Page 240 of A Vicious Love

“And if you find another woman,” I continued, “I remove her too. Then the next one. And the next. I will empty every pretty little option your family sets in my path until you understand that Sienna is not a placeholder you can exchange because I took too long to claim what was already mine.”

Her father stared at me.

The word mine had come out before I could stop it.

I was not a good person.

I had never pretended to be.

Good men did not build empires, or enjoy the sound of powerful families learning fear.

I was a bastard.

A violent, selfish, controlling bastard with blood in his history and worse in his hands.

And this bastard wanted Sienna.

As mine.

The realization moved through me without permission. I smothered it immediately. This was not feeling. That sick low ache that had been sitting under my ribs since Damius told me the Bellemeres had pulled her from the merger.

Men like me built systems and expected them to stay where I put them. Sienna had been beside my name for three years. Her hand had been in mine for three years. Her voice had softened rooms I didn’t ask her to soften. Her little hand please had become part of the way events worked, part of the way my body expected to stand at tables, bars, foyers, country clubs.

I didn’t like change.

That was easier than admitting I liked how she traced my tattoos with her thumb while speaking to my brothers. Her silence at recent events had made every room feel wrong.

My fantasies about her had become daily torment. Daily. Her in silk. Her in my bed. Her mouth parted under mine in the car. Her thighs parting for my hand, her voice saying whispering Daddy.

The thought hit hard enough that my jaw tightened.

Wrong fucking time.

Her father watched me like he sensed something dangerous but could not identify which shape it had taken.

“I always get what I want,” I said.

“You would fight the Bellemere council and Damius over a woman you spent three years avoiding.”

“Yes.”

The answer came without hesitation.

I told myself it was because I didn’t like losing. Because that was also true. I hated losing almost as much as I hated men touching things I had not decided to give.

Her father looked toward the path, then back at me. “Celeste will be withdrawn from active consideration.”

“If her name appears in one Crow-facing document after sunrise tomorrow, I’ll assume you lied.”

“She will be withdrawn.”

“And Sienna?”

“The matter will not be mentioned to Sienna.”

“By anyone?”

He hesitated again. My patience snapped thinner.