The Paper Swan(80)

“How’s your shoulder?” he asked.

“Fine.” It’s not my shoulder that hurts. It’s my heart. “How’s your leg?”

Damian didn’t give a damn about the old wound on his thigh, a reminder of their last day on the island when Victor’s men had cornered him in the shack. He leaned across the table, as close to her as he knew the guards would let him. “What’s wrong, Skye? Is there something you’re not telling me?”

She looked startled, although he couldn’t imagine why. They had always been able to read each other.

“Why did you do it?” she asked. “After everything we went through, you still had to go after my father’s company?”

Damian sighed. He didn’t want to talk about all the things that had torn them apart, not when he was seeing her after so long, but he told her what she wanted to know. “Because even after he put me away, he wasn’t done. Your father sent someone in here to rough me up, with a warning to stay away from you. He said that if I ever tried to contact you, I wouldn’t have to worry about serving out the rest of my sentence because he’d put me in a box long before then.”

“When? When did he do this?”

“A few months after I got here.” Damian could feel the pieces of the puzzle moving around in her head. He wished he could get inside her mind and rearrange every single piece so they weren’t wasting this time, this precious time discussing Warren Fucking Sedgewick.

“So you sold your Sedgewick Hotels stock short and sent his shares plummeting. You must have lost a lot of money. Why shoot yourself in the leg? Why not just take over?”

“I don’t react well to threats, Skye. And that company was built on dirty money. Cartel money. I would have given anything to see the look on Warren’s face when it all came tumbling down.”

“Well, that’s never going to happen now. He’s gone, Damian. My father died a few days ago. You got your revenge. It took a while for everything to crumble, for him to lose everything, piece by piece. The stress was too much for him. Foreclosures and debt collectors. Everywhere he turned. He had a stroke last year, and then another one a few months later. He didn’t survive the third one. So congratulations. You finally did it. You avenged MaMaLu.”

“Good.” Damian sat back and folded his arms. He should have felt a small measure of victory, of justice, but it did nothing to fill the Skye-less hole that was gnawing away pieces of his soul. “I can’t say he didn’t deserve it.”

“Don’t, Damian. It’s time to let it go. My father meant to get you and MaMaLu out of there. He was going to get you new lives, new identities. He came looking for you after MaMaLu died, but you were nowhere to be found. He couldn’t undo what he did, but he never meant you or MaMaLu any harm.”

A sick, slow heaviness curdled in Damian’s veins, the initial burst of happiness at seeing Skye dissipating like cool ether. She wasn’t here for him. She was here for her father.

“So that’s it?” he asked. “That’s why you showed up? A year later? To berate me for something he started? I walked away, Skye. For you. But he couldn’t leave it alone, could he? He just had to try to strong-arm me into keeping my distance. As if I could ever bring myself to contact you. You deserve better. I knew that. He knew that, but he had to prove that he still held the cards.”

“That’s not why he did it!”

“Then why, Skye? Why? I lost MaMaLu. I lost you. I lost eight years of my life. Why the f*ck couldn’t he just leave me alone?”

“Because!”

“Because what?” Damian slammed his palms down on the table. “I hated that f*cking bastard and I’m glad he’s gone. What did you expect, Skye? Did you expect an apology? You want me to say I’m sorry?”

“Stop it, Damian.” Skye could see the guard making his way towards them. “I thought it would be different. I thought you would be different. But you’re still filled with so much rage.”

“And you’re still defending him.” Damian got up and let the guard cuff him. His outburst was going to cost him. He wished Skye had never come. He wished he’d never known her or Warren Sedgewick. He wished he could stop the pain that was shooting through him. “I guess blood will always be thicker than water.”

Skye’s face changed at his parting remark. She looked both heart-broken and enraged. The last thing Damian saw as they led him away was her back, shoulders hunched over the table.