Chapter 7 - THE MOTHER'S SECRET
The rain soaked the edges of the letter, but the ink held. Lena kept her gun leveled at Damian’s chest as she quickly scanned the words.
Damian,
If you are reading this, I am gone. I knew who you were the moment you walked into Sullivan's Grill. I paid the manager to ensure Lena waited your table. She is a Navarro. She is hunted. You are a monster, Damian, but you are the strongest monster in this city. If you love her, keep her in the dark. Let her hate you if she must. Just keep her safe from Vargas. Forgive an old, dying mother for using you as a shield.
— Margaret
Lena lowered the gun entirely. The world tilted on its axis.
Her mother. The gentle woman who knitted shawls and baked bread. Her mother had known who Damian was. Her mother had orchestrated the entire marriage to put Lena inside an impenetrable fortress.
Damian hadn't bought a helpless waitress. He had been manipulated by a desperate, dying mother to serve as a bodyguard for a cartel princess.
"You knew," Lena whispered, staring at him. "You knew who I was?"
Damian stood in the rain, the proud, arrogant boss stripped bare. "Not at first. I found out a week after the wedding. I intercepted a transmission from Vargas looking for you."
"And you didn't tell me?"
"If I told you, you would have run!" Damian shouted over the distant gunfire. "You would have taken off to protect me, and Vargas would have slaughtered you! So I let you think I was just a ruthless bastard who bought you. I let you hate my world so you would never try to leave the safety of the estate."
Lena staggered back, hitting the side of the car. Everything she believed for five years was a lie. He hadn't been keeping her as a pet. He had been standing between her and a firing squad every single day.
"Mama?"
A small, terrified voice broke the tension.
Damian froze.
From the backseat of the ruined sedan, Leo climbed out. He was clutching his red dinosaur blanket, his dark curls wet with rain. He looked at the tall man standing in front of his mother.
Damian dropped to his knees in the mud. He didn't care about his ruined suit. He didn't care about the empire he had lost tonight. He looked into eyes that mirrored his own.
"Hi," Damian choked out, reaching a trembling hand forward.
Leo hid behind Lena’s leg. "Mama, is that the bad man?"
The question was a knife to Damian’s chest. He looked up at Lena, his eyes pleading for mercy he knew he didn't deserve.
Before Lena could answer, a floodlight clicked on from the top of a rusted crane above them.
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"How touching," Hector Vargas’s voice boomed over a bullhorn. "A family reunion."
Suddenly, a dozen laser sights cut through the rain, all of them painting red dots on Damian, Lena, and the child. Vargas hadn't run away. He had just drawn them into the center of the kill zone.
