way, she would have hurt someone beloved to her.
“I know you are angry with me,” she tried again, “but please do not allow that to cloud your judgment.”
“Angry doesn’t begin to describe the way I feel,” he fumed. “You lied to me. You allowed me to torment myself for weeks, all while you knew who I was. I must have amused you, thinking myself in love with a woman who has no heart.”
She deserved his outrage. But despite what he thought of her, she loved him. She loved him more than she had ever imagined possible. And she had lost him, through no one’s fault but her own. However, she would be damned if she would allow any harm to befall him because of her actions. She could not bear it if anything would happen to him.
“Regardless of your poor opinion of me, you must know that fighting Jeremiah Jones is akin to going to the gallows. Your injury has made you weak, and you have not regained the strength in your wounded arm.”
“The only goddamn thing that made me weak was you,” he countered grimly, his voice filled with darkness and bite. “I’m fighting Jones, and there isn’t a bloody thing you can do to stop me.”
“If you will not listen to me, then surely you will consult your siblings?” she asked, desperate now. “What have they made of this decision of yours?”
Tears pricked her eyes, ready to be shed. She blinked to hold them back.
“Do not speak of them,” he said, his jaw tensed. “They are my blood. You are less than nothing to me.”
His words sank into her heart as surely as any blade. She reeled beneath the weight of them, the crushing fear he would forever hate her for what she had done.
“Despise me if you must,” she forced herself to say. “But I would far prefer to bear your hatred than for you to be killed in a prizefight. I did not nurse you back to health only to watch you throw yourself to the lions.”
His lip curled, but even sneering, he was ruthlessly handsome. “I’m the lion, Caro. I may have forgotten for a time, but I remember now. I have you to thank for that. Now get out of my family’s hell and out of my life.”
Before she could respond, he turned and stalked from the room, leaving her standing there alone. At the slamming of the door at his back, she allowed the tears to fall. She had failed him.
And this time, she feared, there would be no saving him.
Seeing Caro again had shaken Gavin.
Shaken him so badly that his hands were literally trembling as he stormed to Dom’s office. His half brother stood at his entrance, quirking a brow.
“Caro Sutton, I presume?”
Caro.
His Caro.
He had not stopped loving her. Damn it.
Gavin raked his fingers through his hair. “Aye. That is the serpent’s name.”
“Eh. Didn’t look much like a serpent to me.”
He gritted his teeth so hard, his jaw ached. “No, she doesn’t look like a goddamned serpent. But that does not mean she ain’t one.”
“You’ve been angry ever since you returned,” Dom said.
“And why wouldn’t I be? I nearly cocked up my toes, spent weeks without recalling a single damned piece of my life, my own family left me to rot at a Sutton gaming hell, and I’ve been kept a prisoner and lied to all because the lot of you thought I would be safer hiding like a damned lad behind his mother’s skirts.”
As he finished the diatribe, he became aware his voice had risen to a roar. But it felt good to unleash some more of his fury, damn it. Dom was not wrong. He had been bloody furious since his return. They had all—every last one of them, from his family to Jasper Sutton to Caro—robbed him of his right to choose what was best for him.
Dom winced. “I know you do not see it as we did, but we made the decision we felt was best for you.”
“I should have been the one to make that choice.”
His half brother shook his head. “As you are now, agreeing to fight the man we believe was responsible for trying to see you killed and for nearly having Demon murdered as well?”
“A strange thing happens to a man when he has nothing left to lose,” Gavin said, meaning those words with everything in him. “He forgets what fear is, because it doesn’t matter any longer.”
“Gav, you have much to lose,” Dom