I was spending far too much time with a murderer.
Desperate to think of anything else, I shifted my focus to something irrelevant. “Why do we sit in the dark? You have solar panels.”
“I don’t want people to know about this place. Lights are suspicious. Candles work fine.”
“Then why are there no candles in here?”
His skeptical gaze slid my way. “Didn’t youjustsay you’re hot? Do you ever stop complaining?”
Damn, this guy was good at pushing my buttons. “Do you ever stop being an ass?”
A dramatic sigh escaped his lungs.
“If I’m so annoying, why don’t you report your information directly to Theo?”
“Who the fuck is Theo?”
“Harrison.”
Vibrant eyes grew penetrating and curious. “You call your general by his first name?”
I mentally slapped a hand over my eyes.Clever, Sophia. Good cover.
He waited for my explanation, but I gave none, so he widened his eyes…questioning, expectant.
I groaned. “Fine. He was a friend of my father’s. Growing up, he was just Uncle Theo. It’s why I’ve been in the Defiance since the beginning. Theo’s always been by my side.”
Lucas blinked at me. “No.”
“No?”
He raised a hand, fingers splayed, allpause-while-I-reason-through-this-difficult-dilemma. “Let me get this straight. Your entire ideology is based on the concept that we’re all equal and free, and yetthe leaderof that ideology chose to sell his adopted niece—like a pimp—to what I’m sure he thought was a woman-hating rapist for information?”
Could I burn him with my gaze alone? “He didn’tsellme. I volunteered.”
“And he allowed you to just…walk into my arms? Without issue?”
I opened my mouth, but what could I say? Memories of Theo flitted through my mind, and I had no idea how to answer his question.
“You said you’d bring her back!” I scream at him. “You said she was alive!”
His mouth opens, but nothing emerges.
“You promised!” I yell.
Theo hurries around his desk and takes my arm, but I shrug out of his grasp.
“You promised, Theo! Mom— She’s dead!”
“I tried,” he says, his tone thready and desperate.
“You should have tried harder!”
Outside his office, a crowd gathers. A soft voice—Zara’s?—cuts through my anger. “Sophia, let’s get you some water, okay?”
I ignore her. “You refused to let me go with them. I could have—I could have helped her!”
“You’d be dead,” he says, brow creased.
