Page 22 of The Enforcer (Damn! #2)

“YOU WANT ME to what?” Lily snapped, whirling on Zane. Her voice cracked like a whip, sharp with disbelief. “Marry me? Right now? Are you out of your mind? I don’t even have on my own underwear!”

She gestured wildly toward the corner where the priest stood like some quiet, judgmental shadow. “With a priest just standing there like this is some kind of goddamn backroom Vegas special? You didn’t even ask me, you just decided. Is this what marriage means to you? A strategy? A shield?”

Her voice was rising, fury shaking loose all the fear she hadn’t let herself feel. “Do you have any idea what you’re doing? What you’re asking me to agree to? You think I’m just going to smile and nod and walk into some calculated protection plan like a pawn on your board?”

Zane didn’t flinch. “Exactly that. You want to survive, Lily? This is how. You want to keep breathing long enough to figure out who put that red dot on you? Then stand still and let me protect you the only way I know how.”

“You’re insane. Certifiable. You don’t get to decide this for me, Zane. Not this. Not now. Marriage isn’t a bulletproof vest, it’s a vow. A lifetime. And you think you can just drop it on me like some tactical move?”

“You’re still breathing. That’s all I care about.”

He moved closer, slow but unyielding, his size looming like a wall.

Not threatening. Not exactly. But commanding.

Zane wasn’t just big, he was presence, weight, heat.

And he let her feel every inch of it as he closed the distance.

“You think I’m asking? I’m telling you how this works.

If putting a ring on your finger keeps a bullet out of your chest, then we’re doing it. Today.”

She opened her mouth to hurl something back, probably a string of inventive profanity, something that would match the full, unholy pressure building in her chest, but the door swung open before she could get there, the sound cutting through the room like a blade.

Titus stood in the threshold, framed by the open doorway like a statue carved from granite.

He wore black, as always, tailored to perfection, sharp as the man himself.

His expression was unreadable, but his stony stare hit like a hammer.

He didn’t speak. He didn’t have to. The air shifted the second he appeared, gravity recalibrating around him.

Silent. Watching. Measuring every breath.

The heaviness of his gaze silenced them both.

“Priest stays,” Titus finally announced. “Medic? Still needed?”

The medic looked up from where he’d been packing supplies. “Vitals are good. No internal trauma. He’s stable.”

“Then you’re done. Get out.”

The medic scurried from the room with a respectful nod.

Titus stepped fully into the room and leveled a blistering look at both of them. “Office. Now.”

Lily’s mouth opened. Closed. She stood there, stunned, breath caught halfway between fury and disbelief.

Zane didn’t wait. He moved with intent, ushering her in front of him like her outrage meant nothing, guiding her down the hall with a hand on her lower back like he owned her spine, like he owned her.

The worst part? A traitorous part of her didn’t entirely hate it.

That scared her more than anything, especially considering the touch wasn’t tender.

It was possessive. Decisive. And it sent heat all the way through her, equal parts fury and something darker she didn’t want to name.

She wanted to shake him off. To scream. But her feet kept moving, like they belonged to someone else. Furious. Betrayed.

Titus’s office was as cold and spare as the man himself, wood, leather, iron.

Few comforts. Serious consequences. But one corner of the room held a heavy mahogany bar, sleek, modern, and brutally masculine.

Crystal decanters caught the light from the narrow windows, filled with amber-toned top-shelf liquor: single malt Scotch, aged bourbon, a bottle of tequila that could buy a used car.

The bar didn’t temper the room, it underscored its severity.

Like everything else, it spoke of power, control, and transactions that didn’t require warmth to carry weight.

He shut the door, then moved across the room to the mahogany bar.

Without a word, he poured three drinks, neat, heavy, deliberate.

One Scotch, one bourbon, one tequila. He passed them out with silent precision, placing each glass with a thud of finality.

Only then did he circle behind his desk, spine straight, one hand cradling the drink he hadn’t yet sipped, the other loose at his side. He faced them fully.

“What the fuck is going on?”

Zane didn’t blink. “This started when Lily deliberately breached Blackthorn Holdings, my shell company. She knew it was a job, yes, but she didn’t know who the client really was, or what the access would uncover. She’s a black-hat hacker, one of the best.”

