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can’t reveal it. They have no idea who within the Kin backs me, or how many back me any more than you do. Whoever it is will get desperate now. They’re going to convince themselves they’re smart enough, strong enough to take her from me. I’m going to prove them wrong. And uncover who they are at the same time, however I have to.”
    Sawyer spoke up then, an edge of disgust in his tone. “By using Grace. When it’s over, you’ll leave her broken, Zack.”
    He repeated his earlier statement. “She’ll be alive.”
    Grace would be alive, and that should be all that concerned her family. At the heart of it, he was afraid that part played too large a role in his own plans as well.
    He’d begun thinking of her as his in some ways, long before now. He didn’t like it, but he also tried not to hide from himself. And Grace was a part of him he couldn’t define or make sense of.
    “What do you need?” Vinny asked rather than protesting further. “How do you intend to play this little game of yours?”
    It wasn’t a game, but so long as the Maddox family believed it was just that, then the safer Grace would be. The Brigham family would know better, unfortunately. Just as Zack knew it. There were secrets they shared, secrets that would end up not just hurting Grace but destroying him as well.
    “Grace is too weak to protect herself. You raised her to be the replacement princess when you thought Kenni was dead.” He ignored the shocked anger in their faces. “She’s delicate, with no fighting skills and a trusting nature.” He shot the four men a scowl. “It’s like letting a puppy loose in a den of wolves. You set her up as bait from the moment you took her into your home.”
    Grace hadn’t even been born with the fiery, stubborn nature of the Maddox Clan. She smiled sweetly at everyone when she asked for something, and for the most part, they indulged her. The princess could do no harm, until the true princess returned. Now she was a target.
    “That’s how you see Grace?” Vinny asked heavily. “Weak and defenseless?”
    “She’s a country club debutante,” Zack reminded him, though without scorn. “Through no fault of her own. She can’t survive in this world you’ve carved out for her. The very fact that she is so defenseless has made her a target.”
    The four men stared at each other as though assessing what Zack had said, perhaps not believing it, but they had to see the truth of the matter.
    “You didn’t train her, even to the extent that Kenni had been trained,” he continued. “At least Kenni knew how to hunt, to shoot, and to fight. Grace has none of those skills. The only chance she has is to align herself with someone who has the strength to protect her, and will spend his life doing just that rather than his job within the Kinship. You set her up to die.”
    And it pissed him the hell off. Over the years, it had driven him to distraction to know that Grace had no idea how to fight if the situation warranted it. And with the Kin, the situation would eventually warrant it.
    “You didn’t answer my question, son. How do you intend to protect her?” Vinny asked with that dangerously soft voice that seemed to affect anyone who heard it.
    Anyone but me, Zack thought. He wasn’t scared of Vinny any more than he was frightened of his uncle, Alex Brigham.
    “First of all, the information regarding my parentage goes no further,” Zack insisted. “Secondly, I’ll be taking care of Grace from here on out.” And here was where he expected the blowout: “As her lover.”
    Surprisingly, Vinny’s brow lifted in subtle, amused mockery, his green eyes lighting with it before he glanced at her cousins. Each of the other three men was too quiet.
    The patriarch finally shrugged. “Grace can choose her own lovers. Any plan you come up with, she’ll be made aware of, though. So it isn’t our agreement you have to procure, but hers.”
    Zack stared back at them suspiciously. Well, now,