Page 75 of Damiano De Luca (The Five Syndicates)
“Those were her words back there?”
“No.” I took a deep breath, my heart running marathons in my chest. “They’re mine. From the letters. Maman stamped my wishes forever into the ground, into history, to show me that dreams are forever. That anything I wished for could be forever. This one… this is the one from a letter I gave my mom. The first one I sent to her right after I left Devils Ridge.”
We both looked down and read.
I want my Damsel.
The edges of the tiles had aged, and there my declaration stood, cemented in history for everyone to see. His eyes studied the tile, his expression thunderstruck.
My hand gripped his shirt and turned him until he looked at me. “I’ve always wanted you, Damian. Even when I ran from you, my heart stayed with you, and you were always mine. I want a world where you’ll always be mine. I’m not stopping. I’m not hopping. I’m not even leaping. I already dove, and I don’t want you to catch me. I want you to fall with me.”
We missed the meeting after that. His driver picked us up and took us back to the library, where we stayed for the rest of the weekend. For the first time in a long time, I felt happy and free.
Deceit is the false road to happiness; and all the joys we travel through… vanish when we touch them.
Aaron Hill
We spent the rest of the summer together. Summer vacation was one of the greatest teaching perks. I had the luxury of having a big enough trust fund that I didn’t need a summer job, and I spent the time I had off with Damian.
The De Luca syndicate spanned Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma. Damian had stuff to take care of in Oklahoma. So, we spent the rest of August and most of September in a lake house there.
It wasn’t exactly taking things slowly, but it felt right. The days blended together in near-domestic bliss. Sometimes, Damian had to drive to Oklahoma City to speak with business associates, but most times, his business was close to Broken Bow, where we stayed in one of the De Luca vacation homes.
He’d be gone for an hour or two a day, which I spent reading on a hammock in the backyard. Damian spent most of his time on Broken Bow Lake with me. By the end of our first week here, my pasty, New England skin was tanner than it had ever been since I’d fled Texas.
I’d gotten used to seeing Damian in suits, but he dropped the suit in Broken Bow, unless he had a business matter to deal with. It was nice seeing him relaxed, shirtless in sweats or swim trunks, depending on our plans for the day.
We spent every night together and woke up every morning beside one another. When he had to leave for the city, he would find his way back by nightfall, even if he hadn’t finished his business and had to wake up extra early to leave for the city again the next morning.
One night, after meeting the Oklahoma caporegime, he returned home at the edge of dawn. I stayed up waiting for him, curled up with a worn paperback of Nightmare Abbey. He entered the room and watched me from the doorframe.
I had just finished the part where Marionetta torments Scythrop. I’d been rereading the scene, thinking of the time I’d last read it. He had entered the library and let me borrow his phone, and we both pretended we hadn’t already been in love.
Damian approached the bed, his eyes sleepy as he took the paperback from me. “Nightmare Abbey. I didn’t take you as an anti-romance type of girl.”
It thrilled me that he remembered our conversation all these years later. I pressed a kiss to his lips as he hovered above me and recounted my words. “Was it my lack of faith in humanity that persuaded you otherwise?”
Renovating the library became my new pet project. Damian came home to me choosing paint swatches, and when I woke up the next morning, he had the room painted the color I’d chosen. We built new shelves by hand and fitted them to the walls. He ordered classics I loved, and we had a shelf dedicated to the books we’d read together in Devils Ridge as teens. He convinced me to
frame the words on my Toynbee tiles all over the library.
Every day, he found ways to erase the pain of our pasts. He’d surprise me with limited edition paperbacks, which we’d read in the library all day long. Sometimes, we’d swim naked in the lake, and I’d convince him to read steamy passages to me from romance novels. He’d agree on the condition that I let him reenact them.
We’d fuck when he returned from working and defaced the lake with our inability to keep our hands off each other. He had me on every surface of the library, and many times, we had to reorder the shelves after all the books had fallen to the floor. Sometimes, we made love. He’d kiss away the bad memories, and I’d kiss the scars his father had left on his back with a belt.
Every now and then, Maman would call. I ignored her phone calls, even though I knew she’d approve of my relationship. After all, she’d been the one to try and convince me lately to let my guard down. But I didn’t want to break the spell, and I loathed the passing of time. Summer would end, and I’d have to return to reality—Maman, Papà, school, and the thousands of miles, which separated us.
Between the picturesque scenery and the lazy days spent in love at a lake house, I’d let my guard down and convinced myself that life was perfect. Not that everything was actually perfect. I hadn’t heard from my dad in nearly a year. I was ignoring my mom’s calls. I’d see Damian press the ignore button on his phone nearly every time his consiglieri-slash-under boss called. But this was the closest to perfect I’d ever experienced.
A day before I had to leave for Connecticut, we spent the day naked in bed, exploring each other. We hadn’t talked about what we’d do after I left, which made me a little anxious. I knew he wanted to—he kept dropping hints—but I wasn’t ready to burst our little bubble of happy.
He sighed, and it was a rare moment of seriousness over our break. “My dad called this morning. Apparently, Cristian called my dad, who called me.”
“Is that why you’ve been acting weird all morning?”
“I got another package from The Benefactor. I thought I was done with these packages a while ago. I don’t even know how he found us.”
“What was in the package?”
