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“Let me say it another way,” Damian said. “If you stay here another minute, you’re going to get hurt.”
Damian knew the man was reaching inside his jacket before he’d fully lifted his arm. He’d seen it in the twitch of the man’s fingers, the angle of his elbow. He didn’t have time to raise it all the way before Damian kicked it out of his hand. Then he was hauling the man into the alley next to the shelter, propping him up against the brick to stabilize him while he threw punch after punch into the man’s face.
He didn’t see the man he was hitting. Not really. It was never his intended victim he saw when he fought. It was always another man, hard and cold, wielding power against Damian and his mother behind the opulent doors of their seemingly charmed life.
Damian didn’t hear the man’s protests. He was in another place now. In a big house with hand-painted murals and antique furniture. A house so far from anyone that the police never came.
By the time he looked down at the man’s face, he could barely make out his features behind the blood and the bruises already forming there. Damian shoved him to the ground and knelt over his body.
“Come back here and I’ll kill you. They don’t belong to you. They never did. Understand?”
The man nodded, then turned his head and spit out a tooth.
Damian straightened, reached into his pocket for a handkerchief to wipe his hands. Then he headed back to his car and out of the city, the man already gone from his mind. It was always like that after he fought: the adrenaline high, the feeling that he was righting an old wrong followed by complete and utter release.
It was one of the only ways he could forget.
Traffic thinned as he traveled north, the trees growing thicker along the highway as he left the city behind. It was mid-October and the leaves were a riot of color as they dropped to the pavement, fluttering around the car in the rearview mirror. He couldn’t conduct business without being in the city most days of the week, but it never felt entirely comfortable to him. He’d grown used to the self-imposed isolation of life with his mother, their quiet dinners and long conversations. University had been uncomfortable for him at best, his social skills stunted by his strange upbringing, the feeling that he had nothing in common with the rich kids who surrounded him at Yale, the sense that he was keeping a dark and dangerous secret. He’d learned not to say too much, not to give anything away. It had served him well at home with his father.
Out in the real world, not so much.
Not socially anyway.
He exited the highway and continued through leafy, winding roads, past estates set back from the road and sheltered by trees and security gates. He hadn’t seen another property in over a mile when he finally slowed the car, pulled in front of another black iron gate.
Reaching through the open window, he keyed in the security code, waited for the gate to swing open. Then he pulled forward and continued up the long drive, trees towering on either side of the winding road.
He noticed the black car as soon as he’d cleared the drive, but it was the man leaning against it that made Damian open the glove compartment, remove the handgun he kept there. He set it in his lap, and came to a stop some distance away from the other car, keeping his eye on the other man.
Damian recognized him. Knew his reputation.
He also knew if the man wanted him dead, he’d probably be dead already. Either that or the man would have been inside the house, ready to end Damian’s life with a bullet to the back of the head and little ceremony.
Instead he’d breached the security gate to stand in plain sight. He was unmoving even as Damian exited his car and started toward him with the gun in his hand.
He stopped a few feet away, waited for the man to speak. He was even more imposing in person, the scar on his face adding an unnecessary air of menace to his massive frame, the empty eyes.
“Sorry about the gate.” He spoke in a clipped British accent. “I’m Farrell Black.”
“I know who you are,” Damian said.
“Good,” Farrell said. “Now that the introductions have been made, I think you should invite me in for a drink.”
Damian weighed his options, decided he didn’t have many that wouldn’t end in bloodshed.
And besides, he was curious.
He nodded, started for the house without speaking, Farrell’s boots crunching on the gravel behind him. He continued up the wide stone steps and unlocked the giant front door, stood aside to let the other man pass.
He started to step into the house, then stopped when he was next to Damian. When he glanced over, Damian was surprised to see a rakish smile on his face. He clamped a hand down on Damian’s shoulder, looked at the gun still in Damian’s hand.
“Won’t be needing that, mate.” He continued into the foyer. “Not this time anyway.”
