“Oh, I uh…”

“I have to go,” I told him, shaking my head.

I hung up, laughing under my breath. For Christ’s sake. What was I? Neighborhood dad, around to help with science projects, too? Maybe come by to help you move?

“What was that?” Winter asked.

I dumped my phone back in the console and shifted the car into gear. “Someone liked the shit I built at your house,” I replied. “Wanted me to make a treehouse and fountain for their property.”

“And you said no?”

“I don’t have time for that,” I shot back. “I need to get a job and figure out what we’re doing.” And then I paused, my back straightening and understanding dawning on me. “Ohhhhh.”

“Yeah, dumbass!” she screeched.

He was trying to hire me.

To design and build.

It had never occurred to me whether the features I built at Winter’s house were any good or not, but I’d had fun planning them out. I was completely focused on the job at hand, and I definitely enjoyed doing something where I could be left alone. To dive into all the little nooks and crannies I still kind of wanted to spend my life hiding in. Only with her now.

I wouldn’t mind doing that for work if I could. I just hadn’t thought of it. I had a dozen more blueprints of other designs when I was brainstorming the builds.

But...

“I can’t work for the people in my own town like I’m a servant.”

“Ugh.” She rolled her eyes. “First stop Thunder Bay, next stop world domination. How about that?”

Meaning it was a starting point. It could grow into a lot more.

A lot more.

But then I remembered.

“I went to jail for a sex crime,” I reminded her. “No one will want me working around their families.”

“And I don’t think your history has escaped Grady MacMiller’s notice, either,” she pointed out. “He still wanted to hire you, Damon.”

Yeah, I guess so. He knew the nature of the trial. Once I married Winter, people would know it was a lot more complicated than what happened in court.

And then maybe, with word of mouth…

“Dial him back and give me the phone,” she told me. “I’ll pretend to be your assistant who buffers between the client and the temperamental, asshole artist.”

I smiled, hooking my finger in her collar and pulling us together, face to face. “First, a shower.”

And I drove off, taking us home as quickly as possible.

Later that night, long after the sun had set, and I’d left Winter to work on some marketing ideas for the tour with Alex, I walked up to a front door I’d never knocked on and never thought I would.

There was so much I’d missed over the years, that when I pieced them together now, it all fit like a puzzle.

The ice cream she gave me when I was seven one day on the street, saying they gave her and Rika one too many.

The way she looked at me at graduation, and I wondered why she was even there at all, but then I just thought she showed up as a family friend, because Michael was graduating, too.

The way I heard through the grapevine my senior year that she’d told Rika to stay far away from me when she was an incoming freshman, because she knew we’d be at the same school. I’d thought it was because my reputation preceded me, but it was because she was afraid something would happen between us.

She was right to warn her off. To think how many times I taunted that line with Rika…

Jesus, fuck.

Oh, what the hell. In the long scheme of things, it was just another rung on the ladder of fucked-up shit I’d done that just made our little group a little more interesting. We’d get over it.

Ringing the doorbell, I slid a hand in my pants pocket, dressed in a black suit and black shirt, because it wasn’t Winter’s Damon I needed to be tonight.

The door opened, and I looked into her eyes, her smile fading and her chest caving deeper and deeper as she breathed.

I stared at her face, seeing it with new eyes and studying her features to try to detect any parts of me. Blonde hair, same as Rika’s, in a stylish, messy bun with strands of hair around her face. Thin, toned body—much healthier than a couple years ago when she was hopped up on pills and alcohol.

She wore a slender pair of black pants, a black, sleeveless blouse, and her makeup made her look so much younger than her mid-forties.

I didn’t see much of me, though. Or maybe my pulse was thundering in my ears so hard, I was just too impatient and distracted to think straight.

“Is it true?” I demanded.

She dropped her hand from the knob and stood there, as if in a trance.

“Is what true?” I heard someone say.

Rika came out from somewhere behind her mother, her fingers threaded through the handle of a coffee cup and looking at me.

They, on the other hand, looked a lot alike.

When no one said anything, her gaze shifted to her mother. “Mom?”

But Christiane’s eyes dropped, her lips trembled, and she knew it was over. There was no hiding this anymore.

