I kept my face neutral, even as heat surged in my veins.
"The whole time he was talking, his eyes kept..." She trailed off, revulsion darkening her features.
My vision tunneled.
"He suggested that we could work it out," she said quietly, gazefalling to her hands. "Between us. An arrangement... mutually satisfying."
For the first time since I'd walked in, the mask slipped—and beneath it, I saw what turned my blood to ice.
Shame.
"He said what?"
"Damien—"
I was on my feet before I knew I'd moved, chair scraping back, fists shaking with the effort of not putting them through the wall.
"I'm going to kill him."
"Damien."
A black, feral thing uncoiled from the depths of me.
He cornered her. Talked to her like that.
My woman.
Mine.
"I'm going to rip his fucking throat out."
"Damien."
Her command cut through the haze—sharp, unyielding. The same steel she used in boardrooms. The one that made grown men sit down and shut up.
I stopped. Violence swam at the edges of my sight.
She rose, rounding the desk until she stood in front of me.
I caught her hands.
Up close, the damage was worse.
"Emma." My voice broke.
She tried to pull away. I didn't let her.
"I'm going to destroy him," I said quietly.
She snatched her hands from mine, cold anger flooding the place shame had occupied. "And do you know why he made that proposition, Damien? Why I sat there and let him?"
I didn't answer. Couldn't. Panic boxed me in.
She wasn't angry at Nathan. She had shame, yes—violation, disgust—but not this. Not the cold fury radiating off her in waves.
That anger, the kind that pulsed through the room like a living thing, was for me.
"He has leverage," she continued, the words brittle. "Leverage that shouldn't exist. Leverage that someone handed him on a silver platter."
