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Dawn was still amazed as she stood in the meeting room that afternoon and listened to the measures agreed upon, the work Seth had been doing for the Breed community over the past ten years.
He had apparently worked tirelessly on their behalf, fighting to overthrow the legacy his father had begun by funding the Genetics Council. It was a legacy he reminded his board members of several times.
That they had sat back and gotten fat from profits made by those who suffered a hell the board members couldn’t imagine. That the profits they had gained from their agreements with the Council had been paid in blood, in the rape, murder and torture of innocent children and adults.
From what Dawn had glimpsed, he hadn’t had to fight very hard. They were signing the measures before he had begun the hardest selling points of his argument. All but Valere, who stank of the Council and something more.
Dawn watched him closely, and he knew he was being watched. His hooded gaze was cold, malicious, as it moved over her. But it wasn’t the right gaze. He wasn’t the one who had raped and attempted to destroy a child’s mind. At least not hers. She was certain, so certain she had to force her hand from her weapon, that this man had been neck deep in the rot that infected the Genetics Council.
When the others pushed their signed agreements to the middle of the table, Valere’s face flushed with fury.
“Don’t do this, Theodore,” Seth warned him quietly. “You can’t block anything we’re doing. You’re only hurting your own companies. Because, trust me, I will drop every one of them once you walk from this room. Imagine what that will do to the Valere family holdings.”
Seth’s voice was hard, harder than Dawn could ever remember hearing it.
“You’ve let this little Breed tramp corrupt you, Seth.” Valere ignored the gasps of shock and outrage at his words as he indicated Dawn. “She dresses in your wealth and
your jewels, but we all know the animal she is. Screw her, toss her out, then return to us with your senses and fortune intact.”
Lightning fast and dangerous, fluid, like a vengeful wind, Dane was out of his chair and across the short distance two chairs from his own. He jerked Valere’s head back, a wicked knife in his hand before anyone knew he had it, and laid at the other man’s throat.
Death glittered in Dane’s dark gold eyes, tightened his features and strengthened the savagery in his expression.
Valere’s eyes bulged from his head as a thin line of blood oozed from the shallow cut beneath the blade.
“Mate, you don’t want to go there,” Dane warned him carefully as Dawn rose slowly to her feet.
The Breeds providing security for the meeting were tense, their hands on their weapons, fury flaring in their eyes.
“Enough,” she said calmly, causing Seth to pause and glare back at her.
“You have no say in this,” he snapped.
Her gaze met Valere’s and she saw smug, vindictive hatred there.
“When he returns to the mainland, we don’t want him to have reason to fuel any fires during the press conference he’ll be making. Better to escort him nicely from the house than to beat him to a bloody pulp. Besides…” She smiled back at Valere as rage flickered in his eyes. “You might splatter blood on the silk your wealth dressed me in. And it is so hard to get bloodstains out.”
She smoothed a hand over the maroon skirt she wore before adjusting the gold chain at her neck, just above the white silk of her sleeveless blouse.
They were her clothes. Well, except for the panties. She had brought a few nice things with her from Sanctuary. Just in case.
Seth’s lips almost twitched. Dane eased the dagger back.
“A true lady shows herself in not just her actions but in her compassion,” Craig Bartel said then, his tone drawing her gaze, his rueful smile an apology for his wife’s words the night before.
“Compassion?” She lifted a brow as Valere rose from his chair. “I have very little compassion for pedophiles and murderers.”
“Compassion perhaps for your fellow board members,” Bartel suggested. “My wife can tell you, I become ill at the sight of sliced arteries. It’s a particularly distasteful sight. So I’ll claim your compassion for myself.”
“Stop flirting, Bartel,” Seth grunted, the tension easing from him as Mercury and Stygian moved close to Theodore Valere, their eyes hard.
“Don’t bruise him when you toss him off my island,” Seth requested. “Dawn’s right. He needs to be presentable for the press conference he will no doubt hold. Just as I’ll be presentable for mine a few days later. When I announce my engagement to Ms. Daniels, as well as my regret that the Valere family would prefer to fund the Council than to aid the survival of the Breeds.”
If rage had simmered in Valere’s eyes before, it burned in them now. Seth had just blocked him, and he knew it. They all knew it.
Valere’s jaw tightened as he straightened his silk jacket with a jerk and stomped to the door. There was no parting shot, no “fuck off” or “fuck you.” The door didn’t even slam, as Stygian managed to catch it and close it quietly as he and Styx followed the other man.
The other board members watched quietly.
