“Why would someone want him dead?” That was what I couldn’t wrap my mind around. He hadn’t been my favorite, no, but he was still my father. I had so many questions, even more now than before. Why couldn’t he just help me?
Ivan’s icy cold stare cut back to me. “Because he wasn’t a good man.”
I blinked. “What do you mean?”
I figured he hadn’t been. Especially after my brothers sold me off to the shittiest human being on the planet. But I’d hoped for different. I’d wanted different, but I guess that didn’t mean much.
His jaw flexed as he exhaled through his nose.
He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Your father… wasn’t who you think he was.”
I swallowed hard. “I didn’t exactly think he was a saint.”
“No,” Ivan said, a sharp, humorless huff leaving him. “He wasn’t even in the same galaxy as a saint.”
Something inside of me shriveled. I should have sat down. I shouldn’t have asked these questions. I should have run back to my room with my tail tucked between my legs and given up, but we were here now, and there was no backing down. “So, what? All of the money I inherited… it was blood money?” I laughed, but there was no amusement in it. I knew the truth. I didn’t need to ask.
He looked down at his shoes and shrugged. “Kind of. Listen, once you go down this rabbit hole, you can’t come out of it. You can never not know these things about your father.”
I took the coward's way out and ran out of the room. He was right. I wasn’t ready.
“That’s it?” He called after me. “The questions get too hard, and you run?”
I looked over my shoulder and leveled him with a glare. “Just like you did?”
He threw his head back and laughed. “It was just sex.”
My lips curled into a smirk. “Was it, though?” I shrugged. “You told me that once I found out, I could never not know again, and I think I need time. Time to do what? I don’t know. But I just need to be innocent for a little bit longer.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Ivan
Poppy didn’t goto Donovan again, and he didn’t push it—but that was the problem. Men like Donovan didn’t give space out of kindness. They withdrew like predators, circling quietly until the exact moment they could strike. He was planning something, and every hour that ticked by without interference made the coil in my gut wind tighter and tighter.
There were no public outings, no orchestrated dates, no calls. Just… silence. They’d already hard-launched their relationship, so she wasn’t really needed anymore until he was ready for her.
She’d tried all the stupid classes he wanted her signed up for—kickboxing, cycling, Pilates—but this morning she had yoga.
Hot yoga.
I pressed my fist to my mouth, because the threat of it alone was enough to make me see my life flash before myeyes. The little workout sets she wore for the other classes werefine—if “fine” meant I spent half the sessions watching men trip over themselves while trying to do side lunges behind her. But hot yoga was another beast entirely.
Minimal clothing. Sweaty skin. Rooms designed by Satan.
And considering the little cold war we’d been waging between us, I already knew she would weaponize the outfit.
She’d been giving me the silent treatment since we’d spoken last about her father and all the things she didn’t want to know yet. I didn’t know what I was doing there. I was playing with fire, I knew that much.
She wouldn’t look at me unless she needed to. She wouldn’t talk unless I forced it. She’d freeze up when I brushed her fingers, shoot me a glare hot enough to cauterize wounds, and then turn on her heel like she couldn’t stand the sight of me.
And then I’d laugh.
Not because it was funny, but because it unraveled her.
Because I needed to see the cracks in her silence, the way her breath stuttered, the way her cheeks flushed and she forgot to be angry with me for half a second.
It was wrong, but it was all I had.