“I’m well aware,” Titus replied calmly, “since she’s worked for me.”

“And if I’d known Blackthorn was a Dante company, I’d never have touched it,” Lily hastened to say.

Titus settled his black gaze on her for a long, nerve-wracking moment.

“You’re wearing our protection now, mainly thanks to your sister,” he said evenly.

“But don’t confuse that with safety. Jazz does not guarantee immunity.

And if Zane decides you’re a liability, you won’t be standing under this roof long enough to say goodbye.

Marriage doesn’t buy absolution, it buys time. Use it wisely.”

The words hit Lily harder than she expected.

Her stomach dropped. Just like yesterday—was it only yesterday?

—when everything first went dark, when the screens went black and her world crashed in on itself in terror.

A cold ripple climbed her spine, threading through her nerves like wire pulled too tight.

A tremor ran through her, stealing her breath.

For a moment she wasn’t standing in a stark office surrounded by authority and menace, all carved wood and cold iron, like the room had been designed to intimidate more than impress.

She was back in that shadowed hallway.

Trapped.

Hunted.

She couldn’t breathe.

Her hand trembled around the untouched drink, her fingers too tight on the crystal. Titus’s words didn’t feel like protection. They felt like warning. Like a knife hovering just above her throat, held steady only because Zane hadn’t let it fall. Yet.

She blinked hard, trying to push the panic down. She’d gotten through that night. Survived. Escaped.

She could do it again.

Maybe.

Zane saw it. The tremor in her fingers. The tight clutch of the glass. He moved, not dramatically, not loudly, but with quiet precision, stepping in beside her like he belonged there. A steady, immovable line between her and everything trying to crush her.

His voice was low, meant only for her. “You’re safe, Lily. I’m here. No one’s touching you. Not while I’m breathing.”

Titus glanced at Zane, a flicker of dry amusement ghosting across his otherwise unreadable face. “Look at you,” he said, voice wry. “All protective. Didn’t know you had it in you.” He let the moment hang, the edge of a smirk curling at his mouth before it vanished like smoke. “Keep going Zane.”

Zane continued. “Someone hired her to target Blackthorn because they knew what was buried under it: serious funds, off-ledger accounts, and operational intel that could burn this entire family to the ground if it ever saw daylight.”

Titus let out a breath, not a sigh, but a blade of air. Precise. Measured. Dangerous. “So she nearly handed us over to the Feds gift-wrapped. And you still want to marry her?”

Zane didn’t blink. Didn’t waver. He could’ve defended her.

Could’ve thrown out reasons, offered context, maybe even softened the facts.

But he didn’t. He simply nodded. “Now someone, other than us, wants her gone. Not questioned. Not warned. Gone. And they’ve come too close twice already.

This isn’t cleanup. It’s removal. And that’s why she’s marrying into this family, because they won’t touch a Dante wife. Not unless they want war.”

“And Blackthorn?”

Zane’s voice steadied, low and firm, like he was grounding her with each word as he continued.

“She didn’t just run a scrape. She mapped the entire system, layered, methodical.

Then she packaged the breach and sold it to an anonymous buyer, not knowing it was ours.

But that data? It wasn’t just numbers. It was the kind of intel that compromises everything, routes, accounts, layers of off-grid operations that should’ve stayed buried.

She didn’t just light a flare. She rang a bell some very bad people didn’t want heard.

And now they’re hunting the echo. That’s not a mistake you walk away from, unless I say otherwise. ”

Titus let that hang for a moment, studying Zane, then Lily, then back again.

Silence stretched across the room, thick with implication.

Lily’s breath caught, the last threads of panic still wrapped tight in her chest. She felt exposed, like every decision she’d made was suddenly open for judgment, each one hanging in the air like a mistake waiting to be punished.

She didn’t know what she expected, disdain, maybe, or warning.

What she got was something far worse: calculation.

Titus’s mouth curled into something too sharp to be called a smile. “Well,” he said dryly, “good thing she has you to say otherwise. God help her if she didn’t.”