Page 35 of Stealing Cinder

Samuel turns his head without releasing me. "Gentlemen. On second thought, give me a minute with Cinder, please."

“Sure. We’ll be close by.”

That was Oliver.

“Thank you.”

I track their departure by the sound of boots on concrete, the soft click of a door, and the gradual drain of tension from the room as their collective energy withdraws. Bastian's heavy stride disappears first. Oliver's quieter footsteps follow. Valerian's cigar smoke lingers after the door closes behind him, a thin blue trail hanging in the still, cold air.

The silence that follows helps my nerves feel less raw by the second.

"Um, why did you do that?"

"Because what I'm about to tell you will cause some friction and I want you to have the privacy you need to absorb the shitstorm news that is coming your way."

My lips and brow follow each other into a deep scowl. “So, more bad news.” I say with a thin smile, not feeling amused in the slightest.

I wrap his shirt tighter around my shoulders and cross my arms over the swell of my belly. The baby shifts, and I press my palm flat against the movement.

"You need to shift your thinking on how Edgar needs to be taken down. The man is planning twenty ways to kill you right now. We can’t wait to go the conventional route of seeking justice when it comes to him."

I stare at him. My heart fails me for a few seconds. The brutal honesty does that sometimes, I guess.

My mind reels. "He's an asshole, but I don't think he's out to kill me. He was mad tonight, sure. Furious. But kill me? I mean nothing to him. Why would he risk getting caught and going to prison for me?" I shake my head. "I don’t think he even realized I was pregnant. He was too focused on you not killing him to notice."

As I speak, his gaze drifts over me, pausing only slightly when his attention reaches my baby bump. "Don't be so sure of that."

Samuel's jaw tightens. The muscle along his cheekbone flexes and releases, a controlled pulse of restraint that tells me he is working very hard not to grab his guns and go back and end Edgar right now.

"If you go back to your father's mansion, Edgar will put you in a shallow grave for spite, revenge, and petty rivalry. Now that he knows I want you, he will destroy you to wound me. Edgar has always wanted everything I have."

The heat drains from my face. I grip the edge of the marble kitchen island behind me. The surface is ice-cold under my fingers, sharp-edged and unforgiving, and the shock of temperature grounds me in the present when my mind wants to spin backward.

"You're scaring me, Samuel."

Eyes still lingering on my body, he says flatly, "Good. You should be scared."

I work the inside of my cheek between my teeth and force my breathing to slow. "What else are you not telling me?"

He steps closer. The recessed lighting carves shadows along the ridges of his jaw and the ink crawling up his neck. His voice drops lower, the volume shrinking while the weight of every syllable doubles.

"Knowing Edgar and your stepmother, he is already working the underground. Lining up a buyer."

My eyes grow wide. "A buyer for what?"

"Either to sell our child on the black market if he ever gets you within reach, or, knowing him, he’ll go after the bigger bucks and sell you as a breeder."

The room tilts. My vision narrows to a pinpoint and the hum of the climate system swells in my ears until it drowns everything else. My knees buckle and Samuel catches me, his arm banding around my waist, his hand pressing firm against the small of my back.

"Breathe, princess."

I pull air in through my nose and push it out through my mouth, my fingers digging into the muscle of his forearm.

"What makes you think all this?" My voice comes out thin. Foreign. "I've known both of them for a long time and I've never heard of any of this. Edgar was friends with my father for decades, Samuel. My stepmother is a greedy bitch and so are her daughters. But traffickers?" I swallow hard. "My father would have known and put a stop to it. How can you be so sure?"

"Edgar is one of the board members of Society 69." Samuel holds my gaze without blinking.

My tongue doesn’t work for several seconds as I stand looking up at him.