CHAPTER 7

I didn’t sleep. I sat on the edge of the mattress, staring at the crumpled cardstock folder; the light from the floor cast a nauseating blue hue over the paper.

The man who had pinned me against the stone wall, the one whose touch made my body betray me in the dark,

was the architect of my undoing. Kael hadn’t just claimed me in prison; he had built the cage himself.

Every blow from Graves, every vile threat from the inmates in the block, every drop of blood I’d spilled in this hellhole- it was all Kael Vance’s doing. When the dawn alarm blared shrilly through the block, the heavy lock clicked open. I rose to my feet, my knees stiff and my soul frozen. For the first time since entering that prison, I wasn’t wondering if Kael would protect me.

I was wondering how I hadn’t seen the devil standing right in front of me. I walked into the mess hall and picked up a tray of cold oatmeal. The room was thick with the usual predatory tension, but I barely noticed it.

A towering shadow fell across my table. There stood Kael, broad-shouldered, radiating that silent, lethal power. His storm-colored eyes searched my face; they were dark and unreadable.

"Get up," Kael said in a low, gravelly murmur. "Work shift starts in five minutes." I didn’t look at him. I took a slow spoonful of the gray oatmeal, chewed, and swallowed. "No." The air at the table grew heavy.

A couple of inmates sitting a few benches away fell silent, sensing the shift in atmosphere. Kael’s jaw tightened, and his jagged scar turned stark white. He didn’t grab me. He didn’t try to seize me by the throat. He simply leaned forward, planting his heavy palms on the stainless-steel table and invading my personal space until I could catch the sharp scent of soap and steel radiating from him.

"You’re going to get moving, Hart," Kael growled under his breath. "The cartel is already cross-referencing the international transfer codes you checked last night. If you don’t finish tracing that transfer by noon, they’ll realize you know where their money ended up. They’ll skin you alive.

" I slowly set down the plastic spoon and turned my head to meet his gaze, the color of a storm."Let them do it," I whispered. Kael’s eyes narrowed; a fleeting flash of surprise cracked his stony mask. "What did you say?" "I said let them do it," I rasped, my chest tight with a bitter, toxic rage.

"I’d rather risk getting stabbed by a cartel than spend another second helping the monster who put me in this uniform."

"Hart..."

"You set me up!" My voice cracked and rose just enough to make Kael’s gaze shift toward the watchtower. I leaned forward, my face inches from his, tears of pure fury burning my eyes.

"You destroyed my life. My career, my home, my freedom... You took it all!" Kael’s gray eyes burned; a dark, desperate emotion churned beneath the surface. He gripped the edge of the metal table so hard his knuckles turned a ghostly gray. "I had no choice," Kael hissed through gritted teeth.

"I needed the country’s best forensic mind inside these walls to track down the leak. You were the only person with a clean enough record to do it."

"I was innocent!" I snapped, shoving the tray away so violently that it clattered loudly against the metal.

"I didn't do anything to you! I didn't even know you existed!"

Kael fell completely silent. His chest heaved as he let out a heavy, soundless sigh. "I know," Kael said quietly. The world stopped. The deafening roar of six hundred inmates eating in the mess hall dissolved into absolute silence.

I stared at him; my heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped animal. "What?" "I knew you were innocent," Kael repeated, his voice dropping an octave, sounding raw and rough.

"I knew you had nothing to do with the original corporate embezzlement. I followed the paper trail. I knew you were innocent."

A sob born of pure, absolute shock rose in my throat, but I stifled it; I bit my bruised lip so hard I tasted the metallic tang of blood. He knew. You had seen my unblemished life, my honest work, and yet you had deliberately dragged me into the mire.

"You knew..." I whispered, my voice trembling violently. "You knew I hadn't done it, and yet you let them lock me up. You watched as they handed me an eight-year sentence for something I didn't commit."

"If I hadn't brought you here on state charges, the cartel would have found out I was investigating their accounts," Kael argued, stepping closer; his voice dripped with a dark, twisted desperation. His large hand made a move toward me but stopped short.

"They would have slaughtered you in plain sight to stop you from even looking at those ledgers. I brought you here to keep you alive. Under my watch.

Under my protection." I let out a harsh, bitter laugh that sounded broken even to my own ears.

"You can't call ruining my life 'protection'!" I snapped, planting myself right in front of his chest; my body trembled with a dangerous mix of fury and that stifling, unwanted heat that always flared up when he was near.

"You didn't save me, Kael! You enslaved me! You dragged me into a war I never asked to fight!" Kael stood there, towering over me, his massive frame frozen. For the first time since I’d met him, since he’d stepped out of the shadows and claimed me,Kael Vance had no answer. His mouth tightened into a hard, pale line.

His eyes, storm-colored and usually so piercing and commanding, looked empty. Silence hung between us like a razor-sharp blade, slicing through the space where his absolute authority had once resided. I took a step back, pulling away from his heat, from that magnetic pull that had held me in its grip since day one.

"I’m going to finish tracing those offshore account numbers," I said, my voice cold, steady, and stripped of any trace of panic. Kael’s head snapped up.

"Hart..." "Not for you," I interrupted, locking eyes with him with absolute clarity. "And not because I trust a single word coming out of your lying mouth. I’m doing it because I want my life back.

" I want to know who held a gun to my head, and I’m going to use those numbers to dismantle this entire operation. I walked past his broad shoulder, brushing against it without flinching. "Our deal is over, Kael," I whispered right into his ear as I passed. You don't belong to me anymore.