I tried not to look them as I took the necessary steps toward Jack. I stopped when I was beside Piranha. In this moment, I wasn’t his Red. I wasn’t even his wife. Only one person aboard knew where I stood with him, and that was Jack. There was no question that I was at his complete and total mercy.

Careful to keep a blank face, I stared at his chest. “Yes, sir.” My fingers laced together behind my back.

“Solo,” he ordered. “Fetch her blade from my quarters.”

I dared not move as we waited for Solo to return. A chill tickled my skin through my thin nightdress. I tried not to shiver. My neck ached, but at least it seemed the bleeding stopped.

“Here go, Cap.” Solo held out the steel that I’d used just hours before to save Jack’s life.

“Niet.” He shook his head. “Give it to my wife.”

My eyes widened and I tried not to look surprised as I accepted the sword.

Jack continued his spiel once the blade was firm in my hand. “Redella, it is my belief that this man attempted to rape you tonight—in my bed.” He paused. “In our bed.”

A low murmur rolled through the men. My cheeks flushed with shame and I ducked my head.

“Was he successful in this, his abominable enterprise?”

“No.” I licked my lips and prayed my voice didn’t waver. “He was not successful.”

The murmurs quieted.

“Very well.” Jack kept his face and voice steady as the tide, but I saw his trembling fingers relax with my assurance. He blinked once and then he continued. “Then, a man who swore his loyalty to me and this fleet had the audacity to bear false witness about his actions to not only his captain, but also to all aboard.”

The pirate crew grumbled their agreement.

“His punishment is death!”

The piratical grumble rose to a raucous cheer.

My head bobbed in a miniscule nod and my stomach turned over.

Jack paced the deck, his black eyes wild. “Do you agree, men of The Black Otter fleet?”

Their answer, in unison, came faster than I expected. “Aye!”

Jack looked at me as though he was explaining simple addition to me for the fourth time. “Aboard this ship, Redella, I am the judge. And you heard the jury.” Jack’s face was no longer scarlet. “But the crime was committed against you. Which makes you the executioner.”

The Black Otter began to pitch and roll again, and with it, my stomach. “Jack, I don’t—”

He erased the space between us, but did not touch me as he had before. I wished he would. “What’s the matter?”

I stared into his eyes, which had returned to their normal green, but kept my voice low. “I don’t know what to do, Jack.”

“My darling girl.” His chiseled, handsome face broke into a knowing grin. “You take his life.”

Piranha broke the silence. “Lying whore,” he managed. “She liked it, Cap.”

I stared at my husband as his eyes clouded to the tell-tale stormy black. His hand began to tremble, and the notorious Russian whirled with a roar. The jeweled cutlass was in his grasp as all the pent-up rage he’d struggled to contain came to fruition.

Jack grasped the broken, would-be rapist by the hair. The shriek that came from the dying man as Jack yanked him up straight told of unimaginable pain. The cutlass moved so quickly, I thought Jack had done the deed for me.

“The lips of a liar!” Jack bellowed.

I stared in horror as a chunk of flesh from Piranha’s face flew through the air like a comet trailing blood and fell to the deck with a sickening smack. Blood spread like a curtain of silk over Jack’s cutlass blade. When he stepped aside, I swallowed back my horror.

Piranha, a man who Jack thought loyal, tottered there on the deck, his skull split, broken, and bloody. Beneath his nose, the flesh was gone. The bloody bones revealed there gave him the look of a grinning skeleton.

“He was going to do worse to you, Red,” Jack bawled.

I held my blade in quaking hands.

“Even after his judgement was rendered, he tried to make you out the liar!” Jack’s voice boomed like that of a cannon. “His dying wish was to break you down and kill you—or make me kill you—like any other pirate captain on the sea would have!”

I recoiled as though I’d been slapped. Jack’s words stung with immeasurable truth. He was right, though, and his words were impossibly true. If any other man had come in judgement against me, I would have been found guilty before the trail even began. Strange enough, aboard this pirate ship, I’d received fairer treatment than I ever had as an honest landlubber.

“Do it!” Jack commanded.

I raised my sword. With the adrenaline from the earlier battle gone, I felt helpless and weak. Certainly not like a killer of any sort.

“His dying wish was that I believe him over you,” Jack shouted. “That I take off your head and end your very life! As is my right!”

I looked at my shaking hands. Strangely enough, I thought of Sully. Sully certainly thought me weak and unable. Jack, however, found me to be nothing but capable from the moment we met. He rescued me from a life of shaking in fear when he took The Scarlet Rose and had never asked me to do anything I wasn’t willing to do.

Until now.

He’s trying to save you from yourself. To show you what you’re capable of. This is your crew. You are capable, Red. Now, it’s time to show them.

The tiny voice in the back of my mind was replaced by an image. Those sad, hopeless eyes of the dark woman in Sully’s kitchen. There was nobody to speak for her as she endured her misery in suffocating silence. Nobody to force her unleash her inner warrior that seethed just below the surface.

This is my life now.

My ship.

My battle to fight.

As I raised my arms, the sword seemed to know what to do. The dying man before me was no formidable foe, at least not in this state, but he thought me a weak woman.

Prey.

A victim.

Some lowly thing to be used for his sick pleasure, then killed, or executed, in a heap of lies.

Already, I’d given him more grace than he’d shown me.

My blade slashed across his thin neck and his head lolled back. Piranha fell to the deck, never to move again.