“The day of his funeral,” I say. Then, because something ugly in me wants him to hear how simple it was, “Yes.”
His hand shifts from my lip to the bruising at my cheekbone. Two fingers. Light pressure. Testing swelling.
I flinch anyway.
He doesn’t apologize.
“Why not leave?”
That one almost makes me laugh. I look him truly in the eye for the first time since he walked in.
Because men like him ask questions like doors exist everywhere. Like walking out is the same thing as getting away.
“That’s not possible for someone like me.”
His gaze stays on mine.
“Why?”
Not why didn’t you. Not why not. Just why. He wants the bones of it, not the performance.
I swallow.
“Because I had nowhere to go,” I say. “No money of my own. No one who’d take me in. No version of my life that Gabriel couldn’t reach into and ruin.” My mouth twists. “Girls like me don’t leave men like him. We just make them angry.”
Vaska says nothing. Just reaches for my wrist.
Turns it over once in his hand, inspecting the raw skin there like it belongs to the rest of the story.
“You were trying to get away.”
I blink.
The words hit harder than they should because he says them like fact, not comfort.
Before I can stop myself, I nod. “Yes.”
His thumb brushes once near the edge of the rope burn, not tender, just deliberate.
“Before this.”
Again, not a question.
“Yes,” I say, voice lower now. “Before he put me on this assignment.”
That gets a pause out of him. A sharpened one.
“What exactly was the assignment?”
I look at the first aid kit. At the gauze. At his hands. Anywhere but his face.
“To get information on imports tied to Smash and Sugar.”
He waits. I know what part he wants.
I hate that I know.
“Through you.”
