“Don’t try to tell me that you weren’t deliberately leading Inez into the worst part of Cairo, or are you really going to sit there and pretend that you care a whit about her?”
She widened her eyes. “That was an accident! It may come as a shock to you, but my father allowed me to accompany him to his various job sites. Not all of them were at fancy hotels and stately mansions. I recalled the old government building being run-down and made an educated guess on where to go.”
“A guess,” I said, my anger spiking. “You risked everyone’s life on a guess?”
“It wasn’t like Inez could ask for directions,” she snapped. “It would have drawn too much attention.”
I tried another line of questioning. “Where is your father?”
Isadora fell silent. She met my gaze unflinchingly. Not fainthearted, this girl.
“Well?”
“I don’t answer to you.”
I slapped the table in frustration, and she jumped.
If Inez were here, she’d demand I apologize for that, too.
“Do you really expect me to believe you have had zero contact with him?”
“Why not?” she asked. “It’s the truth. My God, what happened to you to mistrust everyone, to believe the worst of people?”
Growing up in a house that held no warmth. Joining the military at fifteen. Being sent off to battle in the desert. Too late to save General Gordon, and then being court-martialed for even attempting it. But I would never have said that out loud. She would turn any word I said against me.
“Why don’t you make another guess?”
“I told you—I don’t know. Stop asking me.”
I studied her, on the edge of her seat, barely holding on to her prim exterior. Twin flags burned on her cheeks, and a vein stood out on her brow. It would be too easy to set her off. People always revealed more than they should while on the defense. “You know what I think?” I began softly. “I think your father learned the truth about Lourdes and decided she wasn’t worth the bother. I think he’s searching for a way out—”
“No,” she said.
“Maybe he’d rather take his chances somewhere else, rather than stay with a cold-blooded—”
“Do not finish that sentence,” she cut in, the red blooming across her cheeks turning mottled.
“Maybe he’s looking for another woman. Someone less complicated, more loyal. Not a bitch who—”
She stood and reached across the narrow table, her hand held high. I froze, silently goading her to finish what she started. I dared her to strike me.
Isadora panted in outrage, her anger coating her pale skin in a thinlayer of sweat. We were locked in this sickening tableau, each of us not moving, barely breathing.
I waited to see what she would do.
She waited to see if I’d let her slap me.
I arched a brow.
Her lips twisted, her arm trembling as if she fought a battle against it. Eventually, she lowered her hand and resumed her seat. Isadora laid her palms flat on the table, her eyes brimming with white-hot anger. “Papa loves my mother. He never lets her out of his sight. I can’t imagine he’s far away from her.”
“Ever?” I asked softly. “I hardly believe—”
“Ever,” she snapped. “They are devoted to each other.”
“Fine,” I said flatly. “Then tell me why you followed me to an opium den the other night.” I threw that sentence out there from out of nowhere, hoping to surprise her into giving herself away. Everything she did felt calculated to me, despite what Inez might believe.
Isadora blinked.
