It tore at her like a wound.She wanted to go back in time and save him from being hurt like that by the person he should have been able to trust most in the world.Make him see his own goodness—his astonishing, unutterable value.
She couldn’t, and the scars were part of what made him the man he was—not because of George Bates, but in spite of him.
Because ofAdam.
She took him by the shoulders and spoke with all the force she could muster.“You got out.”
“Not as soon as I should have,” Adam pushed back harshly.
“You were achildbefore that,” Ellie emphasized fiercely.“But you got away from him and built a life for yourself—your life, on your own terms.”
“I left my mom behind,” Adam bluntly returned.
“She should have protected you,” Ellie shot back.
Adam’s expression was lined with grief.“I don’t think she could.”
Ellie closed her eyes as she absorbed everything those few words meant.
“And your brother?”she asked gently.
She remembered the name he had shared with her once.It was her only knowledge of Adam’s younger sibling.
Ethan.
He looked tired.“Dad was never like that with him.I don’t know why.Maybe I should’ve been angry about it or thought it was unfair, but I didn’t.All I could think was that it must have meant there was something wrong with me.”
Ellie pressed her hand to his heart as she spoke, the words fierce.“There isnothingwrong with you.”
Adam drew in a deep, uneven breath as he met her look.“I know.”
The depth of her admiration for the man before her swept through her like a tide.For everything he had survived.For what he had built himself into in spite of all the violence that had been used to try to crush him.
He gripped her shoulders, desperate.“I don’t want you anywhere near him.”
Ellie traced the lines of his face.“Then I won’t be.”
Relief and worry mingled in his expression.
He let her go and began to pace the room.“How could we even do it?Borthwick is nothing compared to what we’d be going up against this time.Nothing.”
“We don’t have to go,” Ellie said again.
Adam braced himself against the wall, his body tense.He shook his head.“We have to.”
“Why?”Ellie demanded.
His face was hard.“Because he’s my father.”
“That doesn’t make him your responsibility,” Ellie snapped.
She was angry.The feeling seethed under her grief for Adam and her desperate desire to support him—a violent, dangerous rage against the man who had done this to him.
“Padma will have other people she can send,” she asserted.
She was certain that it was true.Constance’s omniscient grandmother would never leave herself with so few cards to play.
Hot steel flashed behind Adam’s gaze.“Nobody else knows him like I do.”
