Chapter 3

Amelia POV

The VIP room went dead silent.

Dennis's hand froze in my hair. Across the poker table, the four executives leaned back so fast their chairs squeaked. On the screen, Brandt jumped out of his leather seat, knocking over his champagne flute.

"Amelia, shut your mouth!" Brandt screamed hysterically. "Mr. Ross, she's delusional! She doesn't know who she's talking to! Dennis, kill her right now!"

Jax didn't look at the screen. He didn't look at Dennis.

The bored, detached posture he had held for the last hour vanished in a fraction of a second. His spine locked straight. His gray eyes widened, the pupils contracting into tiny black points—a predator that had just caught the scent of blood in the brush.

He stood up from the table without making a sound. He stepped around the felt, his polished shoes slowly crunching over the scattered glass. Every step made the floorboards groan. He stopped just inches from my blood.

"What did you say?" he whispered. The words were so soft they were deadly.

I looked straight up into his face, ignoring the glass biting deeper into my bones.

"I said you forgot how to count, Stray," I whispered back, my voice trembling with exhaustion and anger. "You sit high up on a pile of blood money, and you still can't tell the difference between the fire and the ashes."

Jax's face twisted into an expression of sheer, uncontrollable rage.

His large right hand shot down like an iron clamp, closing around my windpipe. He lifted his arm, and my knees left the floor. The air was crushed out of my lungs, and my hands involuntarily flew up to claw at his corded wrist. His skin was freezing cold, his pulse thumping like a war drum beneath my fingertips.

"You dare use that name?" he growled, his face inches from mine. "Who told you? Singleton? Did that coward dig through police archives to find a way to mock me?"

"You think wearing a white rag and bleeding on my floor makes you her?"

"She is dead! I buried her bones eight years ago in Queens!"

The edges of my vision began to black out.

But I didn't struggle. I stared into his furious, unfocused gray eyes, and I waited.

The front doors of the penthouse burst open.

Brandt stumbled in, pale and out of breath, followed closely by Karmen clutching her fur wrap. Brandt dropped to his knees at the entrance, sliding across the polished wood.

"Mr. Ross! Please!" Brandt screamed, throwing his hands up. "Don't dirty your hands with this filth! I swear on my family's name, I didn't teach her to say that! She must have stolen something from my office! She's a thief!"

He scrambled forward on his hands and knees, his eyes darting to Dennis's waist. "Dennis, give me the pliers! Mr. Ross, I will pull her tongue out myself! I'll show you how loyal the Singleton family is!"

Jax's grip loosened by a fraction of an inch. My feet touched the floor, but he kept his palm pressed against the base of my throat, pinning me to the wood-paneled wall. I coughed violently, gasping for air.

Dennis pulled a heavy pair of industrial steel pliers from his jacket and handed them to Brandt like a dog offering a bone. Brandt grabbed them, lunging forward to fist the front of my torn shift.

"You ruined everything, Amelia," Brandt hissed through his teeth. "I fed you for three years! I kept you clothed! And you try to get me killed in front of the biggest lender in the state?!"

Karmen stepped up beside him, her heels clicking sharply.

"Rip it out, Brandt," she sneered, her voice trembling with nervous excitement. "She actually thinks she's special because of that ugly burn scar. Show Mr. Ross we don't tolerate trash."

Brandt raised the cold steel pliers, pressing the metal edges hard against my bottom lip.

"Open your mouth, Amelia. Or I'll smash your teeth in first."

I looked at Brandt.

For three years, I believed this man had saved my life. I thought he had found a burned girl in an alley and taken pity on her. I tolerated his demands, his late-night errands, and Karmen's endless cruelty because I thought I owed him a debt.

Now, looking at him, I saw the truth.

He didn't save me out of pity. He kept me locked in a cage like a stray dog, waiting for the day he needed a piece of meat to throw to a bigger wolf.

Jax stepped back toward the poker table, picking up a white linen napkin. He began wiping his fingers slowly, his expression entirely indifferent as he watched Brandt force the steel against my mouth.

"You have a lot of courage against a woman on her knees, Singleton," Jax said softly. "She lived with you for three years?"

"Yes, Mr. Ross!" Brandt shouted eagerly. "Three years of pure charity! And she bites the hand that feeds her! I'll teach her a lesson right now!"

Brandt shoved the pliers harder against my teeth, trying to pry my jaws apart.

My jaw ached under the intense pressure, but I kept my teeth locked shut.

Eight years ago. The wooden stairs of the tenement collapsing in a shower of orange sparks. The boy coughing blood, trapped under a fallen timber.

I threw my body over him. The flaming ceiling tiles smashed into my collarbone, melting my skin. I used my blistered, bloody hands to shove him through the narrow window frame.

I screamed at him to run.

And now, eight years later, that same boy was wiping his hands with a linen napkin, coldly watching another man force steel into my mouth.

I looked at the hand he was wiping.

"That scar on your right forearm," I rasped, my voice barely a whisper. "I stitched it with sewing thread."

Jax stopped wiping his hands.