Page 68 of Claimed By the Boss

We wander into another shop, this one filled with maternity clothes. I’ve been avoiding the thought of buying any, wearing oversized sweaters and stretchy leggings instead, but Damientakes one look at the display and steers me inside. I find dresses, soft cardigans, and even a silk robe I can’t imagine wearing anywhere but behind closed doors. Each time I look at a price tag, he silences me with a look that holds the same mix of stubbornness and care.

At some point, I catch him watching me in the mirror as I try on a pale blue dress that drapes over my growing stomach. He looks proud and possessive. It sends a shiver through me that I try to hide as I smooth the fabric over my hips.

When I step out of the dressing room, he’s already talking to the saleswoman about having everything delivered. I don’t even bother arguing this time.

We spend the afternoon moving through stores. He continues at the same unhurried, unbothered pace, spending money like water. The longer we shop together, the more public our relationship becomes.

We hold hands as we cross the street. He kisses me when we pick out a bassinet. He slips his arm around my shoulders when we stop for coffee, pulling me close against his side. I’m his, not a possession but something more precious.

By the time we head back to the penthouse, the city is painted in shades of gold, the sun catching on glass and steel. The back of the car is filled with shopping bags, though most of the purchases are already on their way to his place.

I lean into him, my head resting against his shoulder, and for the first time in a long time, I let myself believe that we might actually get to have a beautiful future together.

By the end of the day, we’re both exhausted and starving. Damien keeps one hand loose on the wheel and the other restingover my knee as we drive down a narrow road toward some local hole-in-the-wall he swears by.

The city behind us keeps humming, but here the sound falls away until there is only the faint whistle of wind sneaking along the seams of the doors. The hedges start to press in, the pavement narrows, the light ahead dies, and the part of me that has learned to listen to silence sits up and looks around.

Damien’s fingers flex once against my knee. He has already seen it, whatever it is. The car slows by a few miles an hour. I feel the shift in him long before anything else changes. His attention sharpens, the easy conversation from a minute ago folding away. I reach for my seatbelt and drag it tighter across my chest, and he notices and gives a small nod that saysgood.

Headlights appear behind us, then drop back, then appear again. The movement has a rhythm that is wrong. Damien flicks his gaze to the rearview and checks the side mirror. A second pair of lights slides into view ahead, parked across a side lane, and the angle makes my skin tighten along my arms.

The road narrows again. The hedges press closer. The streetlamps thin out until the space between them feels like a tunnel. Damien eases off the gas and glances once at the phone in the console. He unlocks it without looking. The screen lights up his knuckles as he opens an unfamiliar app and holds it low against his thigh.

The road bends left, and that is where the van waits. Its paint is the color of wet concrete, windows blacked out, back doors shut tight. It is parked crosswise like a fallen tree. We are already too close. Damien brakes, smooth and controlled. I feel the car’s weight shift forward and settle.

The headlights smear across the van’s side and catch on something metallic stacked near the rear bumper. The shape registers a beat later. A generator. Coiled cords. A saw with a blade that looks like a bright silver coin. The streetlight above us hums and flickers. Somewhere in the hedges, a trapped bird rustles and goes still.

Damien’s voice drops to that low register that cuts through noise.

“Hold onto the belt,” he says. “Head down, hands over your ears if glass breaks. Do not open the door unless I tell you.”

He keeps his phone open with one hand and presses a button I know will call his men. The line connects before the first man appears.

Figures step from the hedges and from the mouth of a side alley, shapes in heavy jackets with hoods up and tools in their hands. The hiss of a generator lifts into a grind as someone yanks a cord. Sparks twitch in the distance as a blade tests metal. The curve of the street behind us blooms with light when another van switches on its beams and rolls forward just enough to close our path back.

Damien speaks into the phone, fast and clipped.

“Ambush on Kettleman, south approach to the docks. Two vans and at least ten on foot and more in vehicles. I need a wall and I need it now.” He listens for two seconds, nods once, and drops the phone into my lap. “If I go down, you talk to Alek,” he says. “You say where we are. You keep talking.”

I lock my fingers around the phone and push it under my thigh. The first blade bites the metal near my door, a screech that slices through me like wire pulled thin and tight. Sparks fan up andspit against the glass. Damien opens the small compartment by his knee with a smooth, practiced motion and draws two guns, one heavy and one compact. He hands me the compact by the grip without looking away from the men moving toward his side.

“Do not use it unless they break the window,” he says. “If they do, aim and fire.”

I wrap both hands around the gun and try to steady my breathing. It smells like oil and cold metal. The generator’s drone deepens. Another blade hits the car near the back wheel with a sound like a scream being torn in half. The windshield blooms with a spidered crack when a pry bar kisses it too hard.

Damien lowers his window two inches before they can wedge it, leans out, and shoots the first man in the thigh. The man falls, yowls, and then goes silent when Damien fires again. The others flinch back on instinct, then surge forward, six at once, faces shadowed and grins bright where the light catches teeth.

Damien empties the first magazine quickly. Three men drop and two more stumble, blood blooming dark across jackets. The sixth flattens against the front quarter panel and lifts a grinder, its blade screaming an inch from Damien’s arm. Damien kills the engine with his free hand and twists sideways, firing through the narrow gap until the man pitches backward with a guttural sound. The smell of hot metal and the iron tang of blood floods the air.

The rear window blows inward when a pry bar punches through the corner and the tempered glass gives up and becomes glittering rain. I cover my face with my forearm and feel pellets hit my skin. A hand snakes through the new hole and gropes for the lock. I swing the gun up and slam the muzzle into the knuckles, and the hand jerks back with a curse.

Damien glances at me and gives the smallest nod. He swaps magazines with a swift, sure motion and fires again through his gap, each shot loud in the confined space.

They keep coming because there are more of them than bullets in his gun and because the sight of their own men bleeding writes a simple script in their heads. They fight or they die.

Someone drags a wheeled jack to the side and starts cranking. The car lifts a fraction and then settles again when Damien fires down at the mechanism and shatters a tooth. A second grinder screams to life at my door. A thick-gloved hand plants near the handle. Heat blooms against my leg as the blade chews into the seam of the frame, and the smell turns coppery and bitter and hot. The phone under my thigh vibrates. I cannot reach it without losing the grip on the gun.

Damien leans farther out and shoots left, then right. The slide locks back on empty. He goes for the last magazine and comes up with it already half-seated. A black-gloved hand darts through the small opening he made to shoot. It catches his wrist in a grip that looks like it belongs to a machine, not a man. Two more hands clamp onto his forearm and elbow. He snarls something low that I have never heard from him and rips his arm back with a strength that would break smaller bones. He almost makes it. Someone slams a knife into the outer rubber seal by his elbow and wedges it. The blade on my side bites deeper and sparks jump like fireflies that only know how to burn.