“A demonstration is in order, I think, Lord Thornton,” a creaking old voice said from somewhere down the table.
“Yes, after the reports we’ve had and your little tantrum with Lord Ashcroft, I’m of the mind to take the slave away from you and transfer her into the care of another, more capable Master. Perhaps Mr. Landon Knox.”
My head jerked up as my heart nearly flew out my throat.
Instantly, my eyes found his.
Landon Knox.
The man I’d known since I was a prepubescent teenager, the man who had launched my modelling career and driven me to anorexia was sitting at Alexander’s table.
The clash of my two worlds meeting resounded like crashing symbols in my head. I swayed as I blinked hard, trying to process.
Alexander’s stern voice severed our connection. “No one will be taking her away from me. I own her. The papers were signed, her virginity was taken, and she bears my gold at her tits and clit. She is mine.”
“Careful, Thornton, your caveman is showing,” Landon drawled.
“And caution to you, Mr. Knox, your lack of pedigree is obvious,” Alexander retorted.
“Gentlemen.” A man with steel grey hair stood up, long and thin as a reed but with the bearing of a king. “There is one way to settle this. The girl must be put through her paces.”
“I don’t believe it should be Thornton who does it,” Landon argued, his eyes over bright and overeager as he stared at me. “Let it be a new Master.”
“Agreed,” a voice said from the very end of the table.
I wouldn’t have thought anything of it, but Alexander tensed beside me so viciously, I thought he was having a heart attack.
The man spoke again, his voice strong but oddly accented, a hop and a skip of something Latin in his tones. “If we are trying to prove whether the girl is being properly trained and if Thornton has neglected his duties because he is enamoured with her, we must separate them. Make him watch while one of us does the deed.”
“You take things too far by letting that man into my bloody fucking house,” Alexander said, each word sharp as a bullet casing tearing through the air. “Show yourself, Edward.”
My heart tripped and then raced through my chest.
Edward, the long-lost son and brother?
The slowly, cringeworthy sound of a chair screeching against the parquet floor was the only sound in the ominously silent room.
I risked Alexander’s wrath by lifting my chin to see the man Noel and his son had excommunicated from their lives.
I didn’t know what to expect from Edward Davenport.
My only knowledge consisted of his betrayal when he chose Salvatore over his own family. I’d never wondered what he would look like, how he would hold himself, or what I would feel if I ever met him.
I simply wasn’t prepared.
Because if Alexander was a golden prince, King Arthur or Emperor Augustus, some shining example of leadership and male beauty, Edward was his rival.
They could have been two sides of the same coin, contrary though they were, they had the same colossal bodies packed with muscle, Edward’s perhaps even more quilted, and broad faces so beautiful they made my eyes ache in their sockets.
Yet that was where the similarities ended. Edward was coloured not in precious metals like his brother, but in shadows, his hair as ink stained as my own, his eyes so deep a brown they seemed to swallow the light, and his skin tanned and polished to a glossy bronze. The bearing of his broad shoulders was not regal but forceful; his hands large and blunt tipped like some medieval weapons of torture.
He seemed more weapon than man.
His eyes slide to mine swiftly, and our gazes collided like two cars on an icy road. I felt the crash in my gut and shuddered as it passed through me.
I blinked, and his eyes were still there, watching me as though he knew me and even more, held some bizarre degree of familiarity and affection for me.
I gasped quietly when he had the audacity to throw me an almost imperceptible wink.
“How dare you show your face in this house after what you have done?” Alexander asked in his quiet voice filled with fury that boiled so hot and deep within his chest he seemed like a living volcano.
“He is a member of the Order of Dionysus, Thornton. He has a right to be here,” Sherwood stated implacably.
“Whatever right he had was stripped along with his surname and inheritance the moment he joined sides with the villain who killed my mother.” I had never seen Alexander so wholly still. He was on security lockdown, every vault spun shut, every door coated over in titanium so that not one of his vulnerabilities could escape or be plundered by the ruthless men in the room. “I hope you brought him to take responsibility for his actions.”