Mia POV

My mouth opened before my head could catch up.

“You’re a disease wearing a spine,” I spat. “You call it pruning, what you’re really doing is carving your name into the bones of the innocent.”

For a beat, Roger simply smiled as if I’d delivered him a gift. Then the amusement in his face snapped shut like a trap.

“You have a lovely mouth, Princess,” he said softly. “Shame it’ll be the last thing you taste.”

He moved with the calm cruelty of a man who’d practiced ...