Debt Inheritance (Indebted #1)

Chapter Thirteen

**NILA**

"ENOUGH PLAYING, JETHRO, bring her here."

The command burned my ears, turning my false belief I could survive into dirty soot. The fire I'd nursed inside was gone. All the stupid pretending that I could block the worst from damaging my soul disappeared. My little claws had fully retracted into nothing once again.

I was cold. Cold as him.

Shut down. Same as him.

Silent. Same as him.

Only one way to get it off.

I swallowed. My head pounded. My hands flew up to tug at the jewelled collar. It was heavy and lifeless and ice. Pure ice. The perfect clarity and flawless sparkle of the diamonds leached into my skin, claiming me, marking me.

Only one way to get it off.

I thought I'd come to terms with my mortality. I thought I'd face the end with my head held high and dry eyes—but that was before they told me the method of my execution. When I thought of death, I pictured...nothing...I had no image of how the end would come.

Now I did.

Only one way to get it off.

I was to be beheaded.

There'd be no sawing off the collar or picking the lock. The way the clasp snapped so resolutely hinted at a one way mechanism. The heavy noose was now mine...an accessory slowly strangling me by diamonds.

It wasn't breakable. But I was. So fragile really, when a single sharp blade could cast me from life into the nether. Diamonds were nature's hardest fortress—the quintessential marriage of unbreakable ice and power.

A new unwanted respect curdled in my stomach. Jethro said his mines. Their mines. Diamonds were pure, but the method of collection had a chequered history of death and violence.

They didn't just play the part of untouchables. They were untouchable.

No!

My tugging fingers turned frantic. I arched my neck, searching with an edge of insanity for a weakness in the soldered white gold and gemstones. It had to come off.

It has to.

I didn't have the strength to die. I didn't have the martyrdom to let them do this. Not for family. Not for fortune. I'm weak. I don't want to die!

Jethro grabbed my wrists, effortlessly pulling my arms away from my throat. My eyes opened and all I saw was malevolent stone. There was no compassion in his light-brown eyes. No sympathy or even guilt. How did he have the power to be so close to me—to grow hard wanting me—and know all along my fate?

Only a special person could do that. A person who wasn't born of this world, but brimstone and fire. From hell.

I struggled in his hold, breathing hard. The collar settled heavily, still spreading its heinous ice. "I was wrong about you," I hissed.

Jethro placed my hands by my sides, then let me go. He shrugged, running a palm through his thick salt-and-pepper hair. "I've been nothing but forthright and honest from the beginning. You're the one who spun a lie from the truth. You're the one who ignored everything I was telling you."

Turning to face the table, he wrapped a cold arm around my waist. "And now it's time to face the reality of everything you tried to ignore."

Mr. Hawk, with his ridiculous tweed and leather outfit, stubbed out a smouldering cigar. "Did you tell her?"