Chapter 10 - The Sovereign’s Gambit
“Are you completely out of your mind?” Claire gasped, stumbling back against the
examination counter, her hand flying to her throat where her pulse was
fluttering like a hummingbird’s wings. “Damian, we’re fugitives! There is a
federal manhunt looking for our faces on every electronic billboard from Maine
to Rhode Island, and you’re talking about marriage?”
“I have never been more sane in my life,” Damian said, stepping toward her,
closing the distance with predatory confidence.
He didn’t look like a dying man anymore. He looked like an emperor surveying a
battlefield he had already conquered in his mind.
“Think like a lawyer, Claire,” Damian commanded, his voice dropping into that
smooth, intoxicating baritone. “Under Massachusetts law, the spousal privilege
doctrine prevents the Commonwealth from compelling a wife to testify against her
husband. But more importantly, the Crosswell Family Trust has an ancient,
ironclad charter written by my great-grandfather in 1924.”
Marcus, leaning against the doorframe, let out a low whistle of realization.
“The bloodline conservatorship clause.”
“Exactly,” Damian said, not taking his eyes off Claire. “Julian is trying to
claim sole executorship of the trust on the grounds that I am an unmarried,
fugitive felon without legitimate heirs or a legal domestic partner. If I am
married, my spouse automatically assumes joint tenancy of the entire real estate
and maritime portfolio. Julian’s board resolution becomes legally void the
second the marriage certificate is entered into the probate registry.”
Claire stared at him, her chest heaving beneath her flannel shirt. “So... this
is a legal maneuver? A corporate shield?”
A flash of raw, unfiltered emotion flickered across Damian’s dark eyes, softer
and more dangerous than any weapon he carried. He reached out, his rough thumb
gently stroking her cheekbone, tracing the delicate curve down to her lips.
“If this were only a corporate shield, Bennett,” he whispered, his voice thick
with unmasked desire, “I would have married an heiress from Beacon Hill five
years ago. I’m asking you because I want every man in this city to know that if
they touch you, they aren’t just touching my nurse. They’re touching my queen.”
The room spun around her. The weight of his words settled into her chest, heavy,
terrifying, and intoxicatingly sweet.
For two years, Claire had lived like an apology. She had hidden behind oversized
scrubs, paid her sister’s debts, kept her head down, and allowed the world to
walk over her.
Looking into Damian Cross’s eyes, she saw a man who didn't want an apology. He
wanted an equal.
“Where are we going to find a judge who won't call the FBI the second we walk
into the room?” Claire asked, her voice trembling slightly.
Damian’s lips curved into a wicked, triumphant grin. “Marcus. Call Father
Sullivan at St. Anthony’s in the North End. Tell him Damian Cross needs the
church registry opened. Now.”
Thirty minutes later, inside the shadowed, candlelit nave of a hundred-year-old
stone chapel in the North End, Claire Bennett stood before an altar carved from
Italian marble.
The church smelled of frankincense, beeswax, and damp stone. Outside, rain
lashed against the stained-glass windows, masking the sound of Marcus’s security
perimeter securing the street.
Claire wore a clean black turtleneck and dark slacks borrowed from the safe
house, her hair pulled back into a simple, elegant braid. On her left ring
finger sat a breathtaking, seven-carat cushion-cut emerald ring surrounded by
diamonds—a Cross family heirloom that Damian had pulled from a lockbox in the
safe house armory.
Father Sullivan, an eighty-year-old priest who had baptized Damian and buried
Damian’s father, looked down over his wire-rimmed glasses at the two of them.
His hands were steady as he held the leather-bound parish registry.
“Damian,” the old priest said, his voice echoing softly through the empty pews.
“You bring war to my church doors.”
“I bring a vow, Father,” Damian said, standing tall beside Claire, his hand
clasping hers with unyielding warmth. “Nothing more. Nothing less.”
Father Sullivan looked at Claire, his kind, weathered eyes searching her face.
“And you, child? Do you take this man with your eyes open to the shadows that
follow him?”
Claire looked up at Damian.
She saw the scar beneath his ear. She saw the exhaustion in his eyes, the blood
seeping faintly against the bandages beneath his dark wool suit, and the
unshakeable, fierce devotion that had made him jump out of a helicopter into an
exploding ocean to keep her sister breathing.
“My eyes have never been more open, Father,” Claire said clearly, her voice
ringing off the stone vaulted ceiling. “I take him.”
“By the authority vested in me by the Church and the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts,” Father Sullivan murmured, making the sign of the cross over
their joined hands, “I pronounce you husband and wife. Those whom God has
joined, let no man put asunder.”
Damian didn’t wait. He cupped Claire’s face in both hands, tilted her head up,
and kissed her with a fierce, possessive tenderness that made the stone floor
beneath her feet feel weightless.
“You’re mine now, Claire Cross,” he murmured against her lips.
“And you’re mine,” she whispered back, resting her hands against his lapels.
“Now let’s go bury your brother.”
Father Sullivan signed the official state registry certificate, stamped it with
the parish seal, and Marcus instantly snapped a high-resolution digital image
with his encrypted phone, transmitting the file directly to the chief clerk of
the Massachusetts Probate Court.
May you like
“Filed and stamped electronically, Boss,” Marcus said, lowering the phone with a
savage grin. “The marriage is legally recognized. Julian’s board meeting starts
in forty minutes.”
Damian turned toward the church doors, his overcoat sweeping behind him like
wings of midnight. “Marcus. Assemble the convoy. We’re going home.”
