“Did you forgive him for that too?” he asks. “Or did you just decide your cunt mattered more than your memory?”
My vision blurs at the edges with fury.
“Keep Ali out of your mouth.”
“Ali gave you water,” he says, calm as ever. “Food. Small mercies, when no one else cared whether you starved. And you crawled into the bed of the man who killed him.”
My whole body feels hot and cold at once.
“You don’t know anything,” I bite out, because it’s all I have.
“I know enough,” Gabriel says. “Enough to know what you are. Enough to know he hates our kind, and still you spread yourself open and call it, what? Love?”
“You know nothing about love.”
“Did you really think that would make you the exception?” His voice drops lower. Crueler. “Did you think fucking a Russian would wash the filth out of you?”
“Go fuck yourself, Gabriel.”
“I’m serious,” he says, and that almost makes it worse. “You are the sort of thing powerful men enjoy in private and cut loose the second it costs them too much.”
My teeth grind together.
He lets the silence breathe just long enough to make the next words land.
“Did you really think you were different?”
Something hot and humiliating flashes through me. I shove it down so hard it hurts.
“You don’t know anything about us.”
Another soft laugh. “Us.”
I hate how he says it. Like the word itself is ridiculous.
“You reallyhavegrown attached.” His voice drops, silk over a blade. “Tell me, did he finally make you believe you’re more than a whore he keeps coming back to?”
My blood boils.
“Did he tell you he loves you?”
The room goes very still. He hears it, the way my breath hitches.
“Didn’t think so.”
“Shut up.”
“Do you say it to him?” he continues, relentless now, each word chosen to humiliate. “You give and give and spread your legs and play at belonging, and for what? A bed to warm? A leash with prettier stitching?”
Rage hits so hard I almost shake with it.
“At least I know what you are,” I snap. “A coward hiding behind fake numbers and cheap little mind games because youknowif Maksim gets his hands on you, you’re dead.”
He goes quiet for a second.
Not wounded. Measuring.
“Nice to see you’ve grown a backbone now that you think you have protection.”
