Obsessive preoccupation with the subservient role of females. Will always underestimate a woman.
I curled up on one sofa in the living room while he read a book on the other, ignoring me. Midnight had passed before I lifted my tired eyes.
He shot me a wry grin. “I was wondering if you were going to nod off.”
I blinked a few times, struggling to keep my lids up. “Aren’t you sleepy?”
He shook his head. “I don’t sleep well.”
“Why not?”
He stretched out on the couch and shut his eyes. After a long moment, he said, “When I close my eyes, I hear voices begging me not to kill them.”
Instantly awake, my gaze snagged on his face. With his eyes closed, I could study him as long as I wanted, and I stared hard, trying to find answers to his mystery in the lines of his profile—straight nose, tense jaw. He still had those shadows beneath his eyes, likely caused by the ghosts of his past haunting him at night.
It had never occurred to me he didn’twanthis job. So what compelled him to keep doing it? Why would he support the NAO in the first place if he didn’t believe in their cause?
Had something happened to change his mind?
They hurt my sister.
Maybe he thought they’d hurt her again if he didn’t stick around.
“Where is your sister, Lucas?”
His jaw clenched. “She’s dead.”
I sucked in a breath, my heart tripping. “What? She died? When?”
No answer came, but a muscle in his cheek twitched. Recent, then? Perhaps the grief still cut at him.
“Wait. Did she…die, or was she killed?”
A click filled the quiet between us when he swallowed. “What do you think?”
I bit my lip, unwanted pity settling deep inside me. “Why was she killed?”
His gleaming eyes snapped open and found mine. His voice went hard and dark, like sharpened steel. “She defied them.”
Defy.
She…defiedthem.
Was she a Defiant?
Eerie sorrow unfurled in my chest, a night-blooming flower right in the center of my heart. The amount of pain in those three words severed an artery feeding my hostility toward him.
Lucas wasn’tprotectinghis sister, butavengingher. He wanted retribution.
A scary thought. The receiving end of Lucas Scott’s vengeance was a fatal place to be.
“What was her name?”
His face softened, and the amber flecks in those blue-green eyes burned in the scant candlelight. “Her name…was Sophia.”
We stared at each other in the silence that followed. A current came to life along my nerves, hovering the border between pain and pleasure. Was he lying? He was messing with my head, right?
He shifted as if the sofa had grown uncomfortable. “I called her Sophie.”
