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Knocking pounds at the door. Hard and angry.
My jaw tightens with determination. Bee can knock ‘til she’s blue in the face; I’m not opening the door and I’m sure as hell done talking to?—
The lock turns. I feel the protest in my throat but before it has a chance to come out, the door swings open.
It’s not Bee on the other side.
It’s him.
Dmitri’s gaze slides from me to the array of pictures on the floor. I’m hoping to see something other than cold impassiveness, but he’s got his poker face on. He walks into the bathroom and kneels down in front of me. I pull my legs in tight and try to make my body as small as possible. If he touches me, I’ll scream bloody murder, I swear I will.
“Wren—”
“Don’t you fucking dare?—”
I don’t really know what I’m trying to say. Don’t you dare lie to me? Don’t you dare touch me? Don’t you dare make me care about you? He’s already done all of that. The sins have been committed. The damage has been done.
“Let me explain.”
Tears pour down my cheeks as I stare back at him. “Those pictures are real, aren’t they?”
“Yes,” he says. I flinch; it physically hurts. He didn’t even hesitate. “Yes, they’re real.”
I probably shouldn’t close my eyes in front of a cold-blooded killer, but then again, what is even the point? He’s already got me in his lair and under his control. The last several months have been a masterclass in manipulation. He didn’t have to force me into anything, not truly. I just offered up my bare neck to him like an idiot lamb at the slaughter.
And what was I doing while he lulled me into a false sense of security?
I’d been daydreaming about his silver eyes. The sharp square of his granite jaw. The way his muscles rippled with every movement.
I let him seduce me… this monster who killed my sister in cold blood.
“Sh-she was perfect,” I stutter, sobs wrenching from my chest. “She was kind and beautiful and bright and brilliant and you murdered her!”
He doesn’t so much as blink. “If I knew then what I know now, I would have spared her. I wouldn’t have punished her for her husband’s crimes.”
I’m so lost in my own shock and grief that I almost miss that last part. “‘Husband’? ‘Crimes’? This is about Jared?”
“Jared and the men he decided to get in bed with, yes.”
I squint at him furiously. “I knew Jared. He didn’t move in the circles you do. He was a good man. He was a decent man.”
“He may have been—once upon a time. But even decent men do desperate things sometimes. And Jared was desperate enough to go to the Irish.”
The Irish? “Are you talking about?—”
“The O’Gadhras,” he fills in bluntly.
“Cian?!” I exclaim. “That’s impossible; he’s a good guy. He’s?—”
“At the time, he was brother to Cathal O’Gadhra, boss of the Irish mafia. You spent some time with Cian; surely you noticed the wolfhound tattoo on his right arm. That’s the mark of the O’Gadhra mafia.”
“Impossible. Cian and Jared were friends. He used to come over for dinner, for fuck’s sake!” I shake my head, even as a snapshot memory of Cian rolling up his sleeve at the table to reveal the snarling wolf on his forearm floats into my mind’s eye. “It was normal…”
“There was nothing normal about it. Jared cut a deal with Cathal and Cian was in charge of enforcing it. He didn’t just come by for pot roast, Wren; he was coming by to make sure Jared kept to his end of the bargain. Which he did.”
I’m quickly approaching information overload but I swallow and try to concentrate on his face without looking directly into those silver eyes. “Why should I believe you?”
“Because I have proof.” He rises to his feet, looming impossibly huge above me. “And if you come with me, I’ll show you.”
