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“You’ve broken my heart, baby girl.”
The words hit me like a punch to the gut. I tried to speak, but his fingers squeezed my jaw.
“You shook my trust in you.” He paused, letting it sink in. Then his lip curled. “And all because of a Devil,” he hissed.
He rose to his feet, releasing my jaw with a shove that twisted my neck to the side. It hurt.
The stranger let out a low grunt. I whipped toward him, hoping my glare masked the queasiness making my head airy. But he just stood there like a wolf waiting for its master to give an order.
“Heel,” my father barked suddenly. “Get the fuck out. Go be a slob elsewhere.”
Heel hightailed it like Father lit his ass on fire, taking the remains of his food with him. Unbearable tension swelled.
The stranger stepped further into the office and shut the door with a decisive click.
Father claimed Heel’s empty seat like a throne—slouched back, legs spread, his aura dripping with lazy male ego. He watched me for a moment and observed me chained to a chair, bleeding, starving. His own daughter bound by rope in his—our—safe house.
I just watched back.
After an eternity, Father leaned forward, the chair creaking with the motion. He rested his forearms on his thighs and said, “You disappointed me, Caroline. That is why you’re here. We cannot trust a Wolverine in here with you. That’s why Heel is not here.”
Another unbearably long pause before Father continued. “My men cannot be trusted watching you—not with the bonds you’ve forged with them. I don’t need them bending to your feminine wiles. No getting distracted by a smile or…”
He gestured vaguely—at my face, my body, my existence. Like being a woman was some liability.
I wanted to recoil in disgust. But the last thing I could afford right now was a display of weakness. I wouldn’t be what he—what any of these pigs—expected me to be. I wasn’t just some conniving bitch. I wasn’t just a whore.
My father’s gaze lingered a second too long on me. Then he clucked his tongue and turned to the brute. “Say hello, Vane, to my beautiful daughter, Caroline. She is twenty-five, I believe?—”
“I’m thirty,” I snapped without thinking.
It was as if he didn’t hear me. “—inherited her mother’s looks and her bratty attitude. Don’t miss that bitch.”
I clenched my fists so tight my nails pricked skin. My mother died when I was only three years old, you dickwad. She wasn’t a bitch. She just didn’t like your attitude.
“But that doesn’t matter,” Father continued with a wave of his hand missing its pinky. “Say hello to Vane, sweetheart.”
I did no such fucking thing. I stared Vane down. He stared back, drawing a thin, small blade from the inside of his jacket sleeve. He twirled it effortlessly, the blade glinting even in the ugly lights of the office. Then, wobbly and awkward like he had never done it before, he smiled, baring a mouth full of pristine white, straight teeth stark against his dark skin.
“So mercs use whitening strips,” I snarked.
Ignoring me again, Father said, “No pleasantries. Love it. Vane is going to keep an eye on you while I figure out how we move forward.”
He rose to his feet. My sneer faded when he added in a low voice, “If we can move forward at all.”
Vane twirled the knife in his fingers again and exchanged places with my father. The chair groaned under his weight as he leaned forward.
“Let’s get to know each other, Miss Bates.” His tone was a deep, rumbling purr, and yet it was somehow smooth and monotonous, void of any cadence or anything that would make him sound human.
I knew in my marrow that this man was a monster—a killer—and that he had no business here. No business following the orders of Walter Bates to hold his own daughter hostage just for being seen with a member of the Devil’s Luck.
Did I fuck up by breaking a Wolverine code? Yes. Did I deserve to be tied to a chair and punched by a fellow club member? Fuck no. Did I deserve to be looked at like an icon of sin by my father? Fuck. No.
Was I going to get out of this alive?
Fuck. Yes.
Mr. Flippy-Knife here wasn’t going to intimidate me into some whimpering little girl promising she’d never betray Daddy again. He could try. He could make me bleed and cry and beg. But it would not break me. Not now, not ever.