Often children and weaker fighters would occupy the ring to put on a show before the big fight of the night. It was entertainment and to give the bookies a chance to make more money. But Dax had been something of an anomaly then, far younger and scrawnier than the other kids, who were all a good few years older, Dax learned to be fast and to disguise every weakness.

‘What happened back then is nothing to do with now,’ Dax said.

‘No?’ Mauri asked, arching a brow. ‘Growing up here in this house, in the back kitchen with the other staff children, you never complained, you always knew your place.’

He was the only one of the children who got alone time with Mauri, even Mauri’s children spent more time with their mother. Dax was special, he was the chosen one, though he’d never asked why.

Despite being an obvious favourite of Mauri’s, Dax had never asked for more. Mainly through fear that asking for it would cause him to be cast out for being greedy. No, he knew he had done well for himself. Dax always believed that serendipity had found him the day that Mauri offered him the chance to repent for his misdeed.

‘And now I’ve stepped out of it, is that what you’re saying?’ Dax asked.

‘She has given you something that none of the rest of us could.’ Devotion, loyalty, respect, Dax could speculate all day. ‘Status. No matter how we valued your work, you were never going to be the most powerful man in the room, not with Brad, Trystan, Bruno and I on your fringes. No, she saw exactly what you wanted and she gave it to you in order to save herself.’

‘Ivy fell in love with me before she knew anything about what was going on.’

‘She knew that she was being held captive and that you may have held the key. She manipulated you, my son.’

‘No,’ Dax said, shaking his head. ‘Why would she have married me if—?’

‘Marriages are easily undone these days,’ Maurice said. ‘She most likely planned to stick around while you smoothed over things with the family and then planned to leave you, divorce you, after Trystan had been appeased and moved onto other things.’

Dax didn’t want to hear that. He didn’t want to think that it could be true. But as Ivy had pointed out herself, she had been the one to initiate so much between them and had even taken the lead in seducing him on their first night together. He’d considered the possibility that she was manipulating him, but the idea fled in the same moment that her body slid onto his. Everything about her soothed his ego and he had let her do it.

Bringing his hands up, he let his face fall into them and tried to decipher what was truth and what was not. Ivy had been in dire straits, and she was a smart girl who could do what needed to be done in order to survive. The Starks had been his family for twenty years; they had always stood by him just as he had stood by them. He’d been ready to give up his family for a woman who, Mauri was right, might choose to leave him in three months.

Mauri had always guided him and had never let him down. He had let him carry on with the fighting even though it didn’t fit too well with the Stark image. Mauri had never been ashamed of him, had never questioned his loyalty, and Ivy had made Dax do both to the man who had nurtured him.

‘What do I do?’ Dax asked, rubbing his face up his fingers until Mauri came into view again.

‘You can bring her back to us,’ Mauri said. ‘Though it’s unlikely that Trystan will marry her now. Clearly, she isn’t as obedient as we thought she was and if she tries to manipulate him or gives him trouble… well…’

Trystan had no restraint and was so erratic that there was no telling what he would do. If Ivy spoke to Trystan the way that she spoke to him, well, the chances were that she’d get a beating. Having another person wielding that kind of power over her, she would push back hard, which would rile Trystan more and he equated sex with power. Trystan would beat her and rape her and keep her until he got bored, until she was truly broken, if he didn’t kill her first.

‘You don’t want him drawing attention to the family,’ Dax muttered.

‘I don’t.’ That was enough to divulge Mauri’s thinking. If Trystan killed Ivy, whether on purpose or by accident, the family would have a body to get rid of and a lot of unanswered questions. ‘Keep her for today,’ Mauri said. ‘Give me a chance to talk to Trystan and bring her over here, say midnight.’

‘And then what?’ Dax asked, glad that he would have the time to talk to Ivy and get the truth out of her. All he’d thought about was his own love and how it would affect him to see her with another man, he hadn’t considered the notion that he was being played for a fool, not really, he hadn’t given it serious thought and he should have.

Midnight was a daunting time though because there wouldn’t be many eyes around to witness what could happen. If Trystan was understanding then Ivy might get out of this alive. But Dax noticed now how worn Mauri looked. He had believed that Ivy could be the answer to his aggravation. Through the years Mauri had put up with a lot of immature antics from Trystan, but he was getting bored with it now and desperately wanted Trystan to grow up. They’d been on the cusp of maybe seeing that happening and Dax had dashed all hope.

‘I can send Bruno for her if you are uncomfortable—‘

‘No,’ Dax said, rising to his feet. ‘I got us into this mess, it’s my responsibility to get us out of it.’

‘Good,’ Maurice said and actually smiled as he joined Dax on his journey to the door. ‘I wish that Trystan was as responsible as you are. I’m proud of you, Dax.’

He hadn’t expected those words to come out of Maurice’s mouth today. ‘Proud?’

‘Yes. You made a mistake and we all do that sometimes. But now you’ve had this experience you’re never going to let it happen again.’ All good humour left Maurice and he stopped Dax from opening the door. ‘Are you?’

‘No,’ Dax said, understanding the gravity of what Maurice was conveying.

‘Family should always come first and that’s what I’ll be explaining to Trystan. We shouldn’t let a woman come in between brothers, should we?’

‘I’ll deal with it,’ Dax said, experiencing an emotion drain more profound than anything he had before. He’d thought that he’d been numb before finding Ivy, now that he’d found her and the prospect of losing her was on the horizon, numb didn’t come close to describing the lead in his veins now.

Ivy hadn’t meant to fall asleep, but when she heard the clatter of a door close, her eyes popped open and she realised that sleeping was exactly what she’d been doing. Rolling onto her back, she stretched and kept her eyes closed, anticipating that Dax would join her. Except he didn’t and there were no more sounds to indicate what he was doing so curling up to sit in the middle of the vast bed she was confused to see him in the doorway of the closet, doing nothing.

‘What happened?’ she asked. ‘Did you fix it? Did everything get worked out?’

‘I think it did.’

‘Thank goodness for that,’ she said awash with relief that made her sigh out a smile. ‘Do you want me to cook you something and you can tell me what happened?’

‘No,’ he murmured.

She wasn’t sure if she should laugh or get up and run away, because his static form wasn’t giving much away. ‘Are you ok? Was it rough? Was he pissed?’

‘Brad was pissed, so was Bruno.’

‘And Mauri?’

‘I knew I could count on Mauri.’

Their relationship must be stronger than Ivy had given it credit for because she hadn’t expected Mauri to be understanding. Dax wasn’t upset or angry, at least she didn’t think that he was, he was still just standing there.

‘What are you thinking about, tough guy?’ she asked, resisting the urge to exhale a nervous laugh.

Reaching for the back of his tee-shirt, he grabbed the neck of it and pulled it off then bent down to unlace his boots enough to pull them off. Ivy didn’t have to wonder what he was thinking after he shirked his jeans.