The Knight (Endgame #2)(37)

“And you shouldn’t be talking about me with Gabriel Miller, pretending like it’s just business when we both know it’s personal.”

She looks away. “This whole damn city is like a damn Greek tragedy.”

“Tell me what event he’s talking about.”

“Shit.” Her eyes close, and she gives a little shake of her head. When she meets my gaze again, she’s frank and unafraid, so much like Nina. Is this how I look to people who knew my mother? “Someone vandalized the house.”

“What?” Grief squeezes my heart.

“Gabriel will freak out if I tell you, but maybe you should know.” She digs through some of the papers to a file folder at the bottom of a stack. “It’s not like whoever did this can’t find you.”

Pictures appear, large and crude. The front of the house with WHORE written across the front door in bright red spray paint. SLUT scrawled above the fireplace in the empty space where my mother’s portrait used to be. And in my bedroom, taped to the walls beside pictures of kittens and boy bands, are black-and-white pictures. Blown up, grainy like from an old security camera. My eyes, my lips. Breasts that could be mine.

Except I never took my bra off for the photographer.

So where did these pictures come from? The truth hits me like a sledgehammer. Gabriel didn’t just share pictures that we took that day at the Den. He must have taken secret shots of me while I was at his house. When I showered, when I changed my clothes. When we had sex.





Chapter Twenty-Four





The door to the Den doesn’t swing open when I knock this time. No one’s expecting me, but I’m damn well going to come inside. My righteous fury is almost enough to burn down the building. I’m trembling in the cold as I wait with barely leashed rage.

It’s Damon Scott who opens the door, the man I went to for a loan, the one who auctioned me. “Avery. Are you all right?”

A bitter laugh breaks from me. “You’re the second person to ask me that today.”

“I heard what happened, and—”

“Is he here? I know he is.” I push my way past Damon Scott, ready to be a bulldozer if I need to be. Or even a goddamn tank. I’m ready for war. “Gabriel?”

Smoke rises for the circle of men reclining in leather chairs. Dangerous men, all of them powerful, many of them armed. I feel no fear as I face them.

“Where’s Gabriel?”

Some of them look amused, others annoyed. I recognize Ivan from the auction. He gives a cool glance toward the stairs. With a short nod of thanks, I take them two at a time.

Now I understand how Gabriel felt when he took down my father. There’s a burning hunger inside me, to smash things, to ruin them—and that’s exactly what I plan to do.

Gabriel Miller will be broken by the time I’m done with him. He’ll beg me to stop.

There’s only one piece of furniture left in the strange-light room. A chair, plain and made of wood. That’s where Gabriel sits, expression haunted as he stares at a stack of papers in his hand. Before I even reach him, I know what he’s seeing. My defilement.

My shame.

He looks up, and I see the bone-deep weariness in his eyes that matches my own. It’s the kind that comes from a lifetime of secrets, of darkness. Of pretending they can’t hurt you when you’re already bleeding. It doesn’t soften me toward him in the slightest. I’ll twist the knife if I have to.

“Avery,” he mutters, and I’m not sure I’ve ever heard him say my name before.

I won’t let that soften me either.

“You asshole,” I say, trembling with anger. “I knew you were dirty and underhanded. I knew you would purchase a woman rather than winning one the honorable way. But this?”

His brows lower. “Who told you?”

“Where do I even start? You have so many secrets and all of them are vile. Just like you.”

“It might help if you explain,” he says tightly. “So I know what we’re discussing when you insult me.”

“Insult you?” I’m almost breathless with indignation. “Insult you? Fine. I’ll explain what I’m talking about. We’ll play that game as if you don’t know that my house was vandalized.”

“Charlotte.”

“Charlotte. That’s all you have to say about that? That you e-mailed her specifically to tell her not to tell me. Conspiring with her to keep me in the dark. For what?”

“Well, because—” His eyes narrow. “How do you know what I e-mailed her? I can’t imagine she would tell you the details of our private correspondence.”

“Correspondence.” I let out a breath. “That’s a pretty fancy term for sabotage. Betrayal. Need I go on?”

“I’d prefer that you didn’t.”

“And for your information, Charlotte didn’t show me the e-mails. I looked at her laptop when she left the room. Yes, I was devious and underhanded. I learned from the best, after all.”

Anger flashes across his golden eyes. “That information is confidential.”

“My body is confidential, you asshole.”

He cocks his head. “The pictures. You saw them.”

It takes everything in me not to launch myself at him, to use my broken nails like claws, to bite him. He makes me savage, like the wild animal that he is. “Yes, the pictures. The pictures you took. The pictures you shared. Did that make you feel better about what my father did? Ruining him wasn’t enough? Deflowering me wasn’t enough?”