“I’m fine, Damien. What, are you going to follow me into the bathroom next?” Angela asked with a giggle. Ever since their experience with Don Simenn, Damien had been borderline obsessive with Angela’s safety. Everywhere they went, he would scan the place like a hawk, searching for potential trouble. If someone so much as breathed wrong in her direction, he was alert and ready to take them down. That bastard Saul was going to pay dearly, he thought. Although Angela found it endearing how much he cared about her, it was starting to get overbearing. Damien glanced at her as if she’d asked if the sky was blue. “You’re not following me into the bathroom,” Angela snapped, trying to hide her blush. He rolled his eyes. “Fine.” His phone rang. At this point he didn’t need to check to see who it was because the person had blown up his phone so much, he set a custom ringtone. “Her again?” Angela asked. “I don’t understand why you don’t just block her.” She knew he didn’t love

Having already seen him coming, Angela sprung into action, sending Andy sprawling backward with a fist to the gut, milliseconds from the bat hitting Damien square in the face.Andy hit the ground with a painful thud, howling in pain and sputtering like a misfiring exhaust.“Courtney, what the hell are you doing with this bastard?” he croaked in between agonized wheezes, glaring daggers at Damien.Courtney was beside herself. Worry, confusion, anger, desire; all these emotions swirled around in her head, rooting her to the spot. She wanted to go to Andy to check on him but what would Damien think about that? And that bitch with him, she would try to make it seem worse than it looked to Damien.Damien stared down at him with a smirk. “Seems you’re back on your feet. I barely even laid hands on you and it took you weeks to heal up? What a joke,” Damien said with a chuckle.If looks could kill, Damien would have been a pile of ash from the scorching glare Andy was giving him. “I have noth

Daniel knew what that bastard Arthur was doing. Entice Damien with insane strength so he would forgo the medical secret. To be honest, Daniel wouldn’t blame Damien if he went with either of the other two options. He was a young man once and he definitely understood the allure.Garth too was anticipating Damien’s answer. He always knew Damien was a selfish scumbag. Him falling for Arthur’s trick would only confirm that notion.By now, it was pretty obvious to everyone that Damien was going to go with either a martial arts secret or a Mystic art secret. How could he not? It hadn’t been a hard decision for them at all. It shouldn’t have been for him either but then Arthur had pulled out all the stops and had a demonstration done for him. A ripple of mocking snickers came from the crowd; he must have been feeling stupid now for choosing a medical secret.“I’m confident that I can fulfill any tasks you throw at me in record time, so the other secrets are within my reach anyway. Give me a m

I was on my bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking about my life and how things got so complicated.Jesse had practically gone off the deep end, asking to be part of my revenge on Oscar. I was delaying telling Deandra because I knew how much she loved drama; she would welcome Jesse with open arms, potentially other open things too. And then there was Sadie. She had been calling and texting, but after my meeting with Deandra and the soft- reveal that Sadie wasn’t how she seemed, I decided I’d keep my distance.My phone rang again. I was at my limit with her. I picked it up to scream at her to stop calling me but froze when I saw the caller.Sighing, I answered. “Hey, Tristan.”His voice was calm and soothing. Such a jarring contrast to the storm of thoughts and emotions going through my mind. “Hey, Remi. It’s been a while. How are you holding up?” he asked, his words laced with genuine concern.My heart started racing. I knew this wasn’t a casual check-in because Tristan never called w

It had been a hectic couple of days so I decided I was going to shut everything out and actually enjoy my vacation time.Dad, once again, was hounding me to wrap up my me-time and get back to work. The whole point of vacation was to de-stress. As far as things went, it had been nothing but stress.I was trying to relax in a lounge chair in a hot spring resort when my phone rang, jarring me and everyone around me.“Sorry,” I whispered, seeing all their pissed off faces.The caller ID showed it was dad. I hesitated, wondering if I should ignore the call, not wanting to be lectured about ignoring my responsibilities. But I ultimately picked it up.“Hey, Dad.”“Get home. Now!” his gruff voice boomed directly into my ears, making me cringeEven though he was my dad and I knew he would never hurt me, I started panicking. What could have made him so serious? The fact that he was so direct, with no explanation whatsoever made it even worse.My mind raced faster than my car as I sped home, fig