Page 16 of Mess With Me

“How would you know that? You don’t know me.”

“Oh, but I do.”

My skin crawls. “Why did you want to go out with me? Why not any other woman in Manhattan? I imagine you have your pick.”

“You flatter me, Miss Macklin.”

“Not on purpose.”

That tick in his jaw again. “You like being dominated, don’t you?”

The shock of those words—the distinctly sexual implications—has me suddenly stiff, wavering in my hold on my anger.

“Excuse me?” I ask. But my heart beats a staccato panic in my chest.

“It’s only natural as the youngest of the family. The one always seeking attention from siblings and parents who couldn’t be bothered with a lonely little girl. Three siblings, and none of them really played with you, did they? They were too old. Too busy handling the shame of their father marrying his mistress, even after she bore his child, a beautiful girl who takes after her mother in looks, but not in meekness.”

I’m so stunned as he lays out my childhood I don’t realize he’s delivered the upper hand back to himself until it’s too late. When I do, my stomach roils.

“Except maybe now. It’s not like you to be speechless, is it?”

I open my mouth, but he’s not done.

“Leila invested in travel to get away from it all. Cal the carpenter—his heart was too soft; he left to make things out of wood. Samuel, in a way, is the only honorable one, warts and all. He hasn’t tried to shirk that shame like the rest of you. He’s leaned in, knowing the Macklin name is irreparably tarnished.

“But you, Sasha—you couldn’t escape the shame if you tried. Not when you’re the bastard daughter—”

Finally, I regain control of my senses, the anger roaring back into a flame. I don’t care if he hurts me. He doesn’t get to condense my life and my family into a few sentences. No matter how well he’s hit the nail on the head.

“Are you done?”

I press my hand on the table to push myself to standing, but his hand lands on mine.

I try to pull it away, but his fingers wrap around it tight enough that I cry out.

I blink rapidly for a moment, not believing what I’m seeing—and feeling. He’s holding me down.

From somewhere in my periphery, over in the sushi restaurant, someone moves from their seat by the window. It’s all so surreal.

“What the hell are you doing?” I try to pull away, but he grips my hand tight. “Let go of me,” I say, my voice hard.

“Don’t fight it, Sasha. I saw the way you looked at me the moment you walked in.”

“What, like a predator?” The time for helping Sam is long over. Once more, I try to jerk my hand away, but Vincent’s stronger than me by a mile; his fingers are like a vise.

“You’re hurting me,” I manage, because he is, suddenly. A lot. My hand feels like it’s going to crack under the pressure of his grip.

“I’ll let go. But first I need to tell you a little something about your brother.”

My heart thunders in my chest, my stomach roiling. This isn’t happening, is it? It can’t be.

“Sam’s stolen something from me. Something he promised to give me, which he says is now impossible to return.”

“I don’t know anything about my brother’s busin—”

He cuts me off. “Unfortunately, the man has avoided having any offspring, so you’re the next best thing. Someone who means something to him.”

Even with the imminent danger, with my pulse throbbing and every cell in my body screaming to run, some tiny part of me reacts to that statement—that I actually mean something to Sam. But anger quickly strikes that feeling from my chest, twining around the fear pumping adrenaline through me.

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