Page 17 of Heartless Game

He gave me almost nothing, face blank, eyes shuttered—except there was a small twitch in his cheek, just to the right of his left dimple.

A tell.

“What would I have to lie about?” he asked calmly, as if he hadn’t given himself away.

Steeling myself for an intense reaction from him, I stated, “Why you’re pretending your last name is Jones, for one.”

My breath roared in my lungs while I stayed still and tried to pretend I hadn’t just dropped a bomb on him. Under the table, I tapped on Alex’s name on my phone, just in case.

He narrowed his eyes, and said slowly, the threat clear, “If you know my real last name, you know better than to threaten me, little snoop.”

Little snoop.I hated the diminutive, the clear derision in it, the hatred.

I straightened, annoyed. “I don’t know who you’re calling little, IsaacSil?—”

Before I could finish saying his last name, his hand was on my mouth, shutting me up. His fingers dug into my cheek painfully, like he could control me. Control my words, my everything. Shock filled me at his touch, and the blatant violence in it. Had I been wrong about Isaac? Disastrously so?

But no fucking way would I let him shut me up. The reason I wanted to be a journalist wasn’t only because I wanted to take his family down and free my own. It was because I had one calling in this life: speaking truth to power.

Growling low in my throat, I bit him, hard.

It didn’t work. Still gripping my face with his big hand, he leaned forward, his dark eyes intent on mine. “You like to play rough, huh?”

I glared at him, enraged. I tried to bite him again, but was distracted when he dragged my chair closer to his with his free hand and then draped a casual arm over it, his hand closing around the back of my neck…

…and squeezing.

Like I was a pet, and he was my owner. Like he was in charge.

My body agreed, heat traveling from his hand on my neck down my spine before pooling at the small of my back just above my ass. I was already wet from my earlier fantasy, but his dominance did something to me—I got wetter.

Angry, frustrated, helpless, and turned on, I shuddered at his touch.

His voice lowered, the threat in it like a caress. “You might know my last name, but that doesn’t come close to what I know about you.”

And then his next words shot terror through me.

“That’s right,” he continued, staring at me with triumph. “I knowyoursecret. And while you revealing mine would be an…inconvenience at best, if I revealed yours, it would blow up your entire life, wouldn’t it? I could take it to the police, to the dean…even tell Aviva.”

No.No, he couldn’t know. There was no way. We’d buried our tracks, kept the past hidden. And if he really, truly, knew the truth of who I was, then why were we sitting here? Where were his father’s men with guns, ready to kidnap and torture me to find out where my mother was? And why now?

I didn’t even realize it, but I’d been jerking my head back and forth beneath his hand in denial of what was to come.

But I couldn’t stop the inevitable. Especially when he said, “After all, if you know my real last name, it’s helpful that I know yours…Tovah Lewis.”

He knew.

Heknew.

Oh god, I was dead. Worse, my mother was dead. I’d had a whole fucking plan, and he’d destroyed it in an instant.

Without a second thought, I typedcome down to the bar now!to Alex and pressed send.

Unaware of what I’d just done, Isaac smiled, and the light in his eyes and bright white of his teeth petrified me. It was more terrifying when he finally released my mouth, only to tuck a wayward strand of hair behind my ear—the same ear he’d whispered into before. I shivered uncontrollably, fear—and desire—overwhelming my ability to think. To get out of this mess.

“Now, here’s how this is going to go,” he began.

But my inner rebel, the part of me that was sick of being controlled by outside forces, by his family—it wasn’t about to let me be controlled by him. I’d been helpless almost my entire life, and I refused to be helpless anymore.

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