And my alarm grows. Because this is more wrong than my brother stealing her away just to fuck with me. I feel the dread in my gut.

On the wind, I hear the whining of the dogs. I squeeze my thighs around Kentucky Lightning’s body and turn him in the direction from where the barking grows louder.

But it’s farther off than it should be, in a direction I don’t expect. And as I near the outbuildings, passing the one I’d kept Ivy in, my blood runs cold.

Because there’s one place I’ve forbidden her. Would she go there? Would he take her there?

I stop thinking as I approach the dark mouth of the entrance because I hear a terrifying scream, and my gut wrenches.

“Mercedes!” The wind carries my call away. Can she hear me in there?

Another scream is followed by a choked sob, and I hurry blindly through the darkness, stumbling over stones. When I reach the door, all I can think is I don’t have the key but that doesn’t matter because the lock is gone. Someone has cut it out. I push my way in, and I don’t know if it’s the ear-piercing scream or the sight that greets me that makes my vision darken, makes my brain rattle inside my skull.

Because there, naked and bound to the leather-topped bench I remember well, is Mercedes up on the tips of her toes because she wouldn’t reach the handholds otherwise. She barely reaches them now. Her arms are stretched too far, her hair sweeping the filthy floor. But the worst of it. Fuck. The worst of it is the soft, fragile skin of her ass and thighs burns a throbbing, angry red, the skin broken in places, a drop of crimson blood sliding over the crease of one knee as she sobs like I’ve never heard anyone sob.

And behind her stands Theron. He’s shirtless and covered in sweat, holding a cane in his hand. A whip is discarded at his feet. The look on his face, in his eyes, that’s not the brother I know even in his cruelest moments. Even when he put the knife in my back.

That man was human.

This one I don’t recognize.

But when he raises the cane again, I don’t think. I can’t over the roaring rush of blood that deafens me. Or maybe that’s my own scream when I charge him. Because I’m going to fucking kill him.

2

Mercedes

Fire singes my nerve endings and ricochets through my body as an almighty roar unleashes behind me. It sounds like a demon sent straight from hell, but I know without a shadow of a doubt it isn’t. He’s not quite the devil, but he’s no angel either. It has to be Judge.