Did I even want him here with me? All I’d cared about was making his father suffer, and I hadn’t even thought about what I was really going to do with him. But simply making him renounce his name and giving him a different one wouldn’t have been enough. Marrying me was the ultimate betrayal, and everyone who worked for or followed Desmond would never forgive James for this. Not that I thought he’d manage to escape the most skilled assassins who’d come after him if he tried to restore his family’s glory, but still, this had to be the worst thing I could’ve done to the Ezzatis.

My deal allowed me to kill James if he displeased me, but I first wanted everyone to know what had happened and what he’d done. Besides, he intrigued me, and I wanted to see just how different he was from his father. And it wasn’t all just because he was pleasing to the eye.

When I finally decided to go back to the room where James was, I found him pacing up and down.

“I signed,” he simply said, suspicion still lingering on his face. Maybe he was expecting me to say this whole thing was some kind of a trick or that I’d kill him immediately so I wouldn’t have to deal with him.

I called for the guards. “Take him to say goodbye to his family,” I said to them when they showed up at the door. “Make sure that it lasts no longer than five minutes. Then take him to the doc to have him checked up. After he’s done, bring him to my room.”

The guards nodded, and I turned toward James. “Don’t forget what you just signed. You belong to me now.” With that said, I stormed out of there. My room needed a few changes before I could let James anywhere near it.

Luckily, since some of my men and I lived here together—although on different sides of the building—I’d already had everything important locked up, and I always locked my room. Our hideout was under a house, and even though we used the rooms upstairs too from time to time, our sleeping quarters, dungeon, interrogation rooms, training and tech room were all underground, so there weren’t many ways James could escape even if he wanted to risk his and his family’s lives.

Still, my room was the safest place for him. I didn’t know how my men would react to our arrangement, but I was hoping they’d understand eventually. Why I even cared what happened to James was beyond me, but I supposed I wanted to reward him in a way for sacrificing himself like that for his family.