Page 116 of The Ashes of Summer

Tamara folds her arms and leans back against the wall, working very hard at looking bored.

"Summer…" Jacob starts.

"No." I don't take my eyes off her. "Because I'm not stupid, and I'm too tired to pretend I am." I point at him on the bed. "You see that man?"

Something in her face closes, just slightly.

"He's my fiancé. And tonight he turned the entire fucking world upside down to get to me. He walked into a house he knew might kill him. He nearly died on a corridor floor with my name in his mouth." My voice is shaking now and I let it. "So you can keep your hands professional and your bitchy pining to yourself."

Silence. Then she pushes off the wall, steps in close, and lets out one short, cold laugh.

"Wow." She tilts her head, examining me like something on a slide. "I know daddy was the DA, sweetheart, but you really don't get to tell me what to do."

And it's the wrong word. On the wrong night. Of all the things she could have reached for, she reaches for daddy—and it drops the floor out from under me and I'm back on that mountain, back in that room, back drowning in everything Papa was and everything he did and every life his wanting cost, Annalise and Harris's Sarah and the women in that warehouse and me, me tied to a bed as the last installment on a debt I never knew he owed⁠—

My hand swings before I've decided anything at all.

CRACK.

Her head snaps sideways.

The sound of it hangs in the room. My chest is heaving. My palm sings. She turns back to me slowly, one hand rising to her cheek, pure astonishment on her face—like it genuinely never occurred to her that the DA's soft little daughter might have anything like this in her.

Neither did I, if I'm honest. But there's a lot in me now that wasn't there a week ago. Jackson put most of it there himself, filing me down until this was what was left.

Even Jacob looks stunned.

Good.

She presses her palm flat to a cheek already blooming red, staring at me like she's never seen me before in her life.

Then, very quietly: "I'll go get that kit."

She walks out holding her face, and doesn't look back.

The door's barely shut before there's a soft knock, and Adelaide's head comes cautiously round it, her eyes flicking between both of us, reading the wreckage.

"…What happened in here?"

I lean back against the wall, still breathing hard, my hand still stinging, and for the first time in days something in my chest feels almost quiet.

"Just teaching someone a lesson about trying to get her claws into my man."

Adelaide looks at me. Then at Jacob, bloody and stunned on the bed. Then back at me.

And she shrugs. "Fair."

Chapter 37

She Chose Violence

Jacob

Now really isn't the fucking time for my cock to be standing to attention.

I'm covered in blood. My shoulder feels like somebody shoved molten metal through it. There's dried blood on my chest that isn't even all mine. And yet the second Summer slapped Tamara across the face, something dark and possessive inside me practically purred.

Christ.