He spins, and in one violent motion, my back slams against the cool stone of the estate’s exterior. The impact knocks the breath from my lungs, and before I can recover, his hand is at my throat—squeezing slightly, warning.
My pulse slams against his palm. The back of my head hurts where it made quick contact with the stone wall.
My body trembles not with fear but with fury. My body can’t mourn; it feels impossible to digest what’s happened. It’s too much for one person at once. It’s far too much for me to comprehend.
The air outside is crisp with the autumn chill, as I continue to shiver, partly from the cold and partly from fear. It’s the kind of night that sinks its teeth into your skin, that whispers winter is almost here. A cold reminder that death has arrived. The type of weather I usually love to ride Lilibet in.
I’m in so much shock, all I can think of is my horse.
I think about the work the maids will have with all the blood. How can they possibly get that much out of the carpets?
I wrench against the hand holding me around my waist and against my throat, but it’s pointless. It’s like fighting against a stone wall, just like the one I’m pressed against.
“Let me go,” I snap. Desperate to be released. I think I need to vomit. My hair sticks to my neck, sweaty from terror.
“You’re in shock,” he murmurs, his voice low like smoke curling through the dark. “You need to breathe.”
His face is so close, too close, the flickering light from the town car’s beams catching on the sharp cut of his cheekbones, the tension in his jaw. He smells clean, crisp, with the faintest trace of a deeper, more dangerous scent.
I recognize the smell instantly. It’s gunsmoke. It takes me back to summers spent on hunting trips with my brothers.
I hate him for touching me. I hate him for being calm. I hate that my body reacts that somewhere beneath the grief clawing at my insides, there is something inside me desperate for his direction.
His hand remains caged around my neck, simply squeezing as a warning.
“Fuck you,” I breathe.
His lips quirk—just barely. It was so quick I could have missed it, but the bastard smiled. I want to claw at him to scream to demand answers that I know he won’t give me. Instead, I press both palms against his chest, shoving him hard. He lets me. He lets my anger wash over him as if it were nothing. Like I’m nothing.
“You knew this was going to happen,” I accuse, my voice shaking.
Hayden’s expression remains unreadable. “Get in the car, Martine.”
I shake my head as best I can against the iron grip at my throat. “Tell me what the fuck is going on.”
A muscle ticks in his jaw. For a second, I think he’s going to ignore me. That he’ll just throw me in the car and silence me by force, but then he leans in slow and measured until his breath ghosts against my temple.
Standing here, draped in the shadow of my family’s massacre, he is unhurried and unbothered.
Dressed in black. A specter. A goddamn omen.
I shouldn’t be surprised. This world has always belonged to men like him. Men who prefer the edges but at no expense to their power, who watch, who pull strings from the dark.
His hand slides from my waist to my forearm, slow and deliberate, his fingers pressing just lightly enough against the inside of my elbow.
A silent warning.
“You’re shaking,” he murmurs.
His voice is deeper than I remember—low and slow, as if he’s savoring the words on his tongue, turning them over before releasing them into the air between us.
I pull my arm away. “My family was just slaughtered, you bastard.”
And while I expect my words to bite, in return, I’m granted nothing—no flicker of sympathy. No apology or support in my grief.
Only his gaze. Steady enough to strip me bare with every passing second.
Then, finally, he tilts his head. “Yes.”
