The Ruby Shackle Bound To The Billionaire

Audie Wilcox kicked off her heels. They hit the marble floor of the side corridor with a clatter that was too loud for 2:00 AM, but her feet were screaming. She leaned against the wall, pressing her cheek against the cold plaster.

She took a breath. In. Out.

She needed to lower her heart rate. She needed to look like a girl who had just come back from a bad date with a mechanic, not an operative who had spent the last four hours assessing the perimeter security of a dive bar.

She turned to the antique mirror hanging in the hallway. She widened her eyes. She practiced the tremble of her lower lip. The "frightened doe." It was her best look. It was a look that required no words, a performance of pure, silent terror that had saved her life more than once.

The motion sensor light at the end of the hall flickered.

The smell hit her first. It wasn't the usual lemon polish the maids used. It was heavy. Acrid. Expensive tobacco.

Basil Dean was smoking indoors again.

A hand shot out from the shadows.

It was a blur of movement, black leather gripping her wrist. Audie's training screamed at her to pivot, to drive her elbow into the attacker's solar plexus, to snap the radius bone.

She didn't.

She forced her muscles to turn to water. She let out a pathetic, high-pitched gasp and slumped against the wall, letting the attacker take her weight.

"Late," a voice rasped.

Basil Dean dragged her. He didn't walk; he moved with a predatory stillness that was more unnerving than a storm, his grip on her wrist tight enough to bruise. He pulled her toward the library, past the rows of unread first editions, to the mahogany paneling in the back.

He pressed his thumb against a scanner hidden behind a bust of Caesar. A red light scanned his eye.

Beep.

The wall slid open.

He shoved her inside. Audie stumbled, catching her toe on the carpet, and fell to her knees. It was a calculated fall. Clumsy. Helpless.

The steel door hissed shut behind them, sealing them in the soundproof panic room. The air here was recycled and stale.

Basil towered over her. He looked like a wreck. His tie was undone, his shirt unbuttoned at the collar, revealing the pale skin of his throat. His eyes were bloodshot, rimmed with the kind of exhaustion that came from medication, not lack of sleep.

He held up a photograph.

He threw it at her face. The glossy paper fluttered down, landing on her lap.

It was a picture of her. At the diner. Smiling at Arthur, the mechanic with the grease under his fingernails.

"You smiled at him," Basil said. His voice was dangerously quiet.

Audie picked up the photo with trembling fingers. She looked from the photo up to his face, her own expression a mask of confusion and fear. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but only a choked little sound came out. She shook her head, a frantic, silent denial.

"I don't care what my mother said," he snarled, misinterpreting her silence as an unspoken appeal to his family's instructions.

Basil slammed his fist into the padded wall beside her head. Dust motes danced in the vibration.

Audie flinched, curling into a ball. She held her breath, forcing her heart to hammer against her ribs. She needed him to feel it.