Blindsided

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Maddie stood behind it.

Roni jumped to her feet, scraping the legs of her chair on the floor. “There you are. I waited for you this morning. I thought maybe you—” Roni cast a glance at the Boss, before finishing “—weren’t well.”

Maddie kept her head down as she lifted the serving dishes to place them on the table. She gave no inclination she even heard Roni. When she picked up Roni’s goblet to pour her juice, Roni put out her hand to stop her.

“I can pour my own juice.”

The liquid jostled over the rim of the glass.

“You were told to sit,” the Boss spoke, his voice heavy with an unspoken threat.

Slowly, Roni pulled her hand back and found her seat again.

“You are not to address the help. They have a job to do, and it would do you well to watch carefully.”

Roni picked up her napkin, opening it to fit over her lap. “Where I come from, we treat our help differently. Our maid is treated like family. She sits with us for meals.”

“You will need to leave those notions behind. Servants are to be treated as servants, not family. Knowing their place is what makes them happy.”

“I would have to disagree. There is nothing wrong with being a maid. It’s a job to be proud of and blesses both parties. When they’re paid well of course.”

The Boss sipped his tea, and his eye twitched, accenting a tiny scar by his right eye. He brought the cup back to the saucer with a clatter.

Roni continued to speak over it, not letting it cut into her nerves. “My maid, Cora, has been with my family since before I was born. We’re devoted to her as much as she is to us, and because of that, she’s never wanted to leave.”

Until recently anyway.

Roni kept that to herself. No need to go into the details of Cora’s retirement. “All I’m saying is your servants might not feel the same way as you do about their place.”

“Remove your scarf.”

Roni jolted at the request. “I’m sorry, what?”

“You heard me. I don’t repeat myself.” Not a hair of the man’s slick black hair moved.

Roni lifted a hand to her throat where the silk covered her scars. She quickly brought it down to grab her fork. “I would rather not. It’s my signature piece. I’m never seen without it.”

The scrambled eggs on her plate looked as if they would lodge in her throat if she dared put them down it. She reached for the juice and took a sip, then another and another. Returning it to the white-clothed table, she moved some more eggs around the plate. Her fork hit something hard.

Roni paused and looked back at the man across from her. Two of her remaining guards had stepped up beside him from out of nowhere. The Boss waved a finger and they moved down the sides of the table toward her, their eyes only on her scarf.

Roni wanted to move her eggs to find out what was under them, but she also needed to protect her neck from being exposed.

She reached for her napkin to blot her mouth and threw it over the eggs just as she stood up, upending her chair to the floor.

“Step away from me,” she said with a glare at both men.

“They only follow orders from me, Miss Spencer. Something else you need to learn how to do, as well.”

Just then Ethan and Guerra entered the dining room. They halted as one of the guards wrapped both arms around her, pinning her arms down so the other man could pull at the knot at her throat.

“Drop your hands!” Ethan shouted.

Roni willed him to look away. Why did he have to come in now? She wasn’t ready for the disgust in his eyes when he saw what was beneath the silk. She wondered if she would ever be ready.

And yet, at the same time she wanted to shield his view, a hope blossomed that her scars wouldn’t matter to him. What if he was different?

Before the idea took root, Ethan frowned.

Roni thought maybe the scars had already made an appearance, and he caught his first glimpse, but with the guard’s hands at her neck, she knew that wasn’t the case.

Ethan could only be frowning because he already knew.

After all, he’d checked her out.

Disappointment waged war with anger. Both responses were enough for her to fight her own battles, and she twisted with all her might to free herself from the guard’s pawing hands.

Ethan reached for the other man still holding her.

But not fast enough.

It was over before she knew it. One moment her neck was covered, the next, her imperfections were exposed for all to see...and judge.

The man behind her dropped her as though she’d burned him. The one with her scarf held his hand frozen in midair. The Boss slowly stood, his hands gripping the edge of the table. She raised her gaze to his face and saw the familiar cringe, the distasteful curl of lips, but there was something different in his eyes that she was not used to seeing.

Anger.

Usually people’s eyes widened and they looked away to some sudden interesting occurrence off in the distance. A child might stare and snicker or point and ask what happened, but adults never did. But they also never turned eyes so boiling on her that her skin could melt again.

“Kill her.”

The words spilled from his lips in smooth clarity but bounced off her ears as her mind rejected the command as real.

Then the man who held her arms down before wrapped an arm around her throat.

Roni reached for his tightening forearm, knowing she couldn’t stop the quick death coming her way. She closed her eyes, but suddenly the arm fell away lifeless in her hand. She had no time to understand why, but a quick turn of her head showed Ethan dropping the unconscious man to the floor.

He jerked his head to his left, and she took that as her cue to run for it, but a lift of his boot caught her attention. He reached for something and a tear of fabric could be heard.