I managed a tiny nod.
The hand released my mouth. The gun stayed where it was.
I turned.
And my eyes went wide.
The man standing before me was nothing like the composed staff member who had escorted me here. His eyes were wild, darting around the garage like a cornered animal. His hands were jittery, the gun trembling slightly in his grip. Sweat beaded on his forehead despite the cold.
But it wasn’t his state that made my blood run cold.
It was his face.
I knew that face. I had seen it years ago, back when Aretha first came to the palace. Back when she had a personal bodyguard who followed her everywhere, a man who watched her with an intensity that had always made me uneasy.
A man named...
Royce.
The same name as the man who had supposedly held my sister captive for over a year.
“Hello, Aurora,” Royce said, his wild eyes fixed on mine. “We need to talk about your sister.”
Chapter Thirteen
ARETHA HEARD THE FOOTSTEPSbefore she saw him.
Heavy. Deliberate. The stride of a man who owned every inch of ground he walked on.
But to Aretha, those footseps were the sound of reckoning.
Because this man was the one she had come here to destroy.
She schooled her expression into something wan and sober, her hands folded neatly over the hospital sheets. She had considered crying—had even practiced the trembling lip and glistening eyes that had served her so well with Aurora—but she knew better than to try such tactics with the sheikh.
Mik’hail had never been moved by her tears. Not even when they were real.
