“Nobody told me I couldn’t be,” I returned, hiding my uncertainty of how Ronan would feel about it if he found out. Not for my own sake, but Ivan’s. “I am telling you now. Go back upstairs.” On my way to his cell, I ignored him and gingerly stepped around a bloody plastic tarp on the floor. “Mila.” It was a frustrated growl. “There is blood everywhere. I do not want you to pass out and hit your head on the cement floor.” As I reached him, a small smile appeared at the memories of him pushing my head between my knees after many altercations with Onegative while he murmured accented, encouraging words—especially one cheerleading pyramid fail where Ivan jumped over a fence to reach me, which aroused the entire team’s envy. I’d always taken his presence for granted. I refused to do the same with his life. Reaching through the bars, I wiped some fresh blood from his busted lip. His hand lashed out and gripped my wrist, a sudden wave of discontent rising in his eyes. “What the fuck has he done to you?” I blinked. “Nothing, really.” “Nothing, really?” “Well . . .” I swallowed. “I saw him cut off a man’s finger, shoot someone in the head at the dinner table, and, apparently, he murdered another few in the driveway. But things have been going okay for me.” For a heavy second, Ivan watched me as if I was crazy before he released my wrist. “Nothing about this is ‘okay.’ You should be home where you belong, not—” He glanced around with disgust. “Here.” Here. Stay here. You belong here. Ivan’s voice, past and present, flashed through my mind, and like a puzzle piece clicking into place, I finally understood why I never fit in at The Moorings. The neighborhood was a shiny cage masquerading as paradise, and Ivan was compliant in my confinement from the beginning. “Is ‘home’ supposed to be Miami?” The pent-up frustration of living a lie bubbled out of me. “The place Papa left me for months on end so he could go murder people—boys—in Moscow?” “You do not know what you speak of,” Ivan returned with heat.