“My god,” she whispers. “They framed you.”
“Exactly,” I nod. “When the police raided the estate minutes later, I was kneeling over my father’s corpse, covered in his blood, holding the gun. The paralyzer was out of my system, but the shock wasn’t. The prosecutor wanted a career-making headline. They pushed for the federal death penalty. I sat in an eight-by-ten concrete cell for eight months, staring at the wall, waiting for the lethal injection for a crime I didn’t commit.”
I look away from her, staring at the intact door of the office.
“Your father was the presiding judge,” I say. “My lawyers were useless. The case was built to be completely airtight. Then Judge William Hale found a microscopic seam and tore it wide open. He threw out the murder weapon on a Fourth Amendment technicality. He systematically dismantled the prosecution’s timeline. He signed the exact legal order that let me walk out of that courthouse a free man.”
“Why?” she whispers.
“Because he’s agenius,” I say bitterly. “I thought he was a saint. I thought he was the one righteous man in a violently corrupt system who cared more about the actual truth than his own conviction rate. The night I was released, I walked straight into his private chambers. I got on my knees, and I swore a bloodoath to him. I told him if he ever needed a favor to protect his city from the shadows and from the corrupt people like the ones who framed me, he just had to call.”
I look back down at her.
“For five years, I ran my own empire. I hunted down the men who killed my father, and I gutted them. I became a King to the criminal underworld. But your father held my leash. A few days ago, he finally called in his favor. He told me Elias was a domestic terrorist about to bomb a museum full of civilians. He told me to go to the Waldorf, wait in the shadows, and execute the target the second I received the ‘Bluebird’ signal on my secure line. I didn’t question it. I didn’t ask him for proof. You don’t ask saints for proof. I believed Elias was a terrorist, and there was no time for the law to help save the innocent, which is why your dad called me so I could act fast. That’s what I thought.”
She stares at me, her mind rapidly processing the sheer, staggering weight of the manipulation.
“He used you,” she says, her voice thick with a new, dark realization. “He used your grief over your father. He used your honor against you.”
She goes completely still. The remaining color drains from her face. I watch the horror bleed into her eyes as the sociopathic reality of who her father really is finally crushes her.
“I meant absolutely nothing to him,” she whispers. “Twenty-four years of being the perfect daughter, and he threw me in the incinerator like garbage.”
I drop the tablet onto the thick rug. It hits with a dull thud. I cover her hands with my own, pressing her palms tighter against my face.
“Hey, listen to me,” I demand, leaning in until our foreheads touch. “He’s a psychopath. He’s a parasite. But you are notgarbage, Iris. You are the only real thing in this entire godforsaken world.”
She lets out a shattered sob and throws her arms around my neck, burying her face tightly in the curve of my shoulder. I wrap my arms around her waist, pulling her fully into my lap. She clings to me like I’m the only solid ground left on earth, and I hold her fiercely, burying my face in her hair.
She trembles in my arms. A profound, hollow ache vibrates through her chest, leaving her completely untethered. The identity she built—the perfect, obedient daughter of a Federal Judge—has been wiped out. She looks lost, like she doesn’t know who she is anymore.
I need to show her.
I wrap my right arm around her waist, supporting her dead weight against my uninjured side as I pull her to her feet.
She gasps, her arms tightening around my neck as I haul her up. “Where are we going?”
“I’m not doing this in a concrete bunker surrounded by the smell of bleach and body bags.”
I keep my arm clamped tight around her waist as we walk out of the office. We make our way down the destroyed corridor to the private elevator, and I hit the button for the Tower. She buries her face in my neck, her breathing ragged, her body shaking.
When the elevator doors slide open, I walk straight through the dark living room and into the master bedroom.
The city skyline is nothing but a blur of distant lights through the floor-to-ceiling ballistic glass. I walk to the edge of the unmade bed and gently turn her to face me.
She stands in front of me, still wearing the thick black sweater and dark jeans. Her eyes are wide, completely stripped of her defenses.
“Cassian,” she whispers.
“I’m going to touch every inch of you until you forget his name,” I vow.
A deep flush of heat travels rapidly up her neck, painting her skin with a gorgeous, desperate pink.
I step firmly into her space. I don’t move with the adrenaline-fueled aggression of yesterday in the bunker. That was raw survival. This is me taking her back from him.
I reach for the hem of her sweater. She raises her arms obediently, letting me pull the wool over her head. I toss it blindly to the hardwood floor. My calloused knuckles brush the warm, soft skin of her bare stomach.
A sharp tremor runs through her, her eyes tracking my face.
