My muscles braced for punishment. The air shimmered with violence.

Jethro’s hand suddenly shot out, capturing my throat. Without a sound, he spun me around, and marched me backward out of the kennel. The sun kissed my skin, fanning the warmth I’d tried so hard to keep hold of from talking to Kite. I embraced it, hugging it close, so Jethro’s ice didn’t slice me into pieces.

His fingers tightened around my neck but I refused to claw at his hold. I repay in kind. Whatever I did to him in self-defence, I’d get back ten times worse. But none of that mattered now because I knew how to survive.

By being above them. By being untouchable on the inside even while they broke me on the outside.

“You think you’ve got it all figured out, don’t you?” His arm hoisted me onto the tips of my toes. Breathing was difficult, not fighting was impossible, but I permitted it. All I did was stare silently into his golden eyes.

“I understand what you’re doing.” He smiled. “But mark my words. You won’t win.” Shaking me, he unwound his fingers, then smoothed the front of his jeans. The sun gleamed on the gold buckle of his crocodile skin belt.

My stomach clenched, but I held my ground. Raising my chin, I whispered, “Mark my words. I will win. Because I am right and you are wrong.”

Jethro seethed, silence thick between us.

“You’re so high and mighty, aren’t you, Ms. Weaver? So sure you’re the one in the right. What if I told you, your ancestors were scum? What if I showed you proof of their corruptibility and eagerness to hurt others in their chase for wealth?”

Lies. All lies.

My family tree was impeccable. I came from honest and good and hardworking stock. Didn’t I?

I ignored my rushing heartbeat.

Jethro stepped closer, crowding me. “The things your family did to mine sicken me. So continue on your quest believing you’re pure, because in a few hours you’ll know the truth. In a few hours, you’ll realise we aren’t the bad guys—it’s you.”

My throat closed up. I didn’t think he could say anything to crumble my fortress so soon, but every word was a carefully planted spade, digging at my foundation until I stood on crumbling ground.

My eyes danced over his, trying to decipher the truth.

Were my bloodlines tarnished with crimes I didn’t know about? My father hadn’t exactly been forthcoming with our history, apart from telling us our family had always been involved in weaving and textiles. It was how we were granted the last name Weaver. Just like the Bakers, and the Butlers, and every other trade that dictated their last names.

Jethro chuckled. “Don’t believe me?” His hands landed on my shoulders, pushing me backward. I stumbled, wincing as my spine collided with the bricked wall of the kennel.

“Don’t believe your forefathers were sentenced to death by hanging for what they did to mine?” His gaze latched onto my mouth. “Don’t believe you’re alive because the Hawks granted them mercy in return for a few signatures on a few debts?”

His voice dropped, sending a constellation of warning skittering over my skin. “Don’t believe I’m fully within my right to do whatever I damn well please to you?”

His touch seared through my jacket and maxi dress, sending unwanted intensity down my arms.

Do I believe it? Could I believe it? That everything I understood of this situation was reversed?

Mind games. Illusions. All designed to trip me up.

Shaking my head, I snapped, “No. I don’t believe it.” My blood pressure exploded, thundering in my ears. His focus was absolute, and it burned, oh how it burned. “Nothing you say will make you the victim in this situation. Nothing you show me will make this permissible. You think I believe a ludicrous debt that you say is over six hundred years old. Wake up! Nothing like that would hold up in a court of law these days. I don’t care that you’ve staged my disappearance, or following my family with a loaded pistol. I don’t believe any of this, and I certainly don’t believe you have anything law abiding on your side.”

Jethro scowled but I continued my tyrant.

“All I believe is you’re a bunch of sick and twisted men who made up some bullshit excuse to make themselves feel justified while tearing other’s lives apart. Show me where you have the right to own me. No one has that right. No one!”

He chuckled, gold eyes growing dark. His body language switched from stand-offish to oozing with sexual innuendo. It was like watching a glacial melt, shedding winter for volcano heat.

“I like it when you’re feisty. Your whole perception of the world is warped. You live in a fairytale, princess, and I’m about to destroy it.”

His shoulders softened, lips parting; his gaze caressed my face to land on my mouth. “You think we don’t have men in high places? Men who make what we say absolute law? You think we got to the level of standing in society or the obscene amount of wealth we have by not using the very same law you think will protect you for our gain?”

His voice whispered over me, threading with his heady scent of woods and leather. “So stupid, Ms. Weaver. We own more than your family. We own everything and everyone. Our word is unbreakable. And we have proof.”

He leaned in; the violence he emitted switched to dangerous lust, buffeting me harder against the wall. His eyes were rivers of fire, annihilating my argument, dragging me under his spell. “You think I can’t make you do what I want?”

I sucked in a breath.

He’d never looked at me like that. Never given any hint he might find anything about me exciting. He treated me like a leper. He looked at me as if I were a different species—a species not evolved enough to warrant his sexual attention.

But that’d changed.

His interest trapped me, consuming me better than threats and tightly restrained anger. This was unexplored territory. Lust and attraction and flirting were terrifying because I was the novice and he was the expert.

I couldn’t fight against something that made me feel.

Jethro’s nostrils flared, fingers twitching on my shoulders. His voice lowered to a husky whisper—a whisper best suited for seduction. “You think you deserve a life built on other’s blood? You think you’re worthy?” The rhythm and volume turned the horrible questions into a poem rather than curse.

Don’t fall for it. Don’t let him win.