She walks into the courtroom and everyone stops breathing.

Except for me. I breathe harder.

Blood surges through my body like a dam just broke, flooding every distant vein. I flex my fists. The instinct to fuck on sight is so strong I can barely stay in my chair.

It isn’t because she’s beautiful, though she is. Or dressed to kill, ditto. She’s wearing a cream silk blouse tucked into a skinny, ass-skimming skirt and high-heeled sandals that tie like a little suede rope around her ankles. If they’re supposed to make me think of all the things I could do to her, mission accomplished.

Chin high, she strides past the first row of seats. Heads swivel. The chatter stops.

Here she comes, the lovely grieving widow. Not exactly widow. Fiancé. And she’s practically a child, only twenty-three.

When Dolly Parton wrote Jolene, she was imagining a girl like Grace Garrett. With flaming locks of auburn hair, with ivory skin, and eyes of emerald green. The lyrics are like Grace’s own personal Missing poster. Along with a list of the things I jerk off to every night.

There are a few descriptives Dolly didn’t think of, like a click-bait body and a stern, craggy-faced minister for a father. This chick was born for social media. The press loves her. She’s got a good-girl pedigree, and she looks amazing no matter what she’s doing. Sitting, walking, crying, or wishing me stone-cold dead.

That’s the part everyone is here to see. The silent explosion when our eyes meet. The epic, David and Goliath battle between her and me. Evil on one side, good on the other.

That’s what makes me hard. What can I say? I’ve always liked contrast.

Grace doesn’t care if I’m taller, richer, stronger, smarter, and better-looking than anyone she’s ever met. She knows the world loves an underdog, and she’s going to take me down. She’s here to show everyone what a monster I am.

As if they don’t already know.

My proclivities have been the stuff of gossip for years. When the jury looks at me, they think they know me. They put rumor and wishful thinking together, and create the perfect monster. And they love it. Something makes a brutal sort of sense in their world, and that something is me.

If only they knew what Grace knows, and I know. They’d discover that they’ve got the story backwards.

I’m not the villain in this tragic drama.

She is.

“Jesus,” I mutter as I watch her bend over to hug James’s parents.

“What?” my lawyer says.

“Those legs.”

“You want to lose?” he murmurs back.

“No,” I say. “And I won’t.”

Her father’s not here. He came for opening arguments last week, but hasn’t been back since. He has too many people to preach to, I suppose, too many souls to save. Her mother sits beside James’s parents and they all stare straight ahead. The three of them look numb, half-dead inside. His mother’s eyes are vacant and helpless.

She probably thinks I don’t notice. That I don’t care.

I do care. And I’d put her only son in the ground all over again if I had to.

Grace strides down the aisle, her heels clicking in the heavy silence. Everyone’s waiting for her to look at me. That’s when the fireworks will start.

Her sea-green eyes flash in my direction. I look over just in time to catch her gaze.

Every time she looks at me, it feels like sucking on jagged glass. Even though it hurts like hell, there’s something beautiful about it. I shouldn’t relish the way it cuts, but I do.

Lips pursed, she takes in my suit, and then, the body underneath. She stares at the parts she shouldn’t, the large, powerful parts that could crush her. Hard as she tries to push her forbidden thoughts away, she can’t help but imagine what a man of my height and strength looks like naked. She wonders if I’d be as ruthless with her tiny body as I was with her fiancé.

Yes, I mouth. A frown crumples her brow.

The air is thick with her hatred, but I’ve never wanted to fuck anyone more.

This is biblical stuff, her and me. First I killed her man, and now I want to fill her with my seed. Plant my flag on her gorgeous body and stake my claim.

The whole city is on her side, and why not? I’m the wealthy scoundrel who’s up to his neck in big government contracts. I dispatch mercenaries around the world to retrieve dangerous information and make things, well, challenging for our enemies.

She’s Scott Garrett’s daughter, a pretty girl with a touch of fire and brimstone inside her. All she wants is justice. She’s standing up for the little guy. Or in this case, the little girl.

What crap.

I could destroy her life in ten seconds. That’s how long it would take to prove what kind of person she is. A liar. A corrupt, money-hungry bitch.

It would save me a lot of time and millions of dollars if I lose, which, contrary to my cocky bullshit, I just might. But I can’t do it. I can’t out her for the malicious wench she is.

She didn’t learn much from her Daddy, or maybe she did. People love a good story, whether it comes from the Bible or the mouth of a beautiful grieving girl. As long as it reaffirms their view of life, they don’t care if it’s true.

Part of me would love to see her go down. It would be a triumph of truth and justice.

But it would destroy her. Maybe her father’s church, too. And for some reason I can’t fathom, my gut won’t let me do it. Even if it means lying for her, which I’m about to do on the stand. Right hand raised.

I swear, your Honor, I don’t have video of the incident. My property is wired with surveillance like a maximum security prison, but it happened to be on the blink that night. In that one place, right where the incident occurred.

Grace sits down, her eyes glassy with grief. I pity the poor bastard who falls in love with her next. No one can compete with a ghost. He can take on any shape, infect the hearts of the living, haunt a woman’s soul all her life.

In the split second before Grace looks away, I smile. She scowls back. We both know what I’m thinking.

Your secret’s safe with me, sweet girl.

But I’ll get something in return. Someday, somehow, I’m going to make you mine.