LITMIR.BIZ

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been so awkward next to her cousin, the languid and effortlessly blond Philippa.

      They’d just been girls. He’d known that then, but it had gotten confused across all these lost, stolen years. And still, Philippa had seemed so much older. Even though it was the always nervous Lexi who had actually done some real living in her early years, when she’d still been in the clutches of her addict parents.

      Atlas hated that there was a part of him that still remembered the affection he’d once felt for the poor Worth relation. The little church mouse who the family had treated like their very own Cinderella, as if she ought to have been happy to dine off their scraps and condescension the rest of her life.

      Looking at her now, it was clear that she was doing exactly that. That she’d taken it all to heart, locked away in the farthest reaches of the estate, where she could do all the work and remain out of sight and out of mind.

      The way her uncle had always wanted it; and Atlas should have had more sympathy for her because of it.

      He didn’t.

      She’d grown into her beauty now, however, though she appeared to be dressed like a mouse today. Or if he was more precise, a run-of-the-mill secretary in a sensible skirt and an unobjectionable blouse. Brown hair tugged into a severe bun that looked as if it ought to have given her a headache.

      She looked as if she was dressed to disappear. To fade into the wallpaper behind her. To never, ever appear to have a single thought above her station.

      But still, mouse or secretary or Cinderella herself, she didn’t crumple, which made her far more brave than most of the men he’d met in prison.

      “You will never know how sorry I am that my testimony put you behind bars,” she said, her eyes slick with misery as if she was as haunted by all of this as he was. Yet she kept her gaze steady on his just the same. “But Atlas. I didn’t tell a single lie. I didn’t make anything up. All I said was what I saw.”

      “What you saw.” He let out a bitter laugh. “You mean what you twisted around in your fevered little teenage brain to make into some kind of—”

      “It was what I saw, nothing more and nothing less.” She pressed her lips together and shook her head. Once, harshly. Then again. “What did you expect me to do? Lie?”

      “Certainly not.” He moved until he was directly opposite her, only the narrow little desktop between them. This close, he could smell her. Soap, he thought, crisp and clean. And something faintly like rosemary that washed through him like heat. Better still, he could see the way her pulse went mad in the crook of her neck. “After all, what do you have if not your word? Your virtue?” He put enough emphasis on that last word that she cringed. “I understand that is a requirement for the charity you enjoy here. Your uncle has always been very clear on that score, has he not?”

      She flushed again, harder this time. And Atlas shouldn’t have been fascinated at the sight. He told himself it was nothing more than the vestiges of his prison time, making him find a female, any female, attractive. It wasn’t personal.

      Because it couldn’t be personal. There was too much work to do.

      “My uncle has never been anything but kind to me,” she said in a low, intense voice, though there was a flicker in her gaze that made him wonder if she believed her own words.

      “I know he requires you to believe it.”

      Another deep, red flash. “I understand that you’re the last person in the world who could think kindly of the family. Any of them. And I don’t blame you for that.”

      “I imagine I should view that as a kind of progress, that I am permitted my own bitterness. That it is no longer considered a part and parcel of my guilt, as if remorse for a crime I didn’t commit might make me a better man.”

      Atlas regarded her stonily as she jerked a bit at that, though something in him...eased, almost. He’d spent all those years fuming, seething, plotting. He’d discarded more byzantine, labyrinthine plots than he cared to recall. That was what life in prison did to a man. It was fertile ground for grudges, the deeper, the better. But he’d never been entirely sure he’d get the opportunity to put all of this into motion.

      “I won’t lie to you, Lexi. I expected this to be harder.”

      “Your return?”

      He watched, fascinated despite himself, as she pressed her lips together. As if they were dry. Or she was nervous. And Atlas was a man who had gone without female companionship for longer than he ever would have believed possible, before. No matter what else happened, he was still a man.

      He could think of several ways to wet those lips.

      But that was getting ahead of himself.

      “I don’t expect you to believe this,” Lexi was saying with an intense earnestness that made him feel almost...restless. “But everyone feels terrible. My uncle. My cousins. All of us. Me especially. If I could change what happened, you have to believe I would.”

      “You’re right,” Atlas murmured. He waited for that faint bit of hope to kindle in her gaze, because he was nothing if not the monster they’d made him. “I don’t believe it.”

      And really, she was too easy. He could read her too well. He saw the way she drooped, then collected herself. He watched her straighten again, then twist her hands together again. Harder this time.

      “I know why you came here,” she said after a moment. Quietly. “I expect your hatred, Atlas. I know I earned it.”

      “Aren’t you the perfect little martyr?” When she shook a bit at that, he felt his mouth curve. “But it’s not going to be that easy, Lexi. Nothing about this is going to be easy at all. If you come to a place of peace with that now, perhaps you will find this all less distressing.” He shrugged. “Or perhaps not.”

      She looked panicked, but to her credit, she didn’t move. She didn’t swoon or scream or do any of the things Philippa would have done. No tantrums, no drama.

      But then, Lexi had never been about theatrics.

      That was precisely why she’d been such an effective witness for the prosecution, all starchy and matter-of-fact until she’d turned the knife in him, one glassy-eyed half sob at a time.

      And what was wrong with him that he was tempted to forget that? For even a moment? He felt no connection to this woman. He couldn’t. She was a pawn, nothing more.

      It irritated him that he seemed to need reminding of that fact.

      “What exactly is to come?” she asked, her voice hardly more than a breath and her eyes much too big in her face.

      “I’m so glad you asked.” He stood where he was, watching her. Studying her. Then he crooked a finger, and liked it a little too much when she jolted, as if he’d shot her through with lightning when he wasn’t even touching her. Yet. “Come here.”

      She swayed on her feet and he was bastard enough to enjoy it. Hell, he more than enjoyed it. He figured it was as close as Lexi ever got to a full-on faint, and it was only a drop in the bucket next to the pain he owed her.

      She swallowed, hard. He watched her throat move and braced himself for a spate of complaints. Or excuses. Anything to avoid what was coming.

      But she didn’t say anything. She didn’t argue or dawdle. She straightened that blouse of hers that was already precise to a near military level, and then she stepped out from behind her desk.

      “Closer,” Atlas ordered her when she only rounded the desk and stopped, leaving several feet between them.

      Another hard, audible swallow. He could see her terror beat in her neck. He could see the flushed state of her skin. He could see fear and apprehension in her gaze, and the truth was, it was better than he’d imagined.

      And God knew, he’d imagined this moment again and again and again. He’d imagined it so many times it was

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