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“You said your father had contacted you to negotiate my return,” she said, taking a bite of the fruit. Now that she’d started eating, she was digging into the food hungrily.
“Yes.”
“You must be a shitty negotiator.”
“I’m not a negotiator at all,” he said.
She glared at him. “So you didn’t even try to get me out.”
“Negotiating with my father is like negotiating with a terrorist,” Roman said. “He doesn’t negotiate in good faith.”
She sat back in her chair, anger darkening her eyes. “You were going to let me rot.”
“No.”
“What then?” she asked.
He turned his palms to the ceiling. “You’re here, aren’t you?”
“So you were banking on being able to get me out yourself,” she said.
“It wasn’t a gamble.” He heard the darkness in his own voice, wondered if she heard it too. “There was never going to be a world in which I didn’t get you out.”
She picked at the bowl of fruit, plucking a piece of mango and putting it in her mouth, then a piece of banana. He was glad to see her eating the fruit. She was clearly malnourished. It would take a while to get her back to full health. He would talk to the doctor about vitamins.
“I want to go home,” she said. “I’ll call my dad and Brooke from there.”
Roman drew in a breath, steeling himself for the next thing he had to say.
This was going to be the hard part.
“You can’t go home,” he said. “And you can’t go to your dad’s or Brooke’s place either.”
She blinked like she was trying to decipher a foreign language. “What are you talking about?”
He’d known he would have to spell it out — not because Ruby was unintelligent but because she wasn’t part of his world — but he still had to brace himself against the conversation to come.
“Your apartment is off-limits for obvious reasons. It’s the first place my father will look if he wants to capture you again. Your dad’s and Brooke’s apartments are next in line.”
Her eyes widened and she pushed back from the table to stand. “All the more reason I have to go.”
“Sit down, Ruby.”
“I don’t want to sit down.” She was more agitated now, probably beginning to realize that there would no quick return to her old life.
“I need to walk you through the situation,” he said. “For your safety. For the safety of your family.”
She hesitated, then lowered herself grudgingly to the chair.
“I’ve had men stationed outside your dad’s apartment. Brooke’s too. I don’t expect my father to look there for you there,” he said. “But if they do, my men will take care of it.”
“But… I have to pick up Olivia,” she said. “Where will I take her?”
He hated saying the next words as much as she would hate hearing them. “I suspect you won’t be able to pick up Olivia, not anytime soon.”
The blink again. “What are you talking about, Roman? You said she was safe, that she was with Adam.”
“She is, but I have a feeling Adam won’t return her to you without a fight.”
