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His brow furrowed at her distancing. “What? Know about what?”
“What do you know about who took Eva? Torrie?”
His head snapped back, his eyes narrowing at her for a long moment.
A moment where she saw the truth of the matter, the tidal wave of realization surging through her body.
The chilly veneer slid onto his face. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”
She stomped past him, moving to his room, then slammed the door open. Stupid to do, to place herself alone in a room with him. But she was going to get the truth out of him no matter what it took.
He followed her into the chamber, closing the door quietly behind them.
“Victoria—”
She whipped around to him, fury vibrating off her limbs. “Don’t you dare lie again to me. What. Do. You. Know?”
He stared at her, his jawline ticking. And the slightest crack in the cold mask splintered. “I didn’t intend for this.”
Her arms clasped about her waist in an effort to hold her body upright, her spine straight, for she could already feel his next words were about the break her. “Didn’t intend for what?”
“I didn’t intend for this—you—to happen as it did.” He heaved a sigh, the steely veneer fully falling away as weariness set into his face. But he didn’t look away from her, his dark eyes set on her with resolve. “Kidnap you. Seduce you. Use you for revenge against your father. Nothing more. That was the plan. This was never supposed to be anything more.”
She swayed, black dots filling the outer edges of her vision for several breaths.
He’d known all along.
Knew what was to happen. Knew she’d be dumped on the road, ready to collect. Ready to cling onto anybody with soothing words that paid her the slightest attention.
He knew.
Darkness seeped over everything inside of her chest down to her belly, until it hardened, then cracked, splintering into ashes.
Seconds.
That was all it took for the core of her to turn into a wasteland.
By the time those seconds had passed, her right hand had already unthreaded from her waist and slipped into her pocket. She blinked the black dots away from her vision and regained her footing. Her spine rigid and in place.
Yanking free the dagger she had in her pocket, she stepped forward, thrusting the point of it into the fleshy part at the base of Rafe’s throat. Her words seethed. “You kidnapped my Aunt Evalyn, didn’t you? My Aunt Torrie?”
He’d flinched when the blade came at him, his instinct to knock it out of her hand present, but he did nothing to disarm her. Even let her press the tip hard into his skin.
He held her gaze, the absence of cold, the absence of fire, the absence of everything in his vacant eyes. “I didn’t so much do it, as allow it to happen.”
“What?” The word choked out as she twisted the tip of the knife into his skin, drops of blood starting to seep onto the steel. “You need to help us get them back.”
“I cannot do that, Vic.”
“Cannot or will not?”
“Both.”
“You monster.” Her voice went into a screech and her right hand pulled the blade away from his neck only so that she could plunge it through his miserable flesh.
His hand snatched her wrist just as the point met his neck.
With a snarl on his face, he twisted her wrist up high into the air and spun them until she slammed back against the stone wall. He knocked her hand once, twice, three times against the wall, rough shards of stone digging into her skin, before the dagger fell out of her grasp, clanging down onto the floorboards. He kicked the blade away from them, his breath furious on her face, ready to snap her in two.
