This time, I can’t hold back my snort at that half-ass apology. All eyes swing my way, and though I hate being the center of attention, I meet each and every pair. Don’t nobody in here intimidate me. True, I bleed like everyone else, and a bullet has no respect of persons. But men aren’t the only ones not afraid of dying. Do I want to? No, but none of them put fear in my heart.
Besides, they don’t know me. If they come for me, they betternot miss. I can have their brains oozing out of their dicks or pussies if they try me.
Like Hallmark, I have a drug for every occasion.
“Excuse me. Who are you again?” Dimitri’s wife—Elena, Helena?—asks, plump lips curled into a sneer.
“No one,” Michelle hurriedly interjects, mugging me. “She’s no one at all.”
“Then why is ‘no one’ at this table?” Elena/Helena demands. “She needs to learn her place.”
My place?Oh, this bitch loose…
“Because it’smytable,” Asad says, a vein of pure steel threading through his voice. “And as she is my fiancée, I’m the only one who determines where ‘her place’ is—and that’s right here. With me.”
Well, fuck. This is happening.
I slowly inhale, hold that breath, then exhale.
The room erupts with gasps, murmurings, and “what the fucks” from Michelle, Kareem, and Aryn. Horror spreads across Elena/Helena’s face, and she pales as if one of the Four Horsemen just rode through the dining room door and took a shit on top of her glazed salmon. Hell, it’s notthatfar off. She’s staring Death in the eyes, and he’s wearing Asad’s face.
Dimitri cuffs the back of his wife’s neck and from the wince she doesn’t manage to fully cover, I can only imagine what awaits her at home. She unknowingly just insulted the fiancée of the newly appointed head of the Cross organization, and by doing that, the boss. Yeah, her ass is going to pay. And Dimitri doesn’t appear to be the gentle sort.
“Prince, is this some kind of prank?” Michelle snaps, slapping her hand on the table. The crystal glasses tremble. Soft, feminine gasps follow her outburst, and Chelsea, Don Amato’s wife, throws a disgusted look Michelle’s way. Dimitri’s lip curls up in distaste, and the rest of the men stare at her, their expressions stoic. “This is in extremely poor taste. You have Aryn sitting right next to you, and you want to joke about marrying that, that… thing.” She jabs a finger in my direction.
“That’s Mrs. Thing to you,” I say, lifting my crystal tumbler in a mocking toast, the petty retort concealing the thick, deafening thudding of my heart and the damn near primal urge to grab my steak knife, fly across this table, and send fine china scattering to bury the blade in her throat. This ho has made it her life’s work to disrespect me, and a bitch can only be expected to take so much. None of these men would ever accept it, but because she’s Marcus’s wife, I’m supposed to?
Miss me with that. Especially now.
“Ember,” Asad growls, and I shrug, sipping my drink. Tightening my grip on it so I don’t commit the venial sin of throwing the fucker at his head.
“Could you please answer your mother, Prince?” Aryn asks, voice trembling and reed thin. She sounds on the verge of crying, but a closer glance at her face, and there’s no evidence of moisture gleaming in her eyes. Just a fury hot enough to burn this whole damn house down to its foundation. “Are you seriously marrying someone else?”
The “and not me” isn’t spoken, but it’s definitely implied.
“Ember?” I look across the table at Kareem and meet his inexplicably hurt dark gaze. “Is this true? Are you and my brother engaged?”
Before I can reply, abruptly Asad rises from his chair, the screech of wood scraping wood jarring.
“Quiet.” He doesn’t raise his voice, but the low, sensual, authoritative timbre silences every sound in the room. “Ember. Come here.”
My mind screamsfuck you!but my body is already on the move. It instinctively heeds him as if he’s Geppetto pulling my invisible strings and I’m his helpless puppet. In this moment, I’m a slave to my flesh, and as I near him, the shouts to keep walking until I hit the front door and freedom ring in my head. But they’re overruled and drowned out by the primal governing of the physical.
What is this fucking power he has over me? He displayed itat the cemetery, in my kitchen, in my study… I shake my head even as I near him, and he encircles my wrist, those long, elegant, and lethal fingers branding my skin.
More importantly, how do I break free of it?
“As I just mentioned, the reasons of this dinner are twofold. The first is to reforge the alliances between the Cross family and the organizations represented here. The second is to announce my engagement. Let me formally introduce everyone to my fiancée, Ember.” He pauses. “Ember Cross. Marcus’s only daughter.”
A silence so loud blasts in the room, I restrain myself from lifting my hands to my ears and covering them like muffs. The expressions range from astonishment to confusion to rage at the bomb he just dropped.
Then, in the next heartbeat, a cacophony of voices rise, shouting questions or exclaiming disbelief. Aryn and Michelle, both on their feet, shout, but their complaints are lost in the rest of the noise.
But none of them are louder than the pulse thundering in my veins, ricocheting against my skull.
Ember Cross. Marcus’s only daughter.
It echoes in my head, louder and louder, stronger like the wind of a hurricane, screaming, drowning everything else out but its destruction. Because that’s what his outing of me is. A destruction of who I was before this moment. For the first time, my whole name, my paternity, myexistence, is being declared aloud. And I’m shaken. I’m humbled. I’m vulnerable. I’m lost. I’m… liberated.
