“Liar!”
“No!” My eyes flew to Jethro. “Besides, it doesn’t matter now. Your firstborn is back from the dead. He’s your original heir. He can be again.” My injuries all flared in time with my raging heartbeat. Fighting against his hold, I did my best to cajole. “You know in your heart Daniel wasn’t fit to rule your empire. But Jethro is. You groomed him. He’s—”
“Shut up!” Cut’s palm smashed against my cheek.
Stars.
I groaned in pain; my head hanging heavily as he let me go.
Cut breathed hard, pacing away.
Trying to tilt my chin and blink through grey and black, I willed Jethro towake. I didn’t want to be alone anymore. I didn’t want to face whatever would happen by myself.
I’m selfish.
Wake up. Please...
Jethro didn't move, slumping in his matching chair, barely breathing.
Cut continued pacing, his boots kicking up diamond dust and soil. “I don’t care if Jethro is back from the dead. You’re forgetting I wanted him hurt. He betrayed me—with you, no less. I shot him on purpose.”
“No.” I shook my head. “That’s not true.”
Cut paused, his eyebrows shooting upward.
I rushed, “You shot Jasmine, but Jethro protected her.” My heart raced, doing my best to touch some sort of humanity before it was too late. “I don’t think you wanted to shoot Jethro. You’ve never understood his condition, but you’re proud of how strong he is—how loyal he is to your family. How much he endured to be everything you ever asked him—”
“Shut the fuck up.” Cut reared backward, wiping his hands on his trouser leg. “You have it all wrong.”
“Enlighten me then. Tell me your secrets. You said you would. You told me I was entitled to know everything.” I couldn’t suck in a proper breath with fear. “I want to know. I have questions. So many, many questions. Tell me the truth of what happened when you claimed my mother. Did you love her? Did you ever feel anything for her to stop from killing her?”
A cold smile spread his lips. “Out of everything,that’swhat you want to know? Unpractical, stupidly romantic things?”
I nodded. “Yes. Because those stupidly romantic things will show me if you ever had a soul.”
He chuckled. “Oh, I have a soul, Nila Weaver.”
“Show me.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Everything.”
Keep him talking. Keep stalling.
“Tell me your story, Cut. Before you end this, make me understand.”
Cut didn’t reply. Instead, he strolled over to an empty table lining the wall and stroked a finger in the thick dust. “I can see through your ploys. I know what you’re doing, but it so happens your request falls in line with my intentions.”
A chill sent fearful frost down my spine.
Throwing me a smile, Cut changed his path and headed toward the crudely made wooden door. The only entrance and exit. “Seeing as extracting truth from you is proving tiresome, let’s move onto more exciting things, shall we?”
I couldn’t speak as terror cloaked me.
I’d tried to stall and now Cut had twisted my agenda with his. I had a feeling I would’ve preferred a fist to the jaw every time I lied rather than what he planned now.
Grabbing the door handle, Cut wrenched the entrance wide. Immediately, two men marched in. Men I hadn’t seen before. The whites of their eyes glowed in the darkness of their skin; yellow dirt stained their skin with war paint while their clothes of jeans and dirty t-shirts marked them as workers inside the mine.
