Free Hold Your Breath 02 - Unmasking the Marquess by K.J. Jackson Page A

had everything riding on that ship. It was near comical how many debts you had against that cargo.”
    “You are mad, man.” Halstead bolted upright. “That ship held a fortune. A fortune at the bottom of the ocean. Do you know how much money was lost?”
    “I do, and better than even you. My stake was much greater in those holdings, and I lost ten times the amount you did.” Killian sat, relaxed. “But unlike you, I could lose the money. You could not, and that was all that mattered. In fact, the goods on my next ship to the isles brought in double the revenue.”
    Halstead’s blanched face turned red, fury overtaking him. His hand flickered toward the pistol on the desk, fingers shaking in rage.
    Killian willed him, desperately, to pick it up. To lunge and snatch it.
    To give Killian the reason he needed to kill the bastard.
    His hand a hair away from the silver of the pistol, Halstead stopped, glaring at Killian. “My daughter. She would not want this for me. I am her father. You cannot do this to her. You cannot destroy your father-in-law.”
    “I can. She means, quite frankly, less than nothing to me.” He waved his hand flippantly. “But do not think to try to remove her from the marriage. She is probably already with babe—it cannot be annulled. Your last option, whoring out your daughter, has failed you, Halstead.”
    Killian stood, using his height to intimidate as he glared down at Halstead. “Go back to the hole you crawled from, Halstead. Go back there and die.”
    Halstead leaned forward, his hand twitching above the pistol once more, but then he stood and spun, stalking to the door. Halfway through the entrance, he stopped, turning back to Killian, his voice sinister.
    “Do not get comfortable in your revenge, Southfork. You think you destroyed me. You have not. And the lesson of revenge will be returned upon you tenfold. I will crush you, Southfork. You will not see it approaching, but I will wait, I will rebuild, and I will destroy you, just as I did your father. You are as weak as he was. I can already see that in you.”
    He disappeared through the entrance at his last word, and within seconds, Killian could hear the front door open and close.
    Killian dropped heavy into his chair, leaning his head back to stare at the ceiling.
    Aside from Halstead not grabbing the gun, it had gone as Killian had laid out, perfectly.
    His revenge was complete, and he waited for peace to wash over him.
    After ten minutes, his eyes dropped to the tall evergreen hedges outside his window. He sat for two hours, staring out the window, waiting.
    Where was the peace?
    ~~~
    Reanna took a deep breath, filling her lungs to capacity. She couldn’t believe her good fortune. Finally, after days of being trapped inside by blustery winds and chilling snow, the skies had cleared and the world was fresh.
    She wasted no time in getting Ivy out for a long ride and soon found herself in the rarely-used southwest corner of the estate, nudging Ivy down a narrow trail that had frost-laden trees brushing her wool cloak. Out of nowhere, her horse reared.
    Grasping the reins, trying to keep Ivy under control, Reanna at first didn’t see the small boy crouched before her. Ivy spun in the path, and Reanna caught sight of him out of the corner of her eye. But by the time she got the horse settled, the boy was gone from the path.
    “Hello?” she said softly, feeling foolish for she was not quite sure if she had really seen a child. It could have very easily been an animal she saw that had frightened Ivy. “Hello?” she repeated, a bit louder.
    Just as she was about to move on, she heard rustling.
    “Hello? I can hear you. Come out.”
    Ever so slowly, a scrawny little boy stepped from the snowy brush beside the path.
    “Please, ma’am, please don’t tell.”
    Reanna immediately recognized what the boy was talking about, for in one tightly clutched hand, was a dead rabbit clearly taken from a trap. He was poaching.
    “Please,