My Cruel Stepmother Framed Me for Theft — She Didn’t Realize I Was the Empire’s Top Spymaster
Part 2
I stared at the massive blue sapphire ring gleaming in the dim candlelight, my heart stopping entirely in my chest.
Heather had planted it on me.
When she handed me her velvet cloak upon our arrival, she must have slipped the stolen ring into my apron to eliminate me permanently.
Theft from a noble carried an automatic sentence of twenty years in the frozen penal colonies of the north.
It was a certain death sentence.
“There, you see!”
Lord Craig puffed his chest out, trying his hardest to look imposing in front of the Duke.
“She is nothing but a common thief.”
“Guards, drag her out of here and throw her directly into the palace dungeons.”
“She will hang for this offense.”
“No!”
I cried out desperately, the hot tears finally spilling over my lashes as the heavy hands of the guards yanked me violently toward the door.
“Please, it is a complete lie, and I am entirely innocent.”
“Take her away,” Brenda commanded sharply.
She turned a sweet, simpering smile toward the duke as if she had just ordered a servant to sweep up a bit of dust.
“Again, your grace, we profusely apologize for the terrible disturbance.”
“She is nobody, absolutely nothing.”
“Release her.”
The two words cut through the heavy air of the room like the sharp crack of a whip.
The guards froze instantly in their tracks.
Brenda’s fake, sugary smile faltered.
Heather blinked her eyes rapidly in sheer confusion.
Duke Tyler Anderson stepped fully out of the shadows.
The terrifying height and presence of the Wolf of Blackwood bore down heavily on the room.
He walked slowly toward our group, his heavy leather boots echoing ominously on the polished floorboards.
The air in the room seemed to drop ten degrees in a single second.
He stopped directly in front of the guard who was holding my left arm.
The duke did not raise his deep voice.
He simply didn’t have to.
“Take your hands off of her,” Tyler said softly, his icy eyes promising absolute violence.
“Remove them before I sever them entirely from your wrists.”
The guard swallowed hard, instantly dropping my arm and taking three frantic steps back.
The other guard did exactly the same, bowing his head in sheer, unadulterated terror.
I stumbled forward, rubbing my bruised arms.
I stared up at the giant of a man who had just halted my execution with three words.
“Your grace?”
Brenda stammered, all the color draining rapidly from her heavily powdered face.
Tyler turned his piercing, icy gaze slowly toward Lady Brenda.
“You claim she stole the ring from the cloakroom a few moments ago?”
“Yes, the footman saw her himself,” Lord Craig interjected nervously.
“Fascinating,” Tyler mused, his voice dripping with a deadly calm that sent shivers down my spine.
“Because this woman has been in my private company, in this very library, for the past hour.”
The room went completely and utterly dead silent.
Heather’s jaw dropped open.
Brenda looked as though she might faint right there on the spot.
Lord Craig took a very nervous step backward.
As the terrifying Wolf of Blackwood stepped out of the shadows to provide me with an ironclad alibi, I could only wonder what the most dangerous man in the empire wanted in return from a scullery maid?
