Demon

chapter 131

Once Damon dropped Anna off at her home, he returned to his.

He quickly caught up with Zeke and then sent him away. Zeke seemed relieved but Damon could see despite Zeke claiming Clara was annoying, Zeke was actually quite fond of her.

He found Clara in the kitchen having breakfast, he smiled as he noticed the extra plate of food. She had made him breakfast.

"Can we talk after breakfast" they both seemed to say at the same time.

Breakfast was eaten in awkward silence, both of them unsure what the other was going to say.

They decided to have their talk in the living room so after Damon washed the plates up and put them away, they went to the living room.

"I want to apologise" Clara quickly said before she lost the nerve

She had been up all night thinking about his words. She was a hypocrite. She did enjoy the thrill of the work sometimes.
But she didn't want too.

But she was so used to this lifestyle and she wanted to start over but she just didn't know how.

"You were right. I still am involved in the Mafia.  Gangs are all I've known in years though. I do want a normal life though, where I'm not dragged into a life or death situation every other week" she continued.

"I want you to have that normal life. I just wanted you to join so you would be more protected. I'm not going to send you into any deadly situation. I was thinking you could just do research " Damon told her.

"So you're just going to make up a role to make me join" she said.

"No. I have plenty of researchers. I don't just magically get information. Let's take a business deal for example, I am a busy man so I have a team of researchers find me everything they can on the business. Then I get the report and do a double check of all information received before deciding whether to accept the business deal" he explained.

"That sounds oddly normal " she stated.

"It takes a lot to run the mafia, it really isn't just shootings and kidnappings. There is alot of paper work involved"

"Ok but what about the part where you want me to be protected yet you have so many traitors and one of them tried to get rid of me" Clara pointed out.

"I really don't have that many.  I know it seems like it but there are hundreds of people in the Mafia and even more people connected to it. Alot of them don't know my identity. I have members all over the world . The place we work out of now is basically the headquarters but there is bases across the country with teams working from them. The gang you belonged to didn't even have 50 members. I have 50 members per team across the country " he explained. He knew it must look like they had plenty of traitor's but the size of the mafia was so big that it would be impossible not to have a few bad people.

"But I am making changes when it comes to the people in the Mafia" he added because despite the number of traitors, even one was too many.
He probably should have changed sooner but things had gotten in the way.

"What happens to the people you don't want involved anymore. They know your identity, you can't just let them leave"

"It's a long process, everyone will be under a investigation, those who seem a threat will be investigated before a decision is made" he explained. He didn't bother saying that the outcome would be death.

"What if we break up and I want to leave" she asked.

"I'm not going to force you to stay. I know the mafia has the reputation of 'the only way out is death' but that really isn't true. You can talk to Lilah about that if you want" he suggested knowing the two women were friends.

Damon and Lilah hated each other however they both acknowledged they used to be friends.  They hated each other so much that deep down they didnt acknowledge they cared still.

"Can I think about it" she asked.
Damon nodded, he had lots to do before she would join anyway so she had plenty of time to consider it.

"I want to talk to you about something else, it's about last night" he knew that their previous conversation and everything could change.

"What did you do Damon" she asked.

"I went out drinking with Callum..." Damon started but Clara cut him off.

"You would only tell me if you did something. Did you get with another woman?  You're clearly not hurt so that rules out any sort of fight. Oh god did you spend the night together. When you didn't come home I thought you were at your dad's house"

"Clara I can promise you I did not sleep with another woman however I want you to know what happened. I don't want there to be anymore secrets between us. Please just keep an open mind and believe me when I say nothing happened"

Clara nodded and let him continue.

"So Callum was off hitting on women and I noticed a woman who had been cornered by a group of guys. So I stepped in. After the men dissapeared we tried to find her friends but couldn't so we had a lot to drink. So much so that when we left, she couldn't remember her address. I was a little drunk myself but I couldn't leave her alone in the streets at night. So we got a taxi, i could only remember my dad's address so we went there. She slept on my bed, I slept on the sofa" Damon explained.

"You slept on the sofa for a random woman " Clara asked doubting they didn't share the bed.

"Yes. We stayed up talking before going to sleep" he told her.

"What did you talk about" she asked.

"You. She asked why I was on the sofa not the bed. I told her about you and from there we talked about you"

"I'm not happy Damon but I believe you" Clara said.

"You do? You're not going to accuse me of anything?" He was a little suprised.

"No but I am going to speak to your dad. I want confirmation you did actually go there. I know if you had any intentions of sleeping with her you wouldn't go to your dad's" she said. She figured if Damon was going to cheat on her, he would have done it at her place or even a hotel.
She couldn't see Damon cheating on her whilst his parents and siblings were asleep in the other bedrooms.

"By all means. We can go visit my family later" he told her.

So I was going to continue this chapter switching to family pov but I've decided to write that next chapter. You'll hopefully love what I have planned in the coming chapters.

I want to make it clear Clara is not a push over. She isn't happy with him but they both have a healthy relationship and she does trust him.

But I think in book 1 it was mentioned Damon never sleeps with a girl at his father's home. And Clara knows this. That's why she trusts if he was there then he didn't do anything.

Also I know some of you might think Clara is a little helpless without Damon. She's not. She can handle herself as demonstrated by the shoot outs. She has a life outside of damon. She has her own friends, socialises herself. The mafia is just a massive change from a small gang she was a part of so it does get overwhelming for her sometimes.

Damon also does alot of things himself too. He works, goes out, I just leave those parts out . However we will be seeing more of Damon's character work and personal soon.

I split this book up into two parts. Part 1 was very much family based and I was struggling to get into focusing just on Damon and Clara as the series is very much about the whole family and I have lots to write about them all.

Yes Emilia still has trauma but I wrote a lot about her family helping her etc in previous two books and I would only end up repeating myself. Damon does still play a big role in Emilia's life. But despite the amount of chapters since she was kidnapped it hasn't been long.

(The timeline was a mess before this book so we just ignore any timeline errors)