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“How much,” I grit through clenched teeth.
Deimos’ lips curl at the corners as he shakes his head.
“I think we’re getting a teensy bit ahead of ourselves, don’t you.”
“And I think you invented a fake company just to screw with me.”
He chuckles quietly, and I shiver as he steps even closer to me. His hand comes up, and I bite back a gasp when two of his fingers brush the underside of my chin, making me raise my eyes to his.
“Well, well, well,” he growls. “Look who grew a spine in the last six years.”
“Fuck y—”
I jolt, adrenaline exploding through my body as Deimos’ powerful, tattooed hand grips my jaw tightly.
His scarred hand.
The hand I saw him cradle protectively as it dripped blood on the night of the fire.
The night he destroyed it all.
“For a girl who’s a business student at the graduate level,” he rasps, “you’re being shockingly cavalier and unprofessional with someone who is nowyour boss.”
I shudder and then bark out a cold laugh. “You’re not my boss.”
“On the contrary. I have your internship acceptance contract sitting in my email, signed by your academic advisor, that says I most certainly am.”
My eyes lance into his. “It’s an unpaid internship, and I’m completely free to quit any time I—”
“Actually, this internshipdoespay.” My body shivers as his hand grips my jaw a little tighter and he leers down into my face. “It pays three hundred million dollars, to be exact. Isn’t that astonishing.”
I stare at him.
You son. Of. A. Bitch.
“You’re joking.”
He says nothing. But his hand releases my jaw. A cold sensation ripples up my spine, my skin turning to gooseflesh as Deimos slowly begins to walk around me. Part of me wants to turn my body to follow his steps, as if he’s a wild animal who will pounce the moment I take my eyes off him.
But another part of me refuses to let him pull my strings. Because I know he does this. I’ve watched him do it before: herding people, getting them to play directly into his hand in subtle, conniving ways.
So instead, I stay right where I am, facing forward, my chin held high.
“I’ll be giving the companies I snatched out from under Gerard’s nose back to you and your mother.”
“How very charitable of you,” I sneer.
He steps back into my line of sight, a cold, unnerving smile on his lethally gorgeous face.
“I am many things, Dahlia,” he growls quietly. “But I can assure you,charitableisn’t one of them. As I was saying: I’ll be giving the companies and assets back to you both, for a price.”
That shivering sensation walks it way up my spine again as he continues to circle me, a lion closing in for the kill.
“And again,” I say icily. “How much.”
“You’re going to be mine.”
My pulse skips as something twisted lurches awake in my core—deep in that dark, dangerous place I work so hard to keep locked down tight.
