“Clawing your way up a drug cartel,” I finished for him then leaned forward, taking Brock’s arms with me, thus taking Brock with me. “I know,” I hissed and leaned back. “Stressful, hunh?” I asked. “So stressful you suddenly lose your ability to be a decent human being and when your patience snaps because your wife is asking you simple questions like, ‘Honey, what’s stressing you out?’ you take your hands to her. And when she says no to sex, you lose your mind and rape her. It must have been tough for you dealing with all that stress as you climbed to the highest heights of the criminal underworld, Damian. I feel bad for you that you didn’t have a different woman in your life who’d eat your shit. Sorry I was such a crap wife.”

“You weren’t a crap wife,” he whispered.

“I know,” I bit out. “I was being sarcastic, you moron.”

“I made some bad decisions and let my emotions get the better of me, Tess. I’ll admit that,” Damian said.

“Big of you,” I retorted. “Though bad decisions and emotions getting the better of you don’t entirely destroy lives, Damian, something you’ve been doing to people you care about and people you don’t even fucking know for over a decade now.”

“I—” he started. His jaw clenched and he looked away, tearing both his hands through his hair and I noticed belatedly he looked good.

Like his father, age barely touched him. And like the asshole he was, impending incarceration didn’t faze him. Fit frame at least three inches shorter than Brock and probably more than thirty pounds lighter. Light brown hair. Dark brown eyes. A sharp crease in his well-tailored dark blue trousers. A light blue shirt that I knew had been made specifically for him because he always spent a whack on his clothes. Polished, dark brown, Italian leather shoes.

Even now, he had it. Even now, even as detached as I was, I sensed his magnetism. Decent looks, great clothes he wore well, undercurrent of charisma never switching off.

Toxic charisma.

Poison.

He dropped his hands and leveled his eyes on mine.

Then he stated, “If you gave me a moment to explain at lunch before you took off, I got in touch with you because I was trying to make it up to you.”

Make it up to me?

Maybe he was high.

He kept talking.

“I asked you to lunch to explain”—his eyes moved to Brock then back to me and he carried on—“about the money. To go over the bank documents with you. I wanted you to have”—again he looked to Brock, then back to me—“if something happened to me, I wanted you covered.”

“You wanted me covered?” I asked, my voice filled with derision mixed with shock.

“Yes,” he clipped.

“Why?” I queried.