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He exhaled, his look piercing her. “Then you have it all wrong, Sloane. Every last bit of it.”
{ Chapter 11 }
“You cannot take away the fire, Reiner—take away the deaths that are on your hands.”
Reiner stared at her, stared at the rogue droplet of amber in her blue eyes that marked her unique above all others. For all of the anger rushing through him, halfway through her story all he wanted to do was drag her into his arms.
Calm her.
Erase the past.
Those minutes in time that had damaged her so. Those minutes that upended her world and put such malice into her blue eyes.
“I don’t mean the fire, Sloane. That happened and there isn’t a thing I can do about that. And it was horrendous and I am in a rage thinking on the pain you must have suffered. But you’re wrong about what happened before the fire.”
“Before the fire?”
“You say I was the one that demanded the lands be cleared. Who told you I ordered it?”
Her brow crinkled. “Why does it matter? What matters is that I ken it was you.”
He bit back a blasphemy. “Who told you it was me, Sloane?”
She sighed. “It was Lord Falsted.”
A caustic chuckle left his throat. “Falsted. Of course the lying bastard would have sent you.”
“Sent me?”
He shook his head. “I didn’t order anything cleared, Sloane. There were no conditions to buying the land.”
“But you said your solicitor handled the transaction, maybe he ordered it on your behalf.”
“The man doesn’t do anything I’m not aware of.” His look bored into her. “Falsted used you, Sloane. He used you to come after me.”
Her fingers clasped together in front of her. “That’s not true. I saw the papers—I saw the agreement—signed by your own hand.”
“You know my signature?”
Her head snapped back. “You expect me to just believe you? Believe you because you walk in here and tell me I was lied to?”
He inclined his head toward her, his look skewering her. “Yes.”
“Yes?” she scoffed. “It’s not enough, Reiner. What makes your word any more trustworthy than Lord Falsted’s?”
The side of his mouth lifted in disgust. “If you even have to ask that question, Sloane, then we are done here.” Reiner spun from her and stalked toward the door.
Without a glance back to her, he let himself into the hallway.
~~~
Sloane stared at the closed door to her room, waiting for it to open.
Willing it to open.
It didn’t.
Reiner was gone.
