Coralyn trembled as Giana took another step, then another.
She was right across the desk now. She flattened her palms
there and leaned into them, an apex predator, and Coralyn was
in her sights. She couldn’t swallow past the sudden lump of
fear in her throat. Something wasn’t right. Something was
very, very wrong about this. Her heart hammered wildly, and
Giana’s gaze locked on her throat and her eyes darkened,
Coralyn swore they did.
“So you’ve come begging to me, hoping that out of the
goodness of my heart, I’ll let you have a hundred-thousand-
dollar necklace? I should trust you, a complete stranger? Just
take your word for it that everything would be fine?”
“I could sign something. Something saying that I have it. A
rental agreement.”
Giana laughed at that; the sound so cold that the hair on the
back of Coralyn’s neck stood on end. The smile on her face
was manufactured, but not plastic. More like something
designed to unnerve people. “You think the world works in
this sweet, pretty, nice way, don’t you? You’re so naïve, so
young, so sheltered, that you think that it owes you
something.”
The statement was so blunt. So freaking unkind. So horribly
delivered in that silky voice.
Coralyn wanted to stand up and scream that the last three
years of her life had been anything but sheltered. That she’d
worked her ass off during the day, taking classes at night just
to graduate. That they’d had to sell everything, piece by piece,
given up their family business then their family home. That
she’d lost her mother and she’d been forced to watch as her
dad’s health was stolen from him, as the life left him more and