“Takotsubo cardiomyopathy,” he says, and he must see the confusion on my face because after a beat, he adds, “it’s what doctors call a stress-induced heart failure. Sometimes it’s triggered by grief. Trauma. Loss.”
He glances at me, and for a moment, something cracks behind his expression.
“She died of a broken heart, Adeline.”
The world stills around me.
I don’t know how long I stand there, staring at nothing. Maybe seconds. Maybe longer.
A broken heart.
Irina Steele died of abroken heart.
And my father… he was the reason.
“Irina was already fragile by the end,” Christian says, his voice low. “The drugs didn’t help. But after your father… and Wren… she just couldn’t survive it. Not emotionally. Andeventually, not physically. She loved your father,” Christian says simply. “Enough that it killed her.”
I don’t say anything.
I can’t.
The cold finally starts to register again, creeping in through my sleeves, my collar. But it’s distant somehow, like my body’s here, but the rest of me isn’t.
I swallow hard, but it sticks in my throat. “Why are you telling me this now?”
He’s quiet for a second. Then: “Because you deserve to know. And because he won’t.”
I don’t need to ask who he means.
Kai.
“My father killed Wren, didn’t he?” My voice is low, trembling. “He… he crashed into her.”
Christian’s gaze snaps to me so fast it makes me flinch. His face pales just slightly, and for the first time since we stepped outside, he looks completely thrown.
“How do you know that?”
I glance down, my foot scraping over a patch of frost on the path. “I figured it out. Well… I had some help.”
His brow furrows.
“In the beginning,” I admit, my throat tight, “the stalker practically showed me where to look. Which I thought was weird since they were also warning menotto at the same time.”
Christian’s jaw works, the muscle in his cheek twitching once, hard. His eyes narrow, causing sharp lines to form between his brows. “They warned you away?”
I nod.
And for a long beat, he doesn’t say anything.
But I can see he’s working something out. His jaw tightens, twitching once as he stares at the gravel in front of us intensely.
“Christian,” I say cautiously. “What is it?”
For a moment, he just stares at me. Really stares. Like he’s searching for something, tracing lines on my face that I can’t see myself. And whatever it is he finds, it seems to trouble him.
But then, just as quickly, he looks away. The walls go back up.
He shakes his head. “Nothing,” he says.
