"You expect me to believe that performance?" He straightens his cuff like he didn't just split my face open. "I don't care about your promises. They're worthless. Just like you."
Blood drips onto my dress, blooming across the white fabric in a stain I'll never get out.
"If anyone asks about your face, you fell. Understood?"
I nod mechanically.
"Say it."
"I fell."
"And next time you try to manipulate me?" He leans close, his breath hot against my throbbing cheek. "I'll give you something worth lying about."
He returns to his desk and grabs a folder.
"Close the door on your way out."
I hurry out, passing my sleeve against my bleeding lip, waiting for the collapse. For the tears and the familiar spiral that usually follows these encounters.
But it doesn't come this time.
The sadness and anger are there, hovering at the edges where they've lived for years. But they're being overtaken by something hotter. Impossible to ignore.
Ewan thinks I'm too soft to fight back. Too fragile to ever be anything other than what he's shaped me into. He thinks I'm just a thing to be used and discarded whenever it suits him.
He has no idea that his most trusted guard has already had his mouth on me, that my body is still aching from another man's hands.
He has no idea that in hours, I'm going to spread my legs for Tristan Barlowe in whatever dark corner we can find and let him fuck me senseless.
Not because I'm broken.
Not because I'm desperate.
Because I'm choosing to.
This isn't just about wanting Tristan anymore. It isn't just about feeling alive for the first time in years.
It's about taking something back.
About choosing pleasure. Choosing defiance. Choosing myself in a house that was built to erase me piece by piece.
Ewan wants a vessel?
Fine.
I'll be so empty he won't notice when I hollow myself out completely and fill the space with something else.
Something he will never touch.
Something that is mine.
FORTY-FOUR
KEIRA
Ewan left an hour ago.
Some business emergency pulled him away, and I had to school my expression into disappointment while relief flooded every vein. He made me sit through dinner first, though. The blue dress. The pearls. My split lip throbbing while I smiled and nodded and pretended he isn't the vilest creature on earth.
