My father sold me to pay a debt. He paraded me around in a corset that bruised my ribs, offering me up to the highest bidder to save his own miserable life. He looked at me and saw a transaction.
Thayer Thorne looks at me and sees a possession so invaluable he is willing to snap a man’s neck just for letting his eyes linger on my skin.
"Thayer," I whisper.
The word barely scrapes past the tight knot in my throat. It is frail, broken, entirely devoid of volume. There is absolutely no reason he should be able to hear it over the violent sounds of Matteo choking on his own crushed windpipe.
But Thayer freezes.
The absolute, terrifying stillness that washes over his massive frame is instantaneous. It is as if my barely audible voice is a physical tether, violently jerking the beast back from the edge of the abyss.
He doesn't look back at me. He doesn't need to. I can feel the immediate shift in the gravitational pull of the room. Slowly, with a disgust that borders on absolute indifference, Thayer opens his hand.
Matteo collapses to the floor like a sack of broken bones. He hits the carpet hard, immediately rolling onto his side, coughing violently, dragging ragged, desperate gasps of air into his bruised lungs.
Thayer doesn't even glance down at him. He takes a slow, deliberate step back, picking up the encrypted tablet Matteo dropped.
"Get out," Thayer orders, his voice entirely flat, entirely devoid of the murderous rage from three seconds prior. The emotional whiplash is terrifying. "Wait in the armored car. If you ever enter my private residence without explicit clearance again, Dante will be sending your mother your teeth in a velvet box. Am I understood?"
"Yes... Boss," Matteo wheezes, scrambling backward on his hands and knees until he clears the threshold of the door. He doesn't dare look up. He doesn't dare look anywhere near the bed. He drags himself to his feet and practically sprints down the corridor, the heavy front doors of the penthouse echoing with a solid, definitive slam a moment later.
The silence that rushes back into the master bedroom is completely suffocating.
Thayer remains standing near the shattered doorframe, his back to me. His head is bowed slightly, his broad shoulders rising and falling in slow, heavily controlled breaths. He is reining the monster back in. He is locking the cage.
I am trembling so violently the entire mattress seems to vibrate beneath me. I clutch the duvet up to my chin, my knees pulled tightly to my chest. I want to disappear. I want to sink into the mattress and cease to exist.
Slowly, Thayer turns around.
The dim morning light catches the sharp, aristocratic planes of his face. His pale, glacial gray eyes lock onto mine, immediately cataloging the absolute terror radiating from my rigid posture. He crosses the room, his bare feet making no sound on the thick carpet.
He stops at the edge of the bed. The mattress dips under his weight as he sits down, completely invading my personal space. The scent of him—cedar, dark musk, and the sharp, metallic tang of fresh adrenaline—washes over me, entirely overpowering.
He reaches out.
I flinch, a hard, involuntary jerk backward, squeezing my eyes shut, bracing for the inevitable violence. He just almost killed a man. His blood is running hot. My father always struck me when his adrenaline was spiked, unable to separate his rage from his surroundings.
But Thayer’s hand doesn't strike me.
His large, heavily calloused palm cups the side of my face. His touch is shockingly gentle, terrifyingly precise. His thumb brushes over my cheekbone, his fingers tangling lightly in the loose hair at my temple. The contrast between the hand that just crushed a man’s throat and the hand currently cradling my face is enough to completely fracture my mind.
"Open your eyes, Sybil," he murmurs, his velvet voice a low, dark rumble that vibrates straight into my chest.
I force my heavy, tear-soaked lashes apart.
His dead, gray eyes are burning with a dark, territorial intensity. "He will never look at you again. No one will. You are mine to look at. Only mine."
I swallow hard, the taste of copper flooding my tongue from where I had bitten my cheek in my sleep. "Why... why did he come in?" I manage to ask, my voice trembling, desperate to change the subject, desperate to defuse the suffocating intimacy of his touch.
The dark fire in Thayer’s eyes instantly extinguishes, replaced by a cold, calculating void. He drops his hand from my face, the sudden absence of his heat leaving a cold, burning phantom print on my skin.
He looks down at the encrypted tablet in his other hand. His jaw tightens, a muscle ticking furiously beneath the skin.
"Thayer?" I press, my heart beginning to hammer a new, entirely different rhythm of dread. "What happened?"
He looks back at me. For the first time since I met him, there is no cruel amusement in his expression. There is only a grim, absolute finality.
"Your father," Thayer begins, his voice devoid of any inflection, delivering the words like a hollow executioner, "did not pay his debt yesterday with your hand in marriage. The four million dollars is still missing."
