What Have I Done

Chapter Two

Elara

I made it back to the kitchen before my legs gave out.

Lina caught me by the elbow, her strong brown fingers digging into my arm hard enough to leave bruises. She'd seen me through every disaster of my adult life—the bad men, the worse decisions, the night my father died with his head in my lap—but she'd never seen me like this.

Shaking.

"I threw wine in his face," I said.

"You what?"

"A full glass. Red. It was expensive, too. The 2019 Barolo."

Lina blinked at me. "You're worried about the cost of the wine?"

"He's going to sue me. He's going to buy the building and bulldoze it and put up another glass tower and I'm going to be working the fry station at some corporate chain while Lina, you're going to have to find another job and—"

"Breathe."

I breathed. It didn't help.

The kitchen felt wrong now. Too hot. Too small. The walls my father had painted himself—a warm ochre that he said reminded him of Tuscany—were closing in.

The stainless steel counters where I'd learned to debone a chicken at twelve, to make hollandaise at fifteen, to cry without stopping my hands at twenty-six, they all seemed to be watching me.

"Who is he?" Lina asked.

"Damien Blackwood."

"Never heard of him."

"Blackwood Industries. Hospitality conglomerate. Forty-seven countries. He's been buying up properties in Verdance City for the last three years. Everyone thought it was a shell company, but it was him. It's always been him."

Lina's face went pale.

She knew what that meant. The rent increases. The mysterious health inspections. The suppliers who'd dropped us without explanation.

"Your father," she said slowly. "He knew?"

"He knew someone was trying to force him out. He didn't know who.

I spent six months trying to find out." I laughed, and it came out bitter and wet. "Turns out I didn't need to hire that private investigator.

I just needed to wait for him to walk through the front door and order everything on the menu."

"What did he want?"

"He said he wanted to buy the building."

"And you threw wine in his face."

"He deserved it."

"Probably. But Elara..." Lina hesitated. It was unlike her.

She'd never been afraid to tell me the truth, even when the truth tasted like broken glass. "If he's really that powerful, provoking him might not have been the smartest move."

"I don't care about smart moves. I care about my father's restaurant."

"Your father is dead."

The words hit me like a slap.

"I know he's dead," I said quietly. "I was there. I felt his heart stop. I held his hand while they loaded him into the ambulance even though I knew it was too late. I don't need you to remind me."

Lina's face softened. She reached out and tucked a strand of white hair behind my ear, her calloused fingers gentle against my temple.

"I'm not trying to hurt you, baby girl. I'm trying to save you.

That man out there—he's not going to go away just because you threw wine at him. Men like that, they don't understand rejection. They understand winning."

"Then let him win. I'll burn the place down myself before I sell it to him."

"That's arson."

"Then I'll go to prison. At least I'll get three meals a day."

Lina sighed. She looked old in that moment—older than her fifty-three years, older than the lines around her eyes and the gray in her tight curls. She looked like a woman who had spent her life taking care of other people's children and watching them break their own hearts anyway.

"You're not going to prison," she said. "You're going to go home, take a shower, and sleep. In the morning, you're going to call a lawyer."

"I don't have money for a lawyer."

"Then you're going to call that reporter friend of yours. The one from the Chronicle. And you're going to tell him that Damien Blackwood is trying to destroy a century-old family business."

"You want me to go to the press?"

"I want you to fight smart. Throwing wine is fighting stupid. You're better than stupid."

She was right. She was always right. That was the most annoying thing about her.

The bell above the kitchen door jingled. The runner came back, his face pale.

"He's gone," he said.

"Gone?" I pushed past him, through the dining room, to the front window.

The booth was empty. The plates were stacked neatly. The napkins—the ones with his notes—were folded in a perfect square on the table.

And underneath them, a black business card.

I picked it up. Heavy cardstock, embossed with a single name and a phone number.

Damien Blackwood.

No title. No company. Just his name, like that was supposed to mean something.

On the back, he'd written four words in the same precise handwriting as the napkins.

You have seven days.

Damien's POV

The wine was still wet on my chest when I got to the car.

Marco, my driver, took one look at me and didn't say a word. He'd been with me for twelve years. He'd seen me covered in blood, covered in champagne, covered in the consequences of my own bad decisions. Red wine didn't even make the top ten.

"Home?" he asked.

"No. The office."

"Sir, it's nearly midnight."

"I'm aware."

He pulled away from the curb. I leaned my head back against the leather and closed my eyes.

I could still see her.

Elara Nightshade. The woman who'd been haunting my dreams for six months, ever since I'd seen her photograph in a trade journal.

She'd been standing in front of that restaurant, her white hair blowing across her face, her arms crossed over her chest, her expression saying try me to anyone who dared look twice.

I'd sent my people to buy the building. I'd told them to be gentle. To offer fair market value. To make sure the daughter—Marcus Nightshade's only child—was taken care of.

They'd botched it. Of course they'd botched it. My people were sharks. They didn't know how to be gentle.

By the time I found out what was happening, the damage was done. The rent had been raised. The harassment had begun. And Elara Nightshade thought I was the villain.

She wasn't wrong. I was a villain. I'd made my fortune destroying competitors, buying up properties, building empires on the bones of smaller men. But I'd never wanted to destroy her.

I wanted to own her.

Not the way I owned buildings. Not the way I owned companies.

The way a man owns a woman when he can't stop thinking about her. When he dreams about her white hair fanned across his pillow. When he lies awake at night wondering what her voice sounds like when she says his name.

She'd said my name tonight.

Blackwood.

Like it was poison.

I smiled in the dark of the car.

"Marco."

"Sir?"

"Cancel my meetings for tomorrow."

"All of them?"

"All of them."

"May I ask why?"

"I'm going to fall in love, Marco. And it's going to take all day."

He didn't respond. He'd learned years ago not to ask follow-up questions when I was in one of my moods.

The office was empty when I arrived. The way I liked it. Glass and steel and cold, just like my soul, just like my heart, just like every relationship I'd ever tried to have.

I poured myself a whiskey. Sat in my chair. Looked out at the city lights.

Somewhere out there, Elara Nightshade was probably pacing her apartment, white hair flying, piercings glinting, her soft body wrapped in some ridiculous robe while she plotted my destruction.

I wanted to be there.

I wanted to be everywhere she was.

I wanted to be the reason she smiled and the reason she cried and the reason she stayed up until three in the morning cooking recipes that tasted like longing.

Seven days.

I'd given her a week to think about my offer. A week to realize that I wasn't going away. A week to understand that she could fight me or she could join me, but she couldn't ignore me.

I took out my phone. Scrolled to the photograph I'd taken from the security footage. Her white hair against her father's chest, her face buried in his shirt, her shoulders shaking with grief.

I'd watched that footage a hundred times. A thousand.

It made me feel something I didn't have a name for.

I wasn't a good man. I'd never pretended to be. I'd done things that would send me to hell if there was any justice in the universe. But looking at that photograph, I made a promise.

I was going to save Elara Nightshade.

Even if I had to destroy her first.

The whiskey was warm in my throat. The city was cold below me. And somewhere in between, a woman with white hair and a dead father and a dying restaurant was about to learn that some addictions couldn't be cured.

She was going to be mine.

All seven days of her.