Chapter 1
Warren froze.
Behind me, two of my bodyguards stepped forward.
I raised one hand.
They stopped.
That was the difference between power and panic. I did not need Preston dragged across the carpet to prove who controlled the room.
The golf club lay at his feet.
He was still trying to recover his dignity on the sofa.
Warren pointed toward my men.
“Get them out.”
I looked at him.
“No.”
His face reddened.
“This is a Hale family matter.”
I almost smiled.
“You locked a Marconi bride inside a room with a man swinging metal at her.”
My gaze moved to Preston.
“Your family matter ended when he raised that club.”
Preston pushed himself upright.
“You embarrassed me.”
I stared.
That was what he believed had happened.
Not assault.
Not betrayal.
Embarrassment.
Then I remembered his first sentence.
This is how my father taught my mother to obey.
I looked at the club.
There was engraving near the grip.
Small.
Almost worn away.
E.H.
I bent and turned the shaft with one finger.
“Evelyn Hale?”
Warren’s face changed.
Preston looked at his father.
There.
The club belonged to his mother.
I knew the public story.
Evelyn Hale died thirteen years earlier after a sudden illness.
Elegant woman.
Old Ashby blood.
Photographs of charity dinners, country clubs, summer houses.
Always smiling beside Warren.
I had never heard anyone say she needed to be taught obedience.
“Did this belong to your mother?”
Preston said nothing.
I looked at Warren.
“Did you use her own golf club to frighten her?”
His jaw tightened.
“You have no idea what my marriage was like.”
“Then explain it.”
“No.”
That answer mattered.
Preston snapped:
“She was impossible.”
I turned toward him.
“Dead women are convenient that way. They cannot correct you.”
Silence.
One of my capos, Gideon Mercer, shifted behind me.
He was old enough to remember Evelyn.
His expression had changed too.
I noticed.
“Gideon.”
He met my eyes.
“What do you know?”
Warren suddenly said:
“Giulietta, don’t.”
Wrong.
Gideon looked at the club.
Then at me.
“Evelyn Hale wasn’t weak.”
“I didn’t say she was.”
“No.”
His voice lowered.
“But Warren spent twenty years making people think she was.”
The room became still.
Gideon continued.
“And most of Hale power belonged to her family before it ever belonged to him.”
I looked at Preston.
At the wedding trousers.
The expensive watch.
The son repeating his father’s lesson.
Then I understood the possibility.
May you like
This was not the first time a Hale man had attached himself to a stronger woman.
It was simply the first time one had tried it with me.
