This was the distilled version—stripped of gloss, stripped of safety nets, stripped of every performance anyone had ever demanded from her.
Raw.
Perfect.
Dangerous.
She stopped in front of Sinclair, and the bastard broke. Tears smeared down his face before she even bent toward him.
Grace didn’t touch him. Didn’t need to. She lowered herself just enough that her eyes lined up exactly with his.
Sinclair went sheet-white.
“You’re lying.”
He flinched. Hard. Like the word itself hit him with the same force as the rope.
Grace straightened, gaze cutting to me.
“Again?” I asked.
She nodded once.
I reached for her hand—not to comfort, not to lead, just to move her aside so she didn’t get clipped when I swung. She let me. Trusted me.
“N—!” Sinclair tried to scream.
The knot met flesh.
He jerked, strangled noise caught in his throat.
“Again,” Grace said, voice soft as a prayer and twice as lethal.
“Whatever the lady wants.”
I swung.
It landed.
He bucked.
I swung again.
And this time?—
Sinclair shattered. His whole body seized and he vomited, helpless and heaving, the chair rattling under him. Pain didn’t just hit him; it hollowed him out. His sobs tore free—ugly, raw, animal sounds.
“She was getting in the way,” he choked. “She was going to ruin everything.”
No one moved. No one spoke.
“She wouldn’t listen to reason,” he sobbed. “Goddamn crusader. She didn’t understand how the world worked—we had too much money tied up in everything.”
Grace wasn’t breathing.
Sinclair finally forced his swollen eyes open, bloodshot and wild. “So I had them deal with her,” he whispered. “I didn’t carewhat they did or how. Just told them to make the problem go away.”
Grace didn’t explode. Didn’t break. Didn’t even blink.
