Three years earlier
on the count of grievous bodily harm with intent, how do you plead?”
“Not guilty, Your Honor,” I grind out. A stabbing pain shoots up my jaw as I clench my teeth.
I drag in a deep breath as the victim scoffs from his position across the courtroom. I meet his eyes with a glare that could penetrate bulletproof glass.
I should have killed him. Finished the job when I had my hands around his throat.
The corners of my lips twitch as I recall the softness of his skin beneath my fists that night. The sound his ribs made when they cracked. Like snapping the wishbone after a roast chicken supper that Mom would cook.
Shame, those wishes never came true.
I fight the urge to adjust my collar in the stifling heat of the courtroom. Her Majesty’s finest building for justice and they couldn’t even fix the damn air conditioning.
A bead of sweat rolls down the back of my neck, but I ignore it. Any movement, any show of weakness, and he will think it’s guilt over what happened between him and I.
Guilt or fear.
And I feel neither.
I don’t feel guilt. The bastard deserved it, and a whole lot more.
And fear? I tear my gaze away from the man in the suit staring at me like something he stepped in, then look over at my sister, Jasmin, and give her a small nod as she stares back at me with wide eyes.
No, not fear… but regret maybe.
Regret, in case this sadistic fucker gets his way and sends me down for something he had coming, she will be alone. Something I promised her she would never be.
My friend, Logan, reaches for her and takes her hand, squeezing it, but her eyes never leave mine as she draws in a breath that makes her shoulders shake.
Not guilty, Your Honor. Not fucking guilty.
“Members of the jury, have you reached your verdict?” the female judge asks. And despite the courtroom being quiet before, a new level of silence descends as the entire room seems to hold its breath. Only the ticking of the clock on the wall can be heard. Each strike sounds like a missile counting down to my fate.
“We have, Your Honor,” the appointed speaker of the jury answers—an oily-looking businessman with more money than style. Jury picking by the prosecution, is an obvious tactic. Choose people of the same age, sex, and race as the person I’m accused of harming. And similar social standing in the community, judging from the speaker’s smug self-important expression plastered over his face as he flashes me a look of disdain.
Get more sympathy from jury members. Let them relate to the victim.
I wonder if this jerk has a tidy little side business supplying coke to minors. Oh, and sending fucking dick pics to my sister.
I turn my attention back to the reason we are all here today—Julian Young, owner of Mason’s, the UK’s biggest overseas spirits import company. Business rival, drug dealer, and all-round asshole.
He purses his lips as he stares at me, his hair slicked back, graying at the sides and around his collar.
I never liked him, even before he put his disgusting, filthy, leery eyes on my sister, and then violated her privacy by sending her those messages. He isn’t worthy of breathing the same air as her.
I remember the way his hand landed too low on her back the night of that business dinner as he whispered something in her ear. It made contempt slither over my skin like a swarm of starved locusts. Maybe I should have ignored the comment he made about her, about how it was a shame she was my sister as he bet I would love to fuck an ass like that. Maybe I shouldn’t have gone postal on him. After all, it resulted in me being restrained by five security guards in front of half of Southeast England’s most influential businesspeople.
Or maybe I should have broken the other two ribs that escaped my wrath. And smashed his nose to the backside of his head instead of fracturing it. Maybe I should have done that.
The clock continues to tick. He leans in his chair and whispers something to his lawyer as he holds my eyes.
Sly bastard. He’s wanted me out of the way since our company outperformed his at last year’s industry awards. Slippery fucker tried to get me done for attempted murder, until the charge was reduced to a lesser one.
But I doubt I’m the only one who wouldn’t cry at his obituary if someone did the world a favor. The less creeps like him in the world, the better.
“Very well. And do you find the defendant guilty or not guilty?” the judge asks.
Julian straightens. I stare into his eyes.
“Guilty, Your Honor.”
His eyes gleam, and he bares his yellowing teeth before his mouth curls into a sneer, and he finally breaks my gaze.
I exhale and draw in a deep lungful of air.
I was holding my breath that entire time without realizing.
“No! Dax!” Jasmin sobs from the seating area.
Eyes whip to her, including Julian Young’s son, who is sitting on the opposite side of the central aisle.
Is he proud of his father? Or a fellow criminal—like father, like son?
Although, in the eyes of the law, I’m the only criminal here today.
I can’t leave my seat. I can only look on as Logan wraps an arm around Jasmin’s shoulders, and she blinks at me, wiping the tears from her cheeks with the heel of her hands and pushing her long, dark hair away from her face.
I love you, I mouth as her face crumples again and her entire body shakes with her sobs.
She drops her face into her hands as Logan holds her tight. He tips his chin at me in a silent confirmation.
He’ll look out for her.
We’ve known Logan since school. His family runs a luxury engineering and design company that his father is readying him to take over. But his father was adamant he worked for other companies first to make sure it’s what he wants. So, Logan has been working for me at the distillery Jasmin and I inherited from our grandparents. Our parents were killed in a car accident years ago. And that meant a multimillion-pound company was handed to us when I was twenty-one and Jasmin was fifteen. It’s been years of hard work, college night classes, and more business meetings than I can remember, but we’ve done it. We kept the business afloat, despite not having a clue what we were doing. Jasmin helped out around school hours, but I tried to keep her out of it, wanting her to choose her own future. Not be thrust into one chosen for her.
I wanted her to have freedom. To never lose the beautiful, strong-willed, dreamer of a little sister I had known. For the most part, it worked. We grieved our parents together. Held each other up when the other could have so easily crumbled into ash. We got through it. Day by day. And she still kept her smile that could light up the darkest corners of the earth.
But that smile is a ghost now as the judge reads out my sentencing.
The air leaves my lungs in one harsh burst and tension ripples through my shoulders for the first time since being arrested.
Three years.
Three years of my life I won’t be with her, when I promised her I’d never leave. She may be a grown woman now, but all I see is the twelve-year-old girl who was told Mommy and Daddy were never coming home again.
She looked to me then, her big brother, barely eighteen, with fear in her eyes. And it was simple. I had to protect her at all costs. We had to stay together.
And now I’ve failed her.
I clench my jaw again, unable to take my eyes from her crumpled frame as the officers come to lead me away.
Julian Young will fucking pay for this.
