“I can’t,” he says flatly.
Golden Eyes reclines, face half in shadow. “That’s not quite true.”
The whole room stills. Even Damon Scott pauses, as if seriously considering the words. Damon Scott is the richest man in the city, the most powerful. The most dangerous. Who can tell him what to do?
“Who are you?” I say, my voice shaking only a little.
“Does it matter?” Golden Eyes asks, his tone mocking.
Righteous anger mixes with desperation. I’m already in a free fall—why shouldn’t I spread my arms? “Who are you?” I say again. “If you’re going to decide my fate, I should at least know your name.”
He leans forward, the light adding amber to his lambent gaze. “Gabriel,” he says simply.
My heart stops.
Scott smiles, his eyes crinkling with pleasure. He’s relishing this, anticipating it. It’s almost sexual, the way he watches me. “Gabriel Miller. The man your father stole from.”
Gabriel Miller smiles faintly. “The last man he stole from.”
Oh, and he made sure my father could never steal again.
Never do anything again.
Pinpricks against my eyes. No, I can’t cry in front of them. I can’t fall apart at all, because my father is lying in a bed, unable to get up, hardly able to move—because of what this man did.
This is the man who turned my father in to the authorities.
This is the man who caused my family’s fall from grace.
I push down the knot in my throat. “You—” A deep breath, because it’s taking all my self-control not to launch myself at him. “You’re a murderer.”
If Scott is the king of the underworld, Gabriel Miller is a god. His empire extends across the southern states and even overseas. He buys and sells anything worth money—drugs, guns. People. My father warned me to stay away from him, but then why did he secretly take bribes? Why did he betray Gabriel Miller, knowing how dangerous he was?
My father isn’t dead, but without a heavy dose of pain medicine, he wishes he were.
“I’ve killed men,” Gabriel says, standing to full height. I can’t help but step back a little. Would he hit me? Worse? His eyes narrow. “When they lie to me. When they steal from me.”
Like my father did.
That same sense of falling turns my stomach. I know I should be terrified, and I am—but I’ve been locked up in a cage my whole life. Part of me enjoys the wind against my face. “I didn’t steal from you.”
Scott gives a short nod, acknowledging that horrible truth. “His money still paid for your pretty shoes, didn’t it? The yoga classes that built that beautiful body?”
And my father paid a terrible price for that money. I still remember him bloodied, broken. Someone sent men to break him. Was it the men that my father double-crossed Gabriel Miller for?
Or was it Gabriel Miller who ordered my father beaten?
I force my shoulders back. “You said you could help me.”
Whatever happens next, I’ll face it with honor, with courage. With the same sense of strength I believe my father had. How had he taught me about honesty while lying the whole time? The James name used to mean something, and I’m trying to maintain the last shreds of our dignity.
“Take off the coat,” Gabriel says, his tone almost mild.
Everything inside me turns cold, bones frozen, breath a cold blast of air in my lungs. “Why?”
“I want to see what I’m working with. Don’t worry, girl. I’m not going to touch you.”
With shaking hands I untie my coat and let it slide from my shoulders. There are indistinct murmurs from the men around me—approval, interest. I have the sudden sense that I’m in the center of a bullfight, a stadium full of spectators hungry for blood.
Finally I meet Gabriel’s eyes, and what I see is a fire of desire, red and orange and yellow. The blaze scalds me from four feet away. The businesslike clothes I chose to wear don’t show much of my skin, but they show all of my shape. The flame of his hunger licks over my breasts, my waist, down my legs.
“Lovely,” Damon Scott murmurs. “But a beautiful body isn’t enough. You need to know how to use it.”
I shiver. He owns a string of strip clubs all over the city. “I can…learn.”
Something flashes in Gabriel’s eyes. “You don’t know how to please a man, girl?”
There had been stolen kisses, furtive touches in the darkened hallways outside society parties. Justin had pushed me, but I had pushed back. Something had always kept me from letting him have sex with me. And then my family name was disgraced.
You have to understand, Avery. I want to be a senator someday. I can’t do that married to a James now.
That was the day after the indictment.
In light of that impersonal phone call, I knew our relationship wasn’t about respect. It wasn’t about love either. Definitely not pleasure. No, I have no idea how to please a man.