I try to stand again.
“Please let go.”
The man ignores me completely and instead places a hand on the bare skin of my right thigh.
My entire body reacts in an instant. Every nerve ending lights up with panic and I stop breathing. My skin crawls, images of my dead uncle in blood and bits drawing the nauseaup my throat. I feel like I’m in a cage of vipers—saved from one dangerous man, thrown into a room full of others.
His palm smooths down my thigh, dipping inwards, just inches from my apex. Sweat leaches from my pores and I struggle to get out of his grip.
The room spins, black suits and dark eyes all blurring into one.
Then a deafening crack explodes beside my ear.
For a split second I think someone punctured my ear drum, but then warmth splashes across my cheek.
The man beneath me jerks violently and his grip loosens. And suddenly we’re falling.
His body slides bonelessly off the chair, dragging me down with him to the floor.
A scream tears through the air—I can’t tell if it’s mine—then a hundred things seem to happen at once.
Chairs scrape backward, men shout, security floods the room. All the while, I stare numbly at the blood soaking into the collar of the dead man beneath me. A dark hole sits neatly between his eyes.
My ears ring violently as someone shakes my shoulders. I look around in a daze, piecing together what just happened.
The man who’d pulled me onto his lap is dead.
Someone in this room shot him between the eyes.
My gaze lifts to Fiero like it always does, like a magnet. He’s still positioned calmly at the end of the table but there’s a gun in his hand and it’s pointing right at the man on the floor.
His expression is the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen. He doesn’t look at all moved by the fact he just killed someone for touching me. He looks alarmingly controlled.
Then his gaze lifts to someone behind me and he coldly barks an order.
“Get her out of here.”
Someone speaks—a woman—but I can’t make out thewords. I just see Fiero pocket the gun and remove his gaze completely.
A jacket is folded over my shoulders and someone grips my arms through it, pulling me to my feet. I come face-to-face with Vivienne who peers back at me with a surprisingly concerned look on her face.
“Come on, Pfeiffer. Walk with me.”
I let her guide me firmly through a different exit concealed behind yet another heavy velvet curtain.
“W-where are we going?” My voice is quiet—meek. It terrifies me.
“Upstairs, to the penthouse.”
Even in my shocked daze my heartbeat jumps. But the look on Fiero’s face just now did not convey he wanted me in his apartment.
“Why?”
“That’s where he wants you.”
But, I… I don’t understand.”
We reach the elevator and she steers me inside. When the doors hiss shut, she turns me to face her.
