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My nostrils flare as I inhale deeply and glare at her from the doorway. No. Not all that money was given to her by the lower-level guard. Some of it was tossed at her or shoved into her thongbefore she’d ended up naked on that stage, spreading her legs to show the world what has always belonged to me.

Kato pushes off the wall and closes the space between them, his hand raising to her face. To her credit, her only reaction is a tightness around her eyes. She doesn’t even flinch or raise her hands to defend herself.

But all he does is stroke the backs of his knuckles down her cheek. “Oh, sweetheart. What’s mine is yours…and what’s yours is mine.”

I can’t see his face from where I stand, but I can hear the cruel smile in his voice. I can tell by the fire in her eyes that she’s seconds away from lashing out and burying her knee in his balls.

Her chest is rising and falling with deep breaths, that dress Madd chose barely covering her nipples as it slits all the way down to the beltline.

She’s done something to the sides, tying them between her thighs to keep the hem from dragging.

Fuck. I still want to cross the room, grab the sides, and yank them apart. I want to palm those tits, remind myself how they feel in my hands.

I want to bend her over the bed and split her in two, leave a reminder of me in her cunt for the rest of the day, ruin her, break her.

Then piece her back together until all she knows is me, until she can’t take a single breath of air without feeling me in every cell of her body.

Balling my hands into fists, I let one side of my mouth curl into a smirk when she looks past Kato to me, and I can see the moment she thinks she can play us against each other.

There was a time I wouldn’t have denied her anything she asked. If she wanted the fucking moon, I’d find a way to drag it from the sky. If she’d asked me to cut off a leg, I would have hacked away at it and delivered it to her in a satin lined box.

That time is long gone.

“Will you please help me talk some sense into him? You guys don’t want me here. Trust me.”

“Trust you?” I say, my voice low, deep, then the anger takes over and I’m stalking toward her, matching her step for step as she backs away. “Fucking trust you?!” I bellow, bending until I’m right in her face.

My hands are still fisted, and for the first time, I’m fighting the urge to hit a woman. I might shoot one in the head if the situation is warranted, but I have never and will never be the kind of man who would beat on a woman half my fucking size.

“Food’s ready,” Madd says from behind me, completely oblivious to the tension permeating the air as Everest and I glare at each other.

She might have backed away as I approached her, but she’s standing her ground, and her little fists are tightly balled like she’s ready to throw down if I do anything.

I could snap her fucking neck with one hand before she could raise one of those fists, and she knows that.

Or maybe she doesn’t. While she knew Madd and I were being trained and groomed to be goons to Christos Antoniou and guards for his son, she has zero idea what we’ve been through, nor the fucked up shit we’ve done since the day she walked out on us without so much as a fuck you or a single explanation.

“Damn. I picked a good one,” he says from behind me, his steps shuffling closer. “Where the fuck are the heels? Why did you make it look like a diaper?”

Everest’s eyes stay on mine, even as Maddox approaches and kneels at her feet, lifting first one foot then the other to slide on the tall, spiky shoes like she’s fucking Cinderella, then fixes the dress so the hem grazes the floor.

“Are you two going to fuck? Otherwise, dinner’s ready,” Madd says.

He grabs Everest by the bicep and practically drags her away from me and out of the room.

“I can walk on my own, asshole,” she says, yanking on her arm in an attempt to free herself.

“Yeah, well, the last time we let you walk away on your own, you killed our baby and ran away like a fucking coward. So now, you get an escort,” Madd says as Kato and I follow the two of them.

“I didn’t…” But she doesn’t finish her sentence.

What the fuck could she possibly say? What type of argument, what kind of lie could she possibly offer? She knows damn well we’ll see through it and call her out.

We might have loved her once, but we had never held back from calling her out when she was being a brat.

Now? I’ll call her out every time she’s being a bitch and I’ll enjoy punishing her every single fucking time. Especially if I can make tears well in those pretty gray eyes.

Chapter 6