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Over the last hour, I’ve gotten the name of the man who sent that man downstairs to burn the brewery down.Success. It was easy getting the information out of the bleeding man, especially because he knew I was the one who came out of nowhere to take him down as the brewery burned down around us.
He knew exactly who I was the moment he set eyes upon me, and that made extracting information out of him relatively simple. He knew what might happen if he didn’t talk. He knew all about Damon Penmayne. I didn’t have to resort to any interrogation techniques.
The man who sent him is exactly who I feared it would be.
Handsome Jack.
For fuck’s sake.
That was the name the man squealed over and over and over when he could finally glimpse a real look at my face in the dim light of the basement. The act of burning down my brewery late at night was all Handsome Jack’s revenge on me turning down his offer to buy out what I own in New York. And that revenge wasfast, I’d give him that.
But Handsome Jack and his destructive revenge is not what has made me truly angry.No.
I’ve lost Ava.
My girl.
That’s what makes me furious.
The first thing I said to Jim when he arrived on the scene of the burning brewery was nothing to do with whatwas happening around us, but a question about something very different.
“Where is Ava?”
When Jim told me she had been driven back home at her request, I had snapped at him in a way that surprised even Jim. I’ve never lost control with my second in command like that before, but I was so damn incensed that I had lost her.
She’s left me?
I tried calling her, but she never picked up. And I know why. She spelled it out pretty clearly in the car and at the signing of the agreement between us: she would leave me if I committed violence in front of her.
And I had done so. In the clearest of ways.
And now she is gone - just as she said she would be if I dared commit an act of violence in front of her.
The one thing I care about most in the entire world, and I’ve ruined it all with my desire for revenge.
I storm into the restroom next to my office and furiously wash the bright blood off my knuckles. I glance up at my harried face in the mirror.
Fuck, Damon. You’ve fucked all this up. First your brewery, and now your girl.
Well, I’m going to fix it all. I will. I’m going to get Ava back.
49
DAMON
I knockon the front door, hoping with every fiber of my being that it isherwho opens up.
But it’s not Ava who greets me, it’s her father.
I was not expecting this when I put my fist to the door, and I am momentarily and uncharacteristically taken off guard seeing the man’s face in front of me.
Ava’s father also seems shaken by seeing me, and I’m not surprised. His debt collector: here in the flesh at the front door to his house. No wonder his expression strongly suggests that he is currently experiencing a violent heart attack just by my mere presence.
We stand here at the front door, staring at each other for a full silent moment before one of us dares speak.
“You look nervous,” I remark to the man.
“Damon Penmayne?” Ava’s father is obviously very,veryconcerned by my appearance here. It’s etched in his voice like permanent ink.
