Chapter 4 #2
The shock of those words—the distinctly sexual implications—has me suddenly stiff, wavering in my hold on my anger.
“Excuse me?” I ask. But my heart beats a staccato panic in my chest.
“It’s only natural as the youngest of the family.
The one always seeking attention from siblings and parents who couldn’t be bothered with a lonely little girl.
Three siblings, and none of them really played with you, did they?
They were too old. Too busy handling the shame of their father marrying his mistress, even after she bore his child, a beautiful girl who takes after her mother in looks, but not in meekness. ”
I’m so stunned as he lays out my childhood I don’t realize he’s delivered the upper hand back to himself until it’s too late. When I do, my stomach roils.
“Except maybe now. It’s not like you to be speechless, is it?”
I open my mouth, but he’s not done.
“Leila invested in travel to get away from it all. Cal the carpenter—his heart was too soft; he left to make things out of wood. Samuel, in a way, is the only honorable one, warts and all. He hasn’t tried to shirk that shame like the rest of you.
He’s leaned in, knowing the Macklin name is irreparably tarnished.
“But you, Sasha—you couldn’t escape the shame if you tried. Not when you’re the bastard daughter—”
Finally, I regain control of my senses, the anger roaring back into a flame. I don’t care if he hurts me. He doesn’t get to condense my life and my family into a few sentences. No matter how well he’s hit the nail on the head.
“Are you done?”
I press my hand on the table to push myself to standing, but his hand lands on mine.
I try to pull it away, but his fingers wrap around it tight enough that I cry out.
I blink rapidly for a moment, not believing what I’m seeing—and feeling. He’s holding me down.
From somewhere in my periphery, over in the sushi restaurant, someone moves from their seat by the window. It’s all so surreal.
“What the hell are you doing?” I try to pull away, but he grips my hand tight. “Let go of me,” I say, my voice hard.
“Don’t fight it, Sasha. I saw the way you looked at me the moment you walked in.”
“What, like a predator?” The time for helping Sam is long over. Once more, I try to jerk my hand away, but Vincent’s stronger than me by a mile; his fingers are like a vise.
“You’re hurting me,” I manage, because he is, suddenly. A lot. My hand feels like it’s going to crack under the pressure of his grip.
“I’ll let go. But first I need to tell you a little something about your brother.”
My heart thunders in my chest, my stomach roiling. This isn’t happening, is it? It can’t be.
“Sam’s stolen something from me. Something he promised to give me, which he says is now impossible to return.”
“I don’t know anything about my brother’s busin—”
He cuts me off. “Unfortunately, the man has avoided having any offspring, so you’re the next best thing. Someone who means something to him.”
Even with the imminent danger, with my pulse throbbing and every cell in my body screaming to run, some tiny part of me reacts to that statement—that I actually mean something to Sam. But anger quickly strikes that feeling from my chest, twining around the fear pumping adrenaline through me.
Sam knew. He knew how dangerous this man was—that he owed him something—and he let me walk right in like a lamb to the slaughter.
Well, I’m not a fucking lamb.
“I thought it might be a simple exchange,” Vincent continues, contemplative even as he tightens his grip, making my hand spasm with pain. “But my God, when I saw you in that photo—I think I’ve got the better end of the bargain.”
I give up trying to yank my hand free and stand up. It’ll be harder for him to hold me when I’ve got my whole body to use as leverage.
But Vincent stands, too. “That’s the Sasha I wanted to see. That’s the one I was promise—”
A shrill alarm cuts through his words, so loud it makes both of us wince.
But relief floods through me. An alarm means evacuation. People.
Freedom.
And the chance to get him off guard. I wrap my free hand around my wrist and grit my teeth, pulling hard and fast.
He’s not prepared, and I slip from his grasp.
I should run, but I’m so bewildered at suddenly being freed—and then immediately furious at being held on to in the first place—that I do the first thing I can think of. I rear back, curl my fist, and punch the man square in the face.
Only, I’ve never punched a man before, and I used the hand he’d been holding. The pain is explosive, radiating in excruciating shockwaves up my arm.
But the satisfaction of seeing his head crack backward is delicious. I bite my tongue not to react to the screaming agony in my hand.
But when he turns his face back to me, his fingers at his lip, red with blood, his eyes are steely.
So are the eyes of the man that emerges from the foliage on the other side of the balcony. My heart lurches to my throat. My back was to him at the table, but how did I miss him when I came in? He’s at least six and a half feet and built like a tank, with tiny eyes set in a giant, square face.
“She wants to do this the hard way,” Vincent says over his shoulder, and the big man says nothing, just strides our way.
“No!”
Adrenaline screams through my body. Run.
I whirl around. But the hallway’s not there. I crash head-on into a broad chest. At first, panic chokes me as I think it’s another of Vincent’s men. He’s big and broad. But his coat is heavy under my splayed hands as I push myself away.
I look up. The man’s face is in shadow, a helmet pulled low over his head. But the helmet is red and has a shield on it. Letters, too.
FDNY.
I let out a cry of relief. “Holy shit!” I throw myself back at the firefighter.
He catches me easily, pulling me against him. “Miss,” he shouts over my head. “We’re evacuating the building. You need to come with me.”
He didn’t see what just happened, clearly. Except his words sound tight. Angry, almost. Probably because we’re up here ignoring a fire alarm. “Great, sounds great,” I babble. “Let’s go.” I could sing, I’m so thrilled.
The firefighter, who’s a full head taller than me and feels like he’d be solidly built even without his heavy fire gear, grips me by the waist and tucks me around so I’m behind him.
I’m so surprised I let out a little squeak, though it’s drowned out by the alarm. But there’s something familiar about the way he did that. It was almost like—
“Downstairs. Now,” the firefighter barks over his shoulder. His voice is hard. Gruff.
That tingling familiarity grows to something like recognition.
Even though I should be running away, I lean around him, squinting at his face in the shadow of his helmet.
Then I suck in a breath. It’s not a fireman standing between me and the man who was going to hurt me.
It’s Griffin Kelly.