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I had seen fear. I had seen anger. I had stood in a room with a man who was losing control of himself, and I knew exactly what that looked like on someone with his fist clenched at the ready to swing.

This was none of that.

There was so much rage in that face. An enormous amount of it, more than I have ever seen in another human being. And not one single part of it looked to be going anywhere any time soon.

His hand on Briggs’s throat wasn’t even shaking. It was the type of quiet fury that was so sinister, I wasn’t surprised when the rapist in his hand pissed himself.

All of that rage was held perfectly still. Locked and aimed on one man I just knew wouldn’t be breathing for much longer.

And in that moment, I didn’t see the man who had fed me chocolate out of his own hand.

I knew exactly why every hardened criminal at Ashlock had been terrified.

Why he owned every single one of them.

And now he was ready to murder once again and all for…

The woman he owned.

37

IN YOUR NAME

ANNA

“Don’t… don’t do it, Ghost.” My voice came out of me in pieces, and I barely recognized any of it.

“Please. Please don’t. He isn’t worth it,” I tried again, knowing that he looked to be only seconds away from killing him. But when he didn’t look at me, I wasn’t sure he could even hear me at this point. Not when his eyes stayed exactly where they were, on the man kicking at the wall. But then he answered me, and it came out so chillingly calm that I wondered whether this was the real him. Whether everything else had been the performance. And the murderous intent underneath it was so heavy that I couldn’t catch a proper breath.

“You’re right, he isn’t worth it,” he agreed before turning his head to me and telling me in a tone that dropped even darker,

“But you are.”

“That’s not what I…”

“Enough!” he growled at me, and I flinched, because he had never once sounded that angry with me before. And whatever was left in me that might have argued simply stopped, despite knowing what it would cost. It was an order, and I was too afraid to challenge it. Even to save a man’s life. A life I knew deep down he didn’t deserve to keep, considering what he had tried to do to me. And after what he had said to me while he was doing it, about me not being the only one, it was clear he had done this before and expected to do it again.

Because this had nothing to do with rules, or codes, or any of the things I thought I had worked out about him. Somebody had put their hands on something he believed was his, and there was going to be a price for it. Which meant there was not one thing I could say that would change the outcome he had set.

Then he looked at me properly.

At the blood down the front of me. At the way I was standing with one arm across my ribs. At my mouth.

And I finally saw it.

All the fury the file had been trying to warn me about. Every single thing that had made eleven men wary of one chained prisoner and made a whole ward change direction rather than walk near him. It had been in him the entire time and he had never once let me see it. But now it was right there in his face and there was so much of it that I couldn’t look away.

And he knew.

“Turn around,” he rumbled out the command, making me tremble.

“What?”

“I am going to ask you this only one time… Turn around, little bird. You do not need to see this.” The sinister undertone was hard to miss. Yet despite this, I foolishly didn’t turn around. I had made so many mistakes up until now, I barely knew where to begin to list them. But I knew without a shadow of doubt, that this was at the very top of them.

Because this… this was the very worst mistake I made.

He gave me the chance. He told me not to watch and he meant it.