“Not another word,” Rolan interrupts. His voice is without emotion. “You know, I should kill you,” he says. “But I won’t. Not this time.”
The silence after it is total. Landon’s trembling lips don’t dare part.
Then Rolan pulls the knife back, and, in the same motion, brings the blade down against Landon’s shoulder. A wet thud.
Landon drops, screaming.
I stare.
The moment I understand what happened, Rolan is beside me. I don’t know when he crossed the distance. His hand is on my arm, firm, gripping above the elbow.
“We need to go.”
“He’s—”
“Now.”
His hand tightens.
“But I?—”
“Move, now.”
And I move.
20
ROLAN
I should have killed him.
I should have taken my gun and put a bullet through his left eye the moment his hand touched her arm.
But I didn’t. Because her debt is a leash that keeps her in my house, and a dead creditor makes the leash disappear.
Cold, bloodless arithmetic that I’m performing while my vision narrows to a red point and every muscle in my body screams in a language older than numbers.
He touched her.
His fingers on her elbow, casual, possessive — the grip of a man who has practiced ownership on this woman so many times the gesture has become muscle memory.
She flinched. A small thing, barely visible. And I stood fifteen feet away behind tinted glass and watched it happen and didn’t act, no matter how badly I wanted to.
My security team has Webb’s men on the ground. Two of them carrying guns they’ve never gotten the chance to fire and relying on size rather than skill. Alexei’s men disarmed them in under eight seconds. They’re face down on asphalt behind thebuilding, wrists zip-tied, humbled by their encounter with professionals.
I don’t care about them.
I care about the woman I’m dragging toward the Escalade, not hard enough to bruise, but hard enough to communicate that the pace is non-negotiable. She’s stumbling slightly in those ridiculous black flats with the scuffed toes, her face a mess of confusion and fear.
We reach the car. I spin her, pressing her back against the passenger door. The metal is cold, and she gasps at the contact, her shoulders hitting the armored panel with a dull thud.
“What the hell just happened?” My voice is low. Controlled.
She looks up at me, those hazel eyes wide, wet.
“He’s an old acquaintance. I didn’t know he’d be here. I swear I didn’t?—”
“Stop lying.”
