Page 146 of Cara

His reply snaps with a whip’s intensity. “I’mnotasking.”

Xavier flings the front door open, but instead of guiding me into the night, his arm extends forward, his gun aimed beyond the porch. His spine stiffens, a warning sign that something sinister lurks just beyond my sight.

He takes a step back. And then another.

“Strata.”

The moment the name slips coldly from Xavier’s lips, my eyes scour the room in search of a weapon, propelled purely by instinct. A lamp. One of his mother’s garden stakes. Then my gaze stills on the man blocking the exit—and the world nearly gives out from under me.

No.

It can’t be.

“Isaac.”

Xavier

“Isaac.”

The moment Sophie breathes out that name, I’m trying to understand it… because this is Dominic Strata. The relentless bastard who has shadowed my every step for years. The man who vowed he had captured my wife and murdered her.

A stranger to us both.

Except he isn’t looking at her like a stranger.

Dominic’s smile is almostnervousas he angles his head to get a better view of her. It isn’t surprising because she’s fucking gorgeous. But I’m instantly violent at his goddamn audacity, envisioning what the sockets of his eyes would look like raw and hollow. As she tightens her grip on my arm and I see a flash of terror in her eyes, I realize this isn’t the first time she’s faced this man.

My eyebrow arches. “Isaac?”

“It’s good to see you, Cara.”

Another name. Another blow.

My eyes widen, understanding.

Strata tome. Isaac toher.

As if a frigid bucket of ice has been hauled over myhead—has been suddenly and viciously injected into my fucking veins—the last four years barrel down on me.

And I go from cold tofrozen.

Heorchestrated Victoria’s arrival on Sophie’s doorstep in Madrid.Helured Sophie to Reykjavík under false pretenses, using her own sister against her. And this man—ourenemy—spent the last year, hundreds of days and nightswithmy wife, bending her mind to his will and relaying her progress to her bastard father.

He told me she was dead… but he had her tohimself.

My chest heaves violently, a fierce rage surging through my veins like wildfire.

“You don’t know how many times I almost told you everything. I'm sorry for lying to you,” Dominic tells her—and her alone.

Sophie’s hand slides away from my shirt, and intense anger crashes over me as I sense her resolve fading.

No fucking way they win.

We’ll fight our goddamn way out of this house.

He is just a man.

My thumb clicks the safety off the pistol.