Page 94 of The Heart of an Earl

The ruby centering the ring flickered in the dim light of the sconces.

Gatlong snapped the box closed.

“You have what you wanted all these years,” Des said, his voice even. “Now Jules and I are leaving this place. And we are never to see your face again.”

Gatlong shifted his look to Des, the pistol lifting high once more. “You think that, do you, boy?”

“Yes, we bloody well think that.” Silent until that very moment, Jules’s scream ripped through the study. “That is exactly what is about to happen, Father.”

Gatlong didn’t look back to his daughter, his stare focused on Des, the pistol aimed at his torso.

“No, you owe us this, Father—after what you did to Des, what you did to me. You told him I was dead—you told me he was dead. There is nothing more we owe you. Nothing that you deserve.”

Gatlong chuckled to himself. “That was the sweetest vengeance of all after you two stole the box from me—both of you out there, moving through life, not knowing that the other was alive.” Gatlong extended the pistol toward Des’s chest. “And now this bastard can die for good this time.”

Des coiled, springing forward at the madman just as Jules jumped to the side of her father with the ancient samurai sword in hand, swinging it down with a mighty fury on Gatlong’s raised right arm.

The blade sliced clean through Gatlong’s wrist.

The pistol fired, the crack booming through Des’s head, the room, the house.

Gatlong’s right hand thumped to the floor.

Dismembered from his arm, his fingers still gripping the pistol.

~~~

Of course it was that sharp.

The sword of a samurai.

Even hundreds of years old, the finest of blades.

Her father never would have purchased it from that disreputable contraband merchant all those years ago if it wasn’t the real thing.

The world went blurry, slow in front of Jules.

His hand on the floor.

The box crashing down next to it. Her father stumbling back, the blow of Des crashing into him sending him across the room. His deranged screams filling the room as he fell to the hearth in front of the fireplace. Clutching his arm, clutching at the bleeding stump that now existed where his hand once did.

She should have killed him.

She knew it the moment he mentioned the lack of rugs in his study.

He would only care about his precious rugs if he meant to spill blood.

And she’d been right. He meant to spill blood. Des’s blood. Her blood.

She wasn’t about to let that happen. Not when she still had the soul of a pirate buried deep within her. Brutal strength to call upon.

Her father’s body convulsed, wrapping around his arm, agonized wails seeping from his throat in wave after wave.

She didn’t care. Not anymore.

Jules looked up, searching for Des.

He’d staggered backward to the desk, shock in his hazel eyes. Still. Unmoving.

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