Chapter 17: Claim Me

Malachi came out of the elevator with eleven old men behind him.

He looked at me first.

He looked at every inch of me, the red dress and my bare arms and my hands, and I watched his jaw work.

"I'm fine," I said.

"I heard."

"Every word?"

"Every word."

He turned his head and found Dane by the window with ginger ale dripping off his chin.

Nobody moved.

I stepped between them and put my hand flat on Malachi's chest.

"Not here," I said.

"Kate."

"I want him at that table tonight, sitting in his chair when your father reads it all out."

I kept my eyes on Malachi.

"If you break his face now, he walks in as the victim."

Malachi's chest rose and fell under my palm.

I felt the exact moment he decided to listen.

"Take him down," he said, without looking at the pit boss. "Let him go home and change. His key stays here."

The pit boss took the brass key from the guard with the gold pin, and two of the old men took Dane by the elbows.

Dane looked back over his shoulder at me.

"Seven o'clock, sweetheart," he said. "I still haven't heard your yes."

"You'll hear something," I said.

My father went down in the elevator with the pit boss's arm around his shoulders, still talking about the ice.

Then the doors closed, and the room was empty except for the two of us.

The sea went on in the windows.

Malachi crossed the carpet and stopped an arm's length from me with his hands open.

"I need to say something," he said.

"Say it."

"I told myself for four years that anything I claimed was a cage. My father's way. Dane's way."

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