Chapter 8
The shattered crystal on the floor mirrored the complete destruction of Dahlia’s life. She backed away from the table, her heels slipping slightly on the spilled wine, her luxurious emerald gown feeling like a shroud. The elite guests of the syndicate stared at her not with pity, but with the cold, calculating disgust reserved for a liability.
"Damian, you have to listen to me!" Dahlia pleaded, grasping at the air between them, tears streaming down her face. "He was holding me back! He was a nobody! I did it for us! I knew if I was free, I could bring his estate into your syndicate! I was securing our future!"
"Do you truly believe a throne built on the murder of a father is one I wish to sit upon?" Damian asked, his angular face setting into lines of uncompromising stone.
He didn't wait for her to formulate another pathetic excuse. Damian briefly looked down the table toward Owen. The six-year-old boy was crying silently, his small fists clenched in his navy suit, staring at the mother who had lied to him and the father who had returned from the dead.
Damian’s dark, observant eyes softened with quiet, profound concern for the child. He knew the trauma of violence in the mafia world, but the betrayal of a mother was a wound that rarely healed.
With a slow, deliberate movement, Damian turned his head away from the boy. He slowly turned toward Dahlia.
The artistic tattoos on his neck shifted as his sharply defined jaw tightened slightly, the muscles ticking beneath his neat stubble. He looked down at the woman he had almost married, stripping away the diamonds and the silk, exposing the ruthless, pathetic rot underneath.
He held a cold, unwavering stare. He did not yell. He did not draw a weapon. The absolute, suffocating silence that stretched out from his stare was an execution in itself, pressing down on Dahlia until she collapsed into her velvet dining chair, sobbing uncontrollably.
"Silas," Damian commanded. His deep, measured voice broke the silence, carrying perfectly across the grand dining hall.
The senior capo immediately stood up from his chair, unbuttoning his tailored suit jacket to reveal the dark holster beneath. "Yes, Boss."
"Will you and Marcus escort this woman to the holding cells in the sub-basement?" Damian asked, not taking his cold stare off Dahlia.
"No! Please, Damian! You can't do this!" Dahlia shrieked, kicking wildly as Silas and another massive enforcer approached her, grabbing her roughly by her arms and hauling her out of the chair.
"Will you ensure she is kept entirely isolated?" Damian continued, completely ignoring her thrashing and screaming. "We will discuss the exact nature of her punishment once I have arranged for Mr. Merrick's safe return to his home with his son."
"You can't take my son!" Dahlia screamed, her voice cracking with hysteria as the men dragged her backward. "Owen is mine! He's mine!"
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"Does a woman who throws a father into the sea deserve to hold his son?" Damian asked quietly, finally turning his back on her.
Dahlia's frantic, desperate screams echoed down the long, marble corridor as she was dragged toward the heavy mahogany doors. The doors slammed shut with a definitive, echoing thud, sealing the dining hall in a profound, heavy silence.
