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He opens the box.

For one second, I don’t understand what I’m seeing.

My mind refuses.

Then the world stops.

Ella’s glass bracelet lies inside.

It’s smeared with blood.

My heart stops so completely I think I might truly cease to exist. “No.”

Cain looks down at the bracelet. “Pretty little thing.”

“What did you do to her?”

Cain sighs and shakes his head. “You always were the easiest brother to wound.”

I strain against the grip of my brother’s goons. “Where is she? Where’s Ella?”

I nearly tear free.

The men holding me curse as I throw my weight forward, not caring if my shoulder dislocates, not caring if bone breaks, not caring if Cain shoots me himself.

I have to get to the box.

To the bracelet.

“Where is she?” I roar again.

Cain closes the lid. “Don’t worry,” he says. “It’s not hers. The blood, I mean. Not the tacky trinket.”

The room tilts. I should feel relief. This is Cain’s way of telling me she’s alive. But he could easily be lying. My youngest brother is a snake in the grass.

The blood isn’t hers.

But it’s someone’s.

“Where is she?” I ask a third time.

Cain sets the jewelry box back on the desk. “You keep asking that.”

“Answer me.”

“The better question,” Cain says, walking slowly around the desk, “is where are you?”

I stare at him.

The men still hold me. One on each side. My breath comes hard. My shoulder throbs. I itch to wring my hands around my brother’s throat.

Cain looks at me with his cold gray eyes. “Where do you stand in this family, Nathaniel?”

I laugh once. It sounds deranged. “You’re asking me that now?”

“I am.”

“You threaten the woman I love and want to discuss family loyalty?”