Darragh gave a small nod. “I do.”
“Where is she?”
He shook his head. “I’m afraid it’s not that simple. Your dear sister has run up quite a debt. I sympathize with her, you know, I really do.She talked a great deal about your father and the way she was treated. Paraded around like a piece of meat at business meetings to entice pervy men to make business deals—hardly a life, is it? For her,orfor you.” The concern in his voice feltalmostgenuine.
“So we helped her to cope. We gave her a job to help her stay afloat. But she kept running those debts higher and higher. And so we had no choice.”
I whispered, “No choice but to what?”
Darragh paused. “To send her away,” he said levelly. “On a temporary basis.”
“Where?”
“I can’t tell you that. What Icantell you—” he chose the word carefully “—is that Camila is safe.” The way he said it made clear it was more complicated than that. “Andif you behave, if you play ball and keep Tristian in line and ensure our arrangement works for everyone… then I’ll see to it that your sister comes home. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
Camila, home, in one piece, and safe from the terrible men in our lives.
“Yes,” I breathed. “Yes, please.”
Darragh nodded. “Then do we have a deal?” He extended a hand across the table.
I looked at it, my mind racing. I wanted desperately for Darragh to be out of our lives, even more tonight after seeing the way he had dealt with Brandon, and how he would surely deal with Tristian if ever he were to defy him. I was terrified of the man and hold he had over us—overmenow, too.
But Tristian’s mother would die without care, and Tristian didn’t have the money to pay for it now Mr. Noah had cut him off. And Camila, wherever she was, would only be in more danger by the day. Girls who disappeared into that world didn’t come back. Everyone knew it even if nobody said it out loud.
I thought about how few choices I actually had and how I couldn’t allow that to happen to her.
So, my heart thrumming, I made a decision… and I shook his hand.
His face lifted, lighting with genuine joy. “Fantastic! Oh, I’m on top of the world!” Pumping my hand, eyes glinting, he said, “Brilliant choice,doll, brilliant choice.”
I didn’t think it was. The moment his hand released mine I knew it was the worst decision I’d ever made. I just couldn’t see another one.
Chapter thirty-seven
Tristian
My knuckles were split and drying. I gripped the steering wheel so hard the leather groaned, my jaw set in a permanent lock.
Beside me, Ingrid was a ghost. She didn’t turn my way once, her gaze fixed out the window at the blurred city lights, and I couldn’t blame her. To say I was fucking livid was an understatement; I was vibrating with anger, absolutely furious with what happened tonight.
I kept telling myself it wasn’t my place to pry. It wasn’t my place to force her secrets out of her, or to demand a map of the scars her father had left on her soul. I’d tried to be the man who waited. But I had played the role of the patient observer, and she had walked right into the lion’s den. She’d gone through a trauma tonight that I would blame myself for until the day I stopped breathing.
Why she couldn’t tell me she was going out was a hard pill to swallow, and worse still was the fact that she’d lied about it, told me she felt unwell... but I was going to find out the truth about tonight. It may not be “my place,” but I cared for her too much to let her drown in the silence of her own suffering.
When we reached my apartment, I killed the engine. Ingrid finally looked at me, her eyes wide and searching, but I said nothing. I climbed out, the slamming of the car door echoing. She trailed behind me like a shadow, silent and small.
The moment we stepped inside the apartment, she stopped in the center of the floor.
“Tristian...” she whispered.
I tossed my keys onto the counter with a audibleclack. I didn’t turn around. Instead, I breathed, trying to keep the anger at bay before I snapped. Any sane man would have walked away from this by now. Our relationship was built on a foundation of trauma, guilt, and the kind of secrets that left bruises. She shut down when things got hard. I disappeared. Neither of us was good at this.
She wasn’t a team player when it came to communication. When she did speak, it was usually to beg for forgiveness, often for things she couldn’t control.
I wasn’t much better. My idea of “communicating” usually involved the opposite. But I couldn’t forgive myself for what she’d faced tonight. I wanted to break down my walls for her, but she was still reinforced behind her own.
I leaned against the counter and shed my jacket, tossing it over a chair. I finally lifted my head to look at her. She was standing in the exact spot where she’d had her breakdown after our last fight, looking fragile enough to shatter.
