Page 35 of Ruin My Life (Blood & Betrayal #1)

Damon

I ’M NOT SURE WHAT WOKE ME UP AT EIGHT this morning. Maybe it’s the sunlight leaking through the blackout curtains I haphazardly closed before bed. Maybe it’s my restless mind reminding me I have a lot of fucking work to do.

Or maybe it’s the cold.

Not the kind that settles in your bones on a cold New York winter night, but the kind that creeps in from an empty space—the one where her body used to be.

The second I rolled over and reached for her, all I found was a tangle of cooling sheets and the faintest imprint of her on the mattress.

And the panic hit like a fucking freight train.

But then I reel myself back in and consider the facts. She probably went back to her bedroom in the middle of the night. She may have trusted me in the moment to take care of her, but that doesn’t mean she trusts me anywhere outside of that.

Just because Brie and I had sex—mind-numbing, pulse-splitting, sell-your-soul-to-the-devil-for-a-second-night kind of sex—it doesn’t change the fact that she’s pissed at me for not giving her that photo of Xander.

I just hope she understands why after everything I told her. I’m trying to protect her from accidentally waging a war with the Songbirds where she’s the number one target.

But Brie’s never been the type to wait around and take no for an answer.

I shove on a pair of black boxer briefs and drag my jeans up my legs, the denim clinging like it resents me for rushing .

My head is still flooded with the scents of last night—her scent. A mix of shampoo and arousal and something else that I’ll never be able to scrub out of my skin.

My phone rings before I even make it to a shirt. When I see Lee’s name displayed across the screen, and I snatch it up.

“What?” I ask, not bothering with niceties.

When Lee calls—especially this early—it’s usually about business.

“I finally tracked down where I think those pictures of Xander were taken,” Lee says with pride in his voice. “It’s a mechanic shop in Queens, just off the Belt. The place is registered under an Alexander O’Malley. That’s why it was so hard to find.”

I should’ve known. That bastard.

Changing his name to dodge heat— typical .

“Good work, Lee,” I say, my voice still a little gravelled from sleep. “I’ll take the others over today. Maybe we can start putting pressure on him, see if we can’t push him into making a mistake. Did you find anything that connects him directly to Brie’s family?”

“Other than proximity? Not really. He was in the state, and yeah, Staten Island isn’t a far drive from Queens, but it’s out of the way if it was random.”

“So, you think it wasn’t,” I say, already knowing the answer.

“I think it was planned,” Lee confirms. “I just… can’t figure out why.”

And neither could the police, considering the case went cold so fast.

Xander had been spiralling even before I left the Songbirds, and it looks like he’s only gotten worse. Now that we know he’s been plotting to take me down, it’s not a stretch to think he’d track down Brie just for her skills.

But why her family?

They weren’t connected. Not to me. Not to the gang.

At least, not that I know of .

And there’s no goddamn way Xander could’ve known Brie would become this important to me.

That she’d wreck my fucking brain with one look. That I’d end up memorizing the shape of her mouth and the way she tastes when she moans my name like a prayer and a warning all at once.

He couldn’t have known any of that.

Which means what happened that night… what he did to her sister… it wasn’t about me. That was just Xander being the sick, sadistic piece of shit he’s always been.

And for that alone—he’s going to die screaming .

“Did you have a late night or something?” Lee asks suddenly, his tone casual but curious.

I freeze.

I’d expect any of the others to take one look at me and be tipped off that I’d stayed up late doing something—doing someone —but Lee isn’t that perceptive, nor can he even see my face right now.

“Why?” I deflect.

“The security office was unlocked,” he says slowly. “And your keys are sitting on my desk.”

What?

My fingers plunge into my jeans pocket— no keys .

No…

No, no, no.

“Fuck.”

I throw open my bedroom door and storm down the hall shirtless, my heart already racing.

I don’t bother knocking on her door. I slam it open, and the wood bangs roughly against the doorstop.

The room is wrong.

Not trashed. Not chaotic. Just… empty in the way that screams intentional .

The bed’s untouched. The walls feel hollow. There’s a thick picture album on the bed, but the photos inside are gone. Her suitcase is still in the closet, but her clothes? Gone. Bathroom’s half-stocked with lotions and perfume—but no toothbrush, no hairbrush, no shampoo .

She took what she needed. Left what she didn’t.

She’s gone .

And I didn’t even fucking see it coming.

She took my keys. Got into the security office. Probably left the moment I passed out, too high on her scent and the illusion that she was starting to trust me.

That I could trust her .

