She shakes harder.
And then, in a voice so thin it almost breaks, she whispers, “My aunt. She was there. And Damian.”
Ice floods my veins.
Her aunt.
Damian.
“Did he touch you?” My voice is too low, too controlled. The kind of control that keeps me from putting my fist through the nearest wall.
She hesitates—just long enough to confirm what I already know.
“Yes,” she whispers. “He grabbed me. He—he told me I’d ‘learn to fall in line.’ Like… like I belong to him.”
Rage detonates in my chest so violently I have to loosen my grip on her or risk squeezing her too hard.
He touched her.
He threatened her.
And her aunt helped orchestrate it—because of course she did. The same woman who weaponized Anna’s care to control her. The same woman who, I now suspect, made Kamiyah vanish from my life without a word, leaving me to assume I hadn’t mattered at all.
I swallow the bitterness that still tastes like abandonment.
It wasn’t Kamiyah’s fault.
The more time she spends with me. The more she looks at me with heated glances when she thinks I’m not looking, the more I begin to think it wasn’t her decision to end our relationship before I really got started.
“I’m going to kill him,” I breathe before I can stop myself.
She jerks back, eyes wide. “No. You can’t—Caden, please. I don’t want this to escalate. My aunt—she—she’ll use it against me. Against Anna.”
I stiffen.
Anna.
Her sister is always the lever her aunt pulls—the chain she wraps around her neck. And the worst part? It works. Because Kamiyah will bleed herself dry to keep Anna alive.
I close my eyes for a beat, forcing down my temper. Because she’s right. If I go after Damian, her aunt will retaliate. And she controls the funding for treatments Anna desperately needs. All the more reason the engagement has to work. All the more reason I said yes in the first place.
But Jesus—how much has she been carrying alone?
I lift her chin again, more tender this time.
“You listen to me,” I say quietly. “That man will not put a hand on you again. Not while you’re under my roof. Not ever.”
Her breath trembles on the exhale.
She nods. Barely.
And then her gaze flicks to my mouth before darting away.
My chest tightens painfully.
Don’t do that, sweetheart.
Don’t look at me like that.
