Page 203 of Ruin My Life

“I’m well aware of the deals we struck two years ago,” I reply, holding his stare. “But Xander changed the game the second he hurt The Black Rose and her family.”

“Ah.” He sneers, leaning back in his chair. “The Black Rose.”

The disdain in his tone is clear enough, but it’s the flicker in his eyes—the sharp calculation that sends heat crawling under my skin.

“She’s the one who pulled the trigger, isn’t she?”

I hesitate.

He doesn’t need the answer. We both know he’s seen the footage from Xander’s compound.

“She did,” I say anyway. “It was her revenge for what he did to her sister six months ago. If you ask me, Xander got off easy—”

“But I’m notaskingyou, am I?” he snaps, cutting me off like a whipcrack.

The vein at his temple pulses. His fingers curl tight around the desk edge, knuckles blanching like he’s restraining the urge to break something.

“Xander was my son,” he snarls. “Myboy.Reckless, yes. Arrogant? Absolutely. But he was stillmine.His death will not go unanswered.”

He stands.

Chavez and Monroe tense at my sides—ready, but not moving. Not yet.

Matthias leans forward, palms flattening to the polished wood. His lips twist into something that might pass for a smile, but there’s nothing in it but murder.

“I’ll tell you what,” he says slowly, every word dipped in poison. “You and I have had a long-standing agreement—no bloodshed, mutual respect. I’ve held up my end, Damon. Don’t let one girl’s vendetta ruin that.”

My jaw tightens. “What exactly are you implying?”

He straightens, smooths a phantom crease from his lapel—like we’re negotiating a merger, not bartering over flesh and blood.

“Give me The Black Rose,” he says coolly. “Hand her over. Let me make this right. And we’ll return to the way things were. Songbirds out of Kings. I’ll even cover repairs on your little bar—call it a gesture of goodwill.”

The words suck the air out of the room.

It’s so neat. So fucking calculated.

Matthias O’Doyle doesn’t offer repairs. He doesn’t make nice. Not unless he knows he’s already bleeding out.

A war between us would cost me everything—maybe even my life. But he knows exactly who I’d come for first.

And he knows he wouldn’t survive it.

“Not a chance in hell, O’Doyle,” I say, my voice low enough to make the floor itself flinch. “Come near her, and I’ll peel the skin off your body—inch by inch—while you’re alive to feel every goddamn second of it.”

His brow arches—then he barks a sharp laugh that echoes too loud in the windowless tomb he calls an office.

“The Damon I knew would’ve weighed the cost,” he sneers. “You’re risking your entire circle—forher.”

I step closer. Close enough for him to feel what’s been tempered into my bones since the day I walked away from him.

“The Damon you knew was the beaten-down product of a harsh world that broke him over and over until he crawled to your doorstep for scraps,” I say, aiming every word like a blade ready to kill. “That kid that you used to control—the soldier you built to obey, to bleed, to die for you if it served your cause—he died the day you told him he couldn’t leave. The day you made an example of Isabella.”

Something flickers across his face. Shock, recognition.

But never regret.

Matthias O’Doyle doesn’t regret a single corpse he’s left behind.