Page 29 of The Enforcer (Damn! #2)
“You think I wouldn’t tell you if I’d known this was coming?” Her voice cracked low, fierce. “You think I want to die?”
“You think I’d kill you?”
She didn’t answer the question, at least, not exactly. “Not our baby, if there is one.”
But the deeper truth twisted behind her eyes, because she understood what the message meant, maybe more than he did.
It was never just a threat. It was a setup.
They wanted Zane to kill her. Wanted him to see her as a traitor, a liar, a long con wrapped in vulnerability and sex and need. And if he didn’t do it? If he hesitated?
They’d handle it themselves.
That was the part that made his blood run cold.
Because she hadn’t seen this coming, and why would she? She was out. She’d walked away. But now they were rewriting her choices, turning survival into treason, loyalty into a trap.
Because she had worked for them.
Knowingly. Willingly. All along. Until she’d discovered that Blackthorn Holdings was a Dante shell corporation.
And now the burden of every decision she’d made to survive was crashing down between them like shrapnel.
She looked at him again. “I didn’t see this coming, Zane. Not the message. Not the IP. None of it. I didn’t know they’d turn me into a weapon, to use me against you. But I know what it looks like. I know what you’re thinking. And I’m still standing here, telling you, I didn’t do this.”
He didn’t respond. Not fast enough.
That pause, that hesitation, it gutted her.
“I’m telling you the truth,” she said, stepping forward, eyes searching his. “I got rid of that node. I swear to you. I don’t know how it got revived or who’s using it, but it wasn’t me. Isn’t me.”
Zane stared at her. Part of him believed her. Part of him wanted to believe her.
He hesitated, breath caught in a tight space between instinct and emotion.
This was Lily. His wife. The woman who let him trace fire down her spine and whispered his name like it meant something.
But the woman standing in front of him now?
She was shadowed. Haunted. And suddenly, he couldn’t tell where Lily ended and his doubt began.
Especially since they’d only known each other such a short time.
Then he looked back at the screen.
And the message changed everything.
It wasn’t just the words. It was how they were written, too intimate, too exact.
They knew her voice. Knew her code. Knew just how to plant doubt like a splinter under his skin.
The message had either been written to frame her, or to expose her.
And Zane didn’t know which possibility shook him more.
Because if that either/or scenario was true, then the threat wasn’t just professional.
Someone wanted this to end with her blood. And they were counting on Zane to spill it.
Which made it personal.
Whoever wrote it wasn’t just trying to destroy her, they were trying to rewrite her story.
To tell him she’d always been the enemy.
That she’d used him. Lied to him. Married him not to survive with him, but to survive him.
And if he didn’t act on that? If he didn’t kill her himself? They would. To erase the loose end.
And God help him, it was working.
“Zane—”
“You hit Blackthorn.”
“How many times do I have to say it?” she snapped, pain cutting through her words like glass.
“I didn’t know Blackthorn was tied to the Dantes when I took the job months ago.
I didn’t even know who the hell the Dantes were, not really.
Not then. Not until Jazz married Titus. And when you told me about the connection, I stopped. I walked. I told you everything.”
Her throat bobbed as she tried to steady herself, but her voice didn’t break. It thickened, low and raw.
“I didn’t hide that. I’ve never hidden anything from you, Zane. Not once.”
Zane let out a low breath, but it wasn’t relief. It was restraint. Barely.
He’d given her the benefit of the doubt because she’d briefly worked for Titus when she’d helped take down Senator Vex. Because Jazz was her sister. Because, God help him, he wanted to believe in her. But family only meant something if Lily thought of them that way.
And maybe she didn’t.
Maybe she never had.
Maybe that was a lie, too.
“That doesn’t change the fact that you hit Blackthorn.”
Her hands curled into fists. “You know I didn’t mean to. You said you believed me.”
“That was before a dying man said your name.”
“He was delirious.”
Zane turned fully toward her now. “And this?” He pointed to the screen. “Is this delirium, too?”
Lily’s silence dragged too long, and he finally snapped.
“You didn’t write that,” he said, not as a question, but a fact he believed. “But someone you worked for did. Someone who knew you’d come here. Knew I’d read it. Knew exactly how to use it to tie off a loose end. You.”
She blinked. Staggered, not by accusation, but by the ache behind his words.
The disbelief. The dawning realization that someone had used her past to turn the man she trusted most against her.
Her throat worked, dry and tight. “You really think I knew they’d use you like that?
Use your name like a weapon and make you doubt everything we are? ”
“You didn’t mention the old server,” he said, voice low. “The one you swore was dead.” He didn’t need to ask why. Not yet. But it was there, slicing between them like a blade.
“I didn’t know that server was still alive,” she said. “It was one I used early, way before I knew who Blackthorn belonged to. I deleted it, Zane. Scrubbed it clean. That’s why I didn’t mention it, because it shouldn’t exist. Not anymore.”
He stepped closer. “But you knew what it was. You saw it and didn’t flinch.”
“Because I recognized the signature. That doesn’t make me guilty. That makes me good at what I do.”
His voice was cold. Measured.
“Maybe you were the bait.”
She stared at him.
He didn’t stop.
“Or maybe you were the bullet.”
The words hit hard, not because he believed them, but because some part of him needed to say them. To speak the nightmare aloud before it consumed him.
She hadn’t just been used. That was too easy. Too neat.
What if she’d been sent? From the beginning. Not to infiltrate. To destroy.
A woman with fire in her eyes and soft skin in his bed, programmed to pull him apart from the inside. To tell him she could be pregnant with his child. A lie? A possibility? Time would tell.
If she was in on it, she wasn’t collateral damage.
Nor a casualty.
She was the weapon.
The slap didn’t come. Neither did the tears.
There was no outburst. No explosion. Just silence, deep and shattering.
Lily stepped back. Just one step. But it felt like a canyon opened between them.
“You married me,” she said. “And now you’re trying to decide if you need to kill me.”
“I’m trying to decide what the hell I married.”
Her chest cracked.
But her voice didn’t shake.
“Funny,” she said. “I was just wondering the same thing.”
Zane flinched.
Because that’s when it landed. The gut punch. The one he hadn’t wanted to name.
“You knew who they were,” he said, voice low, ragged. “You took the job anyway. And then you got caught, and what? Switched sides because it was safer? You didn’t lie, Lily. But you didn’t trust me either. You didn’t tell me until your back was against the wall.”
She didn’t deny it.
Not because it was true.
But because nothing she could say would matter now.
“I stayed because of you,” she whispered. “Not because I had to. Because I wanted to.”
She walked past him, slow and calm. Her spine straight. Her hands clenched. At the door, she paused just long enough to lift her hand, the one with the Dante dove burned into her palm. She held it up for him to see, but didn’t look back.
“I assume this doesn’t really mean anything,” she said. Not a question. A statement.
Then she pulled the penthouse door open, stepped into the hall, and walked toward the elevator.
Zane didn’t stop her.
Didn’t move.
Didn’t breathe.
Until the elevator doors slid shut at the end of the hall.
Until the message on the screen pulsed once, a silent echo of something broken.
PREPARE TO BE A WIDOWER.
He read it again.
And for the first time in years, Zane Dante wasn’t sure if he’d just made the worst mistake of his life.
Or the only move that might protect everything he cared about, even if it cost him the one person he never wanted to lose.