Only once the immediate threat had been neutralized, Micah turned back to Caprice. “Got anything to cut these with?” he asked, pointing to his own restricted ankles.

She frowned before shuffling back into the kitchen, returning with a steak knife this time, which she immediately handed over.

“Thanks.”

Caprice picked her phone up from where Jason had smacked it onto the floor as Micah sawed himself free. “I’ll call Damon,” she offered.

Micah tensed. “No!”

Caprice raised an unimpressed eyebrow. “No?”

Micah licked his lips nervously. “I… I mean, you said yourself that Damon would murder him.”

“Eventually,” she agreed coolly – seemingly uncaring that it was her husband they were talking about. (Then again, the man had just threatened to kill her, so fair.) “This fucker will be begging for the sweet release of death by the time my brother is done with him.”

And therein lie the dilemma.

Allowing Damon to torture this man – letting him kill him – went against everything Micah stood for and believed in as a member of law enforcement.

Sure, Micah had known for months now that Damon was up to his eyeballs in crime – he was a mafia don, for fuck’s sake – but Micah had never been a direct witness to anything.

He’d been privy to vague conversations, full of connotation and suggestion… but overhearing Damon hissing what sounded like threats in Italian and occasionally Spanish over the phone was different than permitting the murder of another human being.

Willfully ignorant as it was, Micah had been able to separate Damon (the violent mafia boss) and Damon (his doting… boyfriend?) in his mind, so much so that he practically considered them two entirely different people. But they weren’t… they were the same. And Micah’s two versions of Damon were fast fusing together. Which left Micah with a decision to make.

Could he really allow Caprice to call Damon with a clear conscience, knowing that it would lead to Jason’s inevitable murder?

Sure, Jason had tried to kill him. He’d tied Micah up, held a gun to his head, and had attempted to bash his skull in with that same gun. Was it really so unreasonable if he wanted Damon to dish out his own brand of justice to the man in retaliation?

Oddly, it wasn’t what Jason had done to Micah that made a dark, twisted part of Micah whisper no, it’s not unreasonable at all. It was what he’d threatened to do to Damon.

Then there was the fact that Micah’s identity would almost certainly be revealed if he did what he ought to do – what he was morally and legally obligated to do – and called the police.