Page 40 of Inheritance

She squealed, and her bare feet padded across the floor, and she was gone.

He crouched down next to me. I wouldn’t meet his eyes. He reached out, grabbed my chin and lifted my head toward him. His eyes were hard and sharp. Demanding.

“Caroline took some work to become the woman she is today. She was unwilling to be the wife I needed her to be. She was very…”

His eyes narrowed.

“Maladjusted. But under my guidance, under my strict tutelage, she’s become quite the?—”

I spit in his face.

He didn’t flinch.

Silence followed. Thick and instant.

The room itself seemed to hold its breath, waiting for him to move, to lash out, to do what men like him were always expected to do when challenged.

He blinked. Once. Slowly.

Then he stood.

The back of his hand came across my face—not hard, not soft. Calculated. Enough to sting, to hum beneath the skin, to remind me that I was weak.

He wiped the spit from his face with the same hand.

My cheek burned, but I didn’t look away.

He crouched again, this time slower. He didn’t reach for me.

He just stared.

“You should be careful with that mouth,” he said. “I may be married but plenty of my men aren’t. Spit on one of them, they might take it as an invitation.”

I stared back, my pulse pounding in my ears.

He stood again, hands sliding into his pockets.

His eyes raked over me one more time.

“You’ll see Caroline again soon. Maybe then you’ll understand she’s already been saved.”

He turned his back to me and started walking away.

Before he disappeared through the archway, he paused, looked back at me for a long moment.

Then he was gone.

I sat there, the sting on my cheek blooming slow and hot, the metal cuff cold against my ankle.

Gabriel

The Don worked his jaw side to side, the amber liquid in his glass catching the light as he swirled it. He downed the rest of his whiskey in one gulp before speaking, his voice low and deliberate. “How do you know for sure that Nikolai is a traitor?”

I nodded at Damien, and he slid the phone across the large table toward him. He grabbed the phone.

“What is this?” he asked pointlessly.

His face lowered solemnly as he read through the group messages between the man I had killed, Ivan, and Nikolai.