That’s all.
Yes.
Like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
A roaring fills my ears. My pulse slams against my ribs, thick with horror and rage. “Did you know this was going to happen?”
Silence. Long enough to be an answer in itself.
“Yes,” he says finally.
Somehow, it’s worse than a lie.
My breath leaves me in a ragged exhale. “You’re sick.”
The corners of his mouth twitch like he’s amused. “I’ve been called worse.”
The realization is sinking in now, slow and suffocating—my brothers, my father—all of them gone. And I’m standing here with a man who feels less like a nightmare and more like the thing nightmares are made of.
Not a man.
A predator.
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” I whisper.
Hayden watches me for a beat. Then he steps closer, so close I have to tilt my chin to hold his gaze. His suit-clad chest brushes against me, the silk of my gown a whisper between us.
I’m practically painted in this dress, the fabric pooling at my feet, my body wrapped in it like a second skin. It clings to my curves, a mock-neck reminder of my place in high Society—covered, poised, proper.
I want to rip it off.
His gaze darkens, something shifting between us, crackling in the air like the hush before a thunderstorm.
“Get in the car, Martine.” His voice is softer now, coaxing as if I’m something wild. Something volatile.
A wild beast who needs wrangling, and it’s then I realize. It’s me.
I hesitate, lips curling into a snarl, clawing up my throat. My lip lifts over my teeth in something feral, something new—a part of me I don’t recognize born from the wreckage of my life.
Fordham and Dexter are dead.
And I wish I were, too.
Hayden exhales just a fraction harder, and the scent of his cologne curls around me. Smoky metallic edged with something I know could ruin me.
A perfect contradiction.
I go still.
Everything inside me screams to shove him away, to spit in his face, to claw at his throat until he bleeds—
But I don’t move.
I hesitate.
Because the logical part of me—the part that was raised in this world among power and bloodshed—knows he’s right. I know now that whatever comes next is bigger than my grief. Bigger than my rage.
But the other part of me—the part still clinging to ghosts—wants to fight.
