“Maybe not. But I do know I have family here—family I desperately wanted. Was I ever meant to know the truth? Or were you and Papa planning on lying to me forever?” He tried to mask his expression, but he couldn’t hide a flicker of the truth in his eyes. I was supposed to marry Carter and live the life of a quintessential housewife even though they both knew it would slowly kill me inside. “Your papa was only trying to keep you safe.” There was a difference between caring about someone’s well-being and just keeping them alive. My father had always maintained the latter, and while I knew he loved me, the former was never a concern of his. Weight settled heavily on my chest, the burden pulling all resentment down until I only felt an ache that split my heart in two. “You shouldn’t have come for me,” I whispered. “Do you think I would leave you here to die?” The closest I came to dying was halted by D’yavol’s fingers down my throat. “He isn’t going to kill me.” I suddenly knew it with conviction. “He wants Papa, not me.” He watched me intensely for a long second. “He sure is taking his time then, is he not?” The tone of his voice settled so thick in the air, it strangled the oxygen and slowed the beat of my heart. The unstable energy refused to disperse even after he spoke again. “You are really unharmed?” “I don’t want to talk about me,” I said quietly. At the moment, my psyche wasn’t a refined place. Half of it still lay upstairs, leaking out at Ronan’s feet across the marble floor. “Well, I do. And I think you owe it to me.” I flinched, understanding the innuendo in his voice. I was the one who got him into this mess. I may be the one to sign his death certificate. Tears burned the backs of my eyes. He sighed. “I did not mean it like that. I should have assumed you would go to Moscow. I should not have been distracted by that waitress.” A quiet laugh escaped me even as a tear ran down my cheek. He reached through the bars and wiped it away. His knuckles were busted to match his appearance: torn-open dress shirt stained with dirt and mud. He was even missing his shoes and socks. It was such an odd sight, a miserable sound between a laugh and a sob arose.