I knew she was trying to seduce me at first, to get information. But I didn’t realize she was playing me the whole time—just so she could find it herself.

“ FUCK! ”

The sound echoes off the walls like a detonation, and within seconds, Chavez bursts through the hallway like a shot. He’s probably been on guard the last hour with no clue she was already gone.

He skids around the corner into Brie’s room with his gun raised and scans, his eyes landing on me—alone.

“Damon? What the hell’s going on? Where’s Brie?”

“Oh shit,” Lee mutters through the phone, the pieces clicking into place in his brain.

“She’s gone,” I say through clenched teeth.

My jaw aches almost as much as my stupid heart does.

“And she knows about Xander.”

I T ONLY TAKES twenty minutes to gather Monroe and Connor and start running the camera feeds from both my apartment building and The Speakeasy. Twenty minutes to confirm what I already fucking knew the second I woke up alone and realized my keys were missing.

She planned this.

Brie planned every fucking step.

But seeing it on screen? Watching her move with calm precision—slipping past Connor, accessing the security room like it was hers by right, not theft—somehow makes it worse.

It’s like her betrayal has grown teeth and now it’s chewing through my ribs just for fun .

“She slipped in just before closing,” Lee mutters, switching the feed to show the inside of the office. “Didn’t bother avoiding the cameras. Just Connor.”

“She didn’t need to avoid cameras,” I grind out, my jaw tightening. “She doesn’t care if we see her now—she has what she needs. She’ll use that software, the one she used to track Lola. Odds are, she’s already on her way to Xander.”

That familiar dread coils low in my gut.

The kind that knows she’s walking into danger alone—and what will happen after.

“Why didn’t you check the feeds, Connor?” Monroe asks.

“You know how it is at closing,” Connor snaps back. “I was clearing stragglers, locking up. I can’t babysit the damn cameras every second.”

“It’s not your fault,” I cut in. “It’s mine.”

They all turn toward me.

Chavez and Monroe share a look. It’s brief, but I catch it.

Connor grips my shoulder hard enough to jar me. “Blaming each other isn’t going to fix this. If she puts a bullet in O’Doyle’s kid, we’re screwed six ways from Sunday. So what’s the plan?”

I shove the hurt down deep where I always keep it, behind the thick walls built from years of mistakes I can’t afford to make again. I wear the only face they need from me right now— the King .

“Lee found Xander’s mechanic shop. It’s in Queens, just off the Belt. We think the photos were taken there. That’s where we go.”

“She’s got a four-hour lead on us,” Chavez points out. “She could already be there.”

“Not necessarily,” Lee says. “R.O.S.E. uses live CCTV feeds. She said she needed a picture of his face so she could run it through her program. Unlike with Lola, she doesn’t have a general location she can use to scan through hours of footage.

I’m almost certain it’ll rely on a real-time hit to get a location, which means he has to be outside and in view of one of the street cams. ”

Monroe checks his watch, already calculating. “It’s a weekend. Most garages in the area aren’t open. Odds are, he’s still home or just waking up. We should run his residential address.”

“Nothing comes up under O’Malley,” Lee mutters. “If he’s renting somewhere else, he’s using a different name.”

“We assume he lives at the shop,” I say firmly. “If James was telling the truth, Matthias isn’t funding him anymore. Without that Songbird income, he won’t have an easy time renting a place near the Belt, let alone two different places.”

It’s just a hunch.

But it’s our best chance at stopping this war before it starts.

Monroe heads to the underground garage to bring the SUV around. The rest of us gather gear—guns, ammo, Kevlar—preparing for the worst-case scenario.

Because that’s what this feels like. Like something’s shifting, bleeding into dangerous territory we won’t walk away from clean.

I tell Lee to stay in the office upstairs, not The Speakeasy. If Brie gets to Xander first, the Songbirds will come down on us hard, and I won’t risk anyone else.

I’m hoping she doesn’t go through with it.

I’m hoping she sees his face, remembers what I told her about giving me more time, and comes back.

I’m hoping like a fucking idiot.

Because even if she did… what then?

Would I forgive her? Could I?

She used me. Lied to me. Took the keys while I was asleep—while I was still high off her body—and walked out without a word.

She was the one asking for trust, just to tear me to shreds the moment I let her in. And now I don’t know what the fuck to do with the pieces she left behind.

But I can’t pretend I wouldn’t do the same if I were her.

She wants justice. She wants blood.

And after what he did to her family, to her sister…

Hell, maybe she deserves it .

But not like this—not when it’s going to end with a bullet between her eyes, Matthias himself pulling the trigger.