“My grandfather would tell a story…” she finally said, still carrying a hint of her Afrikaner accent, “about an ancestor from Persia. Centuries ago. A woman named Mahin.” Her solemn eyes rose, meeting mine. “He said that’s where he got his black hair and raven eyes.”

My black hair and raven eyes.

“And he said,” she continued, “every few generations she shows herself again.”

Liquid heat charged through my blood, and I was so angry, but I wasn’t sure I should be, and even if I shouldn’t be, I wanted to be, because there had to be someone else I could take this out on.

How could anyone be that weak?

I tried to understand her position. My father was a dangerous man, and I knew he threatened her, killed her husband, and no doubt, threatened to hurt Rika, but…

How do you live like that? In this town, under his fucking nose, knowing your kid is a mile away, living every day without you? How do you not snatch him off the street when he was five or eight or eleven, and just run?

Schraeder Fane was wealthy. They had resources. Did she have any idea what that house was like for me?

But then I realized, too, if I hadn’t grown up in Gabriel’s house, I would never have been there for Banks.

Still, though…

Rika looked between us, a confused pinch to her brow.

“It was you at the hospital,” I said to Christiane, remembering the voice and the comforting touch of her hands on my face.

Tears welled in her eyes, and she sucked in a breath. She took a step toward me, but I backed away, keeping her at a distance.

“I have no use for a mother,” I warned. “Not anymore.” And then I gestured to Rika. “But I have plenty of use for her. This changes nothing, just don’t come between her and me.”

“What the hell is he talking about?” she asked her mom, concern hardening her voice. And then she turned to me, “Damon?”

I broke eye contact with Christiane—done with fucking parents—and locked eyes with Rika. “I told you you’d never escape me,” I reminded her. “I always felt it.”

She glanced at her mother, worry written all over her face. “Mom? Please? What is it? What’s going on?”

I started to back away, toward my car, but still looking at Rika. “We’re going to rule the world, Rika.” I held out my hands, grinning. “You, Banks, and me.”

I spun around and headed for my car, hearing Rika beg her mother to snap out of it.

But to no avail.

I drove off, Christiane Fane still standing in the doorway watching me.

That was all she ever did.

And hopefully she knew better than to try for more. She wasn’t welcome now that my father was dead and out of her way.

I didn’t respond well to bad parents. She’d do well to remember that.

Damon

I pulled my phone off the charger and held it up, the light hurting my tired eyes as I looked at all the notifications that had slowly woken me up over the last half hour.

Fuckin’ Will.

Missed calls, texts, pictures… He was having the time of his life in Rio.

Or Cartagena. I forgot.

Him on the beach. Him with what’s-her-name. Him in the sun and sand, not freezing his ass off back here in Thunder Bay in January. Eating good food and laughing.

In the nearly three months since Devil’s Night, we’d gotten him clean but not dry, and as Kai, Michael, and I settled into the holidays, our homes, our women, and our work, he broke away and did some traveling. He said he needed a change of scenery, but he’d been gone a while, and although the pictures looked great, and he looked happy, I knew he was spinning and spinning until he eventually lost his balance and fell.

And, at twenty-four, his family would only tolerate the self-destruction for so much longer before they cut him off and made him come home.

Throwing the sheet off, I grabbed some sleep pants and pulled them on, dialing Will.

No answer, though. I sent a text, letting him know I was awake, and he could call.

Walking over to the floor-to-ceiling window, I peered out at the master bedroom balcony, taking in the blanket of fresh snow falling, making it look like cake frosting on the stone railing as the wind howled outside, making the trees creak.

Picking up the cigarettes on the table, I pulled one out and slid it under my nose, smelling the tobacco and cloves. My lips burned, and I stuck it in my mouth, rolling it and feeling the comfort of its feel already.

Winter was trying to get me to quit. It was a non-option for much of the argument. I wasn’t a non-smoker.

But then she mentioned kids and it being on my clothes and how secondhand smoke kills, and do I really want the baby to smell like shit?

Ah, fuck it.

I walked over to the French doors, picking up my lighter off the table, and sparking it up as I put on my shoes and opened the door to go out, but then I heard her sleepy voice from across the room.

“Hey,” she said from the bed. “Anything wrong?”