CHAP 3 — What Belongs to Me
Vanessa released my jaw as if my skin had burned her.
She stumbled backward, one heel sinking into the wet grass.
“Damon,” she whispered.
He did not look at her first.
He looked at me.
At the blood on my lip.
At the mud on my knees.
At the broken silver bracelet lying beside the crushed daisies.
His face changed so slightly most people would have missed it.
I didn’t.
The man from the Black Lantern disappeared.
Damon Cross stood in his place.
“Who did this?” he asked.
I tried to speak, but my throat closed.
Vanessa recovered enough to lift her chin.
“This is a private family matter.”
Damon turned slowly.
“You are not her family.”
“She is carrying my husband’s child.”
“No,” I whispered.
Damon’s eyes returned to me.
Something passed across his face.
Not shock exactly.
Understanding.
Vanessa saw it too.
Her mouth parted.
“You,” she said.
The cemetery seemed to grow colder.
Damon stepped closer, his coat moving in the fog.
“Vanessa Caldwell, listen very carefully. You will take one more step away from Nora. You will instruct your father’s men to stay where they are. Then you will call your attorney.”
She scoffed, but her voice shook.
“My father is Senator Caldwell.”
Damon’s smile was almost invisible.
“Yes. That is why I chose my words carefully.”
One of the men by Vanessa’s car shifted.
Damon did not turn his head.
A man near the SUV lifted his phone and said, “Body cameras are recording.”
Vanessa’s face drained further.
Recording.
That word changed powerful people faster than morality ever did.
Damon crouched beside me, but did not touch me without asking.
“Nora,” he said quietly, “may I help you stand?”
I nodded.
His hand was warm around mine. Gentle. Infuriatingly gentle for a man the whole city feared.
When I winced, his jaw tightened.
“Hospital,” he said to one of his men.
“No,” I said quickly. “The baby—”
“That’s why we go now.”
Vanessa laughed once, too high and sharp.
“This is absurd. She’s manipulating you.”
Damon picked up my mother’s bracelet from the mud.
The thin silver band had snapped at the clasp.
He placed it carefully in my palm.
Then he looked at Vanessa.
“You attacked a pregnant woman in a cemetery, destroyed her property, and accused her of adultery without evidence.”
“She’s a maid.”
The silence after those words was deadly.
Damon’s voice dropped.
“Say that again.”
Vanessa didn’t.
Good.
At the SUV, he helped me into the back seat. I was shaking so badly he took off his coat and wrapped it around my shoulders.
Only then did I find my voice.
“I don’t belong to you.”
He went still.
Then he looked at me, and for one second he was only Damon again.
“You’re right,” he said. “You belong to yourself. I said it because she understands possession better than protection.”
My eyes burned.
“And the baby?”
His hand tightened once around the door frame.
“If the child is mine, I protect both of you. If the child is not mine, I protect both of you.”
That was the first promise anyone had made me without asking what I could give back.
Behind us, Vanessa stood in the fog, phone pressed to her ear, diamonds trembling on her hand.
May you like
She had come to bury me in shame.
Instead, she had awakened the one man her family had spent years avoiding.
