Emily POV
"Emily," he said quietly. Too quiet. His voice was steel wrapped in silk, soft enough to feel intimate, sharp enough to draw blood. "You don't need to say it. I know."
My throat tightened. "You don't know," I whispered. My voice cracked, pathetic against his calm.
His eyes narrowed, but not in anger. Something else flickered there. Something dangerously close to understanding. "I know fear," he said. "I can smell it. I can see it in the way you shake when you think you are hiding it. And I know who put it there." His jaw flexed, the tendons in his neck pulling tight. "I promise you, whoever he is, he will not last long."
It should have comforted me. It should have made me feel safer. But all I could hear was the certainty in his voice, the way he said it like an exe
