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“Someone needed to monitor her behaviour. She presented herself as respectable in the beginning, and it was… disappointing to discover otherwise.”

Before I was aware of my next move, I’d already slammed him against the side of the car with my forearm braced on his chest. My body trembled, and I clenched my jaw so hard it ached.

The impact knocked the breath out of him, and at first, he couldn’t process what had happened. Then his expression hardened, and whatever had been hiding behind the polished facade slipped through.

“You two are alike,” he said. “Cut from the same cloth.”

I released him and smiled through my fear. “Thank you.”

“It wasn’t a compliment.”

“Too bad. That’s how I’m taking it.”

“You both have the same lack of discipline,” he said with the tiniest smirk. “So reactive and emotional.”

My knife hand shot up between us, close enough to stop him blabbering his bullshit. I’d gone too far, but not so far that I couldn’t pull back.

Silence fell between us, and for the first time, he didn’t immediately try to fill it.

Dustin’s eyes flicked to the blade, and a hard, ugly expression crossed his face. “You don’t have the authority to threaten me,” he said. “You have no power here at all. That’s the problem with women like you.”

He moved fast, clutching my forearm, and every detail slammed into focus. The heat of his breath and the press of him against me, the coldness in his eyes.

He leaned in even closer, his mouth beside my ear as if we were sharing an intimate moment.

“You need to be taught some lessons,” he murmured.

Fuck.

Without a second’s hesitation, I rammed my knee straight between his legs.

When he let out an oof of pain and doubled over, I yanked my arm free and told myself to run.

Dustin shot his hand out blindly while he was still bent and grabbed my knife arm again, his fingers digging into my bicep hard enough to leave bruises.

My feet scrabbled for stability, the knife still somehow in my grip. I cried out and wrenched my forearm up and away, straining my shoulder. The blade caught on something as I pulled free, and his hold on me loosened.

A slick, slicing sound filled the space, and I looked up.

Oh, no.

Dustin staggered back a step, colliding with the car as his hand flew to his throat.

His eyes went wide with confusion, and I struggled to breathe, trying to make sense of the sight. Blood gushed through his fingers, spilling over the back of his hand, soaking into his shirt. The stain deepened and spread, and he opened his mouth, letting out a strangled gurgle.

The knife slid from my slackened fingers, clattering onto the concrete as he swayed, then dropped.

He landed hard on his side. The bright red pumping from his throat brought on the instinctive urge to help, but I couldn’t make myself move.

He was still breathing, air rasping in and out as violent shudders took hold of me.

“I didn’t mean…”

What I had or hadn’t meant wasn’t relevant anymore. He still lay right there in front of me, taking his last breaths.

I forced myself to move one step forward, then another, bending over him as if I had the power to undo my actions. My hand hovered near the wound, stopping short before I made contact.

It was too wide, too deep. The blood…