never accepted your parents’ marriage. I wouldn’t put anything past the old man.”

I threw my arms around him, needing a fucking hug. “You’re the only person who understands, D. I wouldn’t have made it through all this shit without you.”

He hugged me back. “You’ve always taken care of me.” Then he tilted my chin until our eyes met. “Let me take care of you, Bash.”

I loved Alex. But with Damian, nothing was black or white. We lived mostly in the gray area. So when he grabbed the side of my face and his tongue swept into my mouth, I didn’t push him away. Instead, I gripped his shirt and kissed him back.

Alex had unlocked something inside him. A soft, caring, loving part of Damian that was so different from the boy I grew up with. He was like that until we were eight years old.

After he saw his dad cheating on his mom with his babysitter, a girl closer to his age than his dad, he changed. Later that day, he went out back and snapped the neck of a bird. Said it was to end its suffering. But I never believed that story.

Didn’t matter, anyway.

Because I loved him unconditionally. Never judged him, not once in our lives. Even when I didn’t agree with his choices, I never made him feel bad for having dark desires.

So I let him push on my chest and climb on top of me. In the bedroom, I was always the aggressor. But with Damian, it was a bit of push-pull, the two of us fighting for control over the other. I didn’t give a fuck tonight, not after killing my grandfather. Not after he admitted to murdering our parents.

I just wanted to feel.

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