Page 116 of Degradation

Mace grabs her, subdues her, as she lashes out with her hands being the only weapon she has. She’s wearing a flimsylittle nightgown. It shows off every curve she has, it shows the slight roundness of her stomach too.

“Please.” She sobs. “Please let my daughter go.”

I narrow my eyes. My mind registering that somewhere in this house, Grace is also here.

“Grace.” A gruff voice repeats.

We all tense when we see who it is. The great man himself.

Titus Ratcliffe.

He’s holding an assault rifle, has it pointed right at me, as if he’d have the nerve to pull the trigger.

“Let her go.” He says.

“You don’t give the orders around here.” I spit. Like fuck I’m going to do that anyway, not when it’s taken me this long to find her, this long to hunt the bitch down.

It’s curious that she is here though. Curious that she’d be so easy to capture. I would have thought my brother would have been more imaginative than this. Perhaps he doesn’t want to lose face, perhaps this nurses his ego more.

After all, this ties everything up with a neat little bow. He gets his rival. I get the whore.

“Momma…” The girl in my arm squeals, getting free from my grasp.

“Devin…” Cooper says, taking a cautious step like he’s no longer on my side. Like I’m a grenade about to go off.

I frown, staring at the room, feeling suddenly like the entire tables have flipped. That everyone here is against me.

“Momma…” The girl screams again, louder.

I look down and that face, that serene, beautiful face of my jezebel changes. The blue eyes turn brown. The smirk vanishes. Instead of a fully grown woman, I’m holding a teenager.

It’s Grace. Not Paitlyn.

What the fuck is going on? What the… I shake my head, trying to clear it. I know it was a trick, a momentary lapse, butI can’t tell the others that. I need them to trust me, to look up to me. If they realise what I am, I won’t get that, I won’t have loyalty, I’ll end up with a bullet in my head.

I yank the girl’s hair, pulling her head back until her neck is exposed. With a small blade, I trace along her jugular. “Be a good boy and drop the rifle, Titus.”

The mother moans, sobs, says something incomprehensible, but I’d put money on her telling him to do it, to surrender, to give in to save their precious daughter.

Titus looks between us like he’s weighing up whose life is worth more to him, his or his family.

“You’ll take them to Oblivion.” He spits.

I shrug. Even though we all know that’s the case, it’s not my decision to make.

“I can’t, I won’t…” Titus screws his face up, staring back and forth between his precious wife and his precious daughter. “She’s seventeen.” He says. “She’s a child.”

I tilt my head, taking a deliberate sniff of the girl in question. I have no interest in children, no interest in anything beyond one woman and my revenge, and yet, I’m more than happy to torment this fucker.

“Bastard.” He cries. “Get your filthy fucking hands off her.”

“Won’t be the only ones on her the minute she turns of age.” I smirk. We all know her future, know what will happen. This bitch will be auctioned off. Her purity will fetch a fine price considering who her parents are. And after that, well, let’s just say, she’ll be lucky to make her thirtieth birthday.

Those words clearly send him over the edge, he pulls the trigger, narrowly missing my ear. Too bad the man is a poor shot, a little more to the left and he might have actually made a difference.

Cooper jumps on him, wrangling the weapon from his grasp, then uses the butt of it to knock him to his knees.

“Please,” Titus cries. “Let her go. Just let her go.”