Page 21 of The Enforcer (Damn! #2)

When they pulled through the wrought iron gates of the Dante estate, the perimeter was already secure. Armed guards waited at checkpoints. The staff had been cleared. The driveway was empty.

Except for one man waiting near the steps.

The medic.

He looked up as the vehicles approached, already pulling on gloves as Zane stepped out of the SUV.

The moment his boots hit stone, Zane felt the tension shift.

This wasn’t his space. It was Titus’s. But he moved with the attitude of a man who didn’t care whose territory it was, not when Lily was still bleeding beneath the surface.

She climbed out behind him, slower this time, her eyes scanning the rooftop lines and windows of the mansion like they might blink back at her.

Every shadow felt like a threat, every reflective surface a scope.

Her gaze flicked upward with a soldier’s instinct, not a victim’s.

Like she was bracing for round two and daring it to come.

Zane reached back for her hand.

She hesitated, just for a beat, as if her body needed a second longer than her mind to respond. But then she slid her hand into his, fingers curling against his palm, firm and sure. Her grip wasn’t soft. It was steady. Like she wasn’t just following him, she was choosing him.

“Inside,” he told the medic.

They were led through the house, down a hall Zane had walked a thousand times, into a room he didn’t use.

The old sitting area had been cleared. A low sofa, clean linens, soft lighting.

There was a second man sitting in the corner, a little older, dark suit, quiet eyes, but Zane barely glanced at him.

The medic moved forward. “Let me see it.”

Zane yanked off his shirt. Blood stuck to the gauze, fresh spots blooming beneath it.

The medic peeled the bandage back and blinked. “Damn. Who stitched you up?”

Zane grunted.

The medic looked up. “No, seriously. These are clean. Tension’s right. Closure’s near-perfect. This isn’t first-time work.”

Zane didn’t flinch. He’d heard it before, more times than he could count.

Years of patching himself up in places where doctors didn’t go.

Years of bleeding without backup. Pride didn’t come into it.

Just survival. And maybe a little satisfaction that Lily, standing there in silence, knew exactly what that meant.

Zane’s eyes shifted to her, drawn like gravity to a fixed point he hadn’t even realized he’d been circling.

It wasn’t just the way she looked, it was the way she held herself, quiet and steady, a hurricane with its own center of calm.

Something in him locked into place every time he saw her like that.

She hadn’t spoken, hadn’t moved from where she stood near the doorway, but her presence filled the room like static before a storm.

It prickled across his skin, tightened his breath, like the charged air right before lightning cracked.

She didn’t need to speak for him to feel it, she was the pressure drop before impact, the silent warning of everything about to shift.

He watched her, barefoot in his clothes, arms folded tight, eyes clear and locked on him.

There was no question in her face. No hesitation.

Just a fierce, unshakable quiet. And in that look, he found every answer he needed.

She hadn’t screamed when the glass exploded around her. She hadn’t flinched when Zane shoved a needle through his own skin. And now, now she was watching a man she barely knew strip down in a room full of strangers. Blood still oozed from the stitched wound at his side. And she hadn’t blinked.

Zane looked at her and saw purpose beneath the stillness, taut, contained, but unmistakably there. Not rage. Not fear. Purpose. A quiet kind of steel forged in fire, and the faintest tremor of vulnerability that made him want to protect her even more.

It hit him all at once, the clarity, the rightness of it.

Not just a decision, not just instinct. A knowing.

She wasn’t a possibility anymore. She was destiny.

And everything in him that had always kept moving, always hunted or defended or retreated, finally went still.

Like fate had just spoken, and for once in his life, he was listening.

Zane turned slowly to the other man in the room, really looking at him for the first time. He wore a suit rather than traditional vestments, the suit understated. His presence wasn’t. Calm, steady, but not forgettable. A man who had seen too much and judged nothing.

Zane’s voice was low, rough. “You’re the priest?”

The man rose from the chair in the corner, slow and composed, his expression unreadable. “I am.”

Zane nodded. “Good.”

He turned back to Lily, the decision already locked in his chest, harder than instinct and heavier than legacy.

He reached out his hand, slow, deliberate, not to ask, but to claim.

A command veiled as an invitation. There would be time for explanations later.

For now, he needed her tethered. Bound. His.

Because whether she realized it or not, she’d already said yes the moment she didn’t run.

She looked from Zane to the priest, confusion flickering behind her eyes like she couldn’t quite process what she’d just heard. Her body tensed subtly, a slight shift of her weight, like she was bracing for something or fighting the urge to step back.

One hand drifted to her abdomen, fingers curling briefly into the hem of the hoodie she still wore, an unconscious motion. Then her gaze snapped back to Zane, searching his face for the catch, for the context, for anything that would make sense of what he’d just said.

Her lips parted, but no words came. A heartbeat passed, sharp and suspended, before her voice finally found its way out.

“Wait. What’s a priest doing here?”

Zane looked to the priest, his eyes steady, his voice stripped of any pretense or pause.

“Marry us. Now.”