“No.” In a desperate surge, she rolled to her side, clawing at the floor.
Mason stepped back, still laughing, watching her struggle.
The room spun in crazy circles around her, but she was still able to pick out details: the curving double staircase behind Ainsley, the high ceilings, baseboards tall as three-tiered cakes, the gallery just visible in the upper shadows. They were in the massive front entrance hall of Hamilton House.
Where no one could hear her, see her, save her.
“Mason, no,” she said, panting as she managed to get up on her hands and knees. “You don’t want to do this. Think about what it’ll do to your permanent record.” Because appealing to his human side wouldn’t work, she reached for the only thing that would: reputation. “Think about your dad’s campaigns, about your mom and all the rich women in this city. You don’t want to throw your whole family down the toilet like that.”
He crouched down in front of her, and tilted his head sideways so she could see his face, the blurry double-image of it. He looked like a deranged gremlin, all perched up on the balls of his feet. “You think? ‘Cause, see, here’s what I think, Teague. I think anything that happens to you, in your whole life, gets chalked up to white trash getting what it deserves. You can’ttouchme.”
Ava rocked back, so she was kneeling, hands gripping at the tops of her boots. She felt the familiar shape of her bone-handled knife in the right one, in its hidden sheathe. The room heaved, like a ship at sea. She couldn’t tell if she swayed, or just her vision. Maybe both. Mason kept blurring in and out of focus. Her head throbbed,thump-thumpwith every scattered heartbeat.
“No?” she asked. Her hand slid into the top of her boot.
Mason watched her slack expression, grinning to himself. “Um, hello. Do you even know who I am? How have you not learned that in all these years? Not just a slut, a stupid slut. You’re some nobody bitch born on the side of the road somewhere, and I’m Mason Matthew Stephens the Second–”
Hard, Mercy always said.If you’re gonna stab someone, do it hard and fast. Make it count. Fuck ‘em up.
In one rapid viper strike, Ava pulled the knife from her boot and plunged it into the side of Mason’s thigh, the thickest, meatiest, bloodiest place she could reach at this angle. Hard. Punch.Slink!The knife was sharp and it went straight through his jeans, down into the flesh. There was a hard, jarring stop that made her think she hit his femur, and she ripped it back out, blood arcing through the air, red and glimmering.
Mason howled.
Ainsley and Beau screamed.
Ava staggered to her feet, flailing for nonexistent handholds, reeling and in pain. Her grip was tight around the knife, her hand oily with blood. Mason was on the ground, but he wouldn’t stay there long.
Had to get away…had to get away…
She tripped over her own feet, and fell hard against the bannister, clutching at the heavy round post at the foot of the stairs to keep from going down. She had to keep her feet, had to keep moving. If she went back down to the floor again, she might never get up…
“Bitch!You fucking bitch!” Mason roared, right next to her. He was up again, and the furious adrenaline was pumping through him, overriding the pain.
Ava brought the knife up, but it was slick with his blood, and he slapped it out of her hand.
“You little cunt!” He was stronger than she’d always thought, and when she reached to claw at his face, the punch he threw sent her stumbling back onto the stairs.
She felt her cheek, her shoulder, her knee impact with sharp pops. The skin split on her face. She wasexhausted, the concussion taking all the fight out of her.
I hate, I hate you, I hate you!she screamed inside her head. But she said, “Please don’t,” as she scrabbled for purchase. “Please. I’m pregnant.”
There was a moment of utter stillness after she said it, and she believed, for one stupid, free-floating second, that Mason might stop. She levered up on her arms, tried to get her feet to work…
Mason’s kick took all the breath from her. Her heart slammed to a stop. He was wearing boots, and the heel caught her in the belly, in the lowest, tenderest spot, with all of his weight behind it.
Her eyes slammed shut. The pain was immediate, crushing, like a bomb going off inside her. And then there was the other pain, the rhythmic clenching, like menstrual cramps.
Ava let her head fall back against the spindles of the bannister; she was done. She couldn’t fight him anymore.
Her eyes slitted open and she saw Mason standing above her…
And someone standing behind him. Someone much taller than him. Someone dark and furious and so painfully familiar.
She was hallucinating.
“Mercy,” she whispered.
Mason’s eyes widened.
