Ruslan scoffs. “That’s one way of looking at it. I’d say it was self-defense.”
“How?”
His gaze returns to me. Somehow, he looks softer being on his knees and gazing up at me. “We don’t need to talk about that right now, Ivy. You’ve been through a lot tonight. You need rest and recovery.” Ruslan gently places my foot back on the floor and stands but as soon as he’s straight, I reach out and grab his hand.
“Tell me,” I demand. “Please. You have to tell me.”
“Why?”
“Because…” How do I word the black hole in my chest that gets wider with every breath and yet somehow doesn’t throb as much when he’s near me? Is there any way to explain this creeping sense of dread that curls its cold fingers around my shoulders at the thought of being alone?
Ruslan’s wrist is warm under my grip and his pulse thumps steadily against my fingertips as he waits for my answer.
“Because if we stop talking, then I’ll start thinking and I can’t… I can’t think because there’s nothing inside me that doesn’t hurt.” A lump forms at the base of my throat. “Please.”
Ruslan’s face doesn’t change as he stares down at me, but whatever words rest on his tongue seem to vanish as he looks at my hand around his wrist. His shoulders rise slightly and he breathes deeply. “Fine.”
“Tell me.”
Ruslan sits next to me on the bed, so I let go of his hand and adjust my position, cocking one leg at my knee and placing both hands in the space between my legs and my crotch. There’s comfort in the warmth.
“I put my hands around his throat and I squeezed until his throat caved in,” Ruslan says as casually as one would talk about their dinner.
While he washed his hands before tending to me, his wrists and forearms are still splattered with blood I’d presumed to be his. It belongs to Joseph.
“Why?”
“Like I said.” Ruslan clears his throat. “Self-defense.”
“Is that how you escaped and found me?”
“No, I escaped because they worked out who I was, but by then, it was too late. The Queen was already here and she took care of one of the others.”
The Queen. That has to be the beautiful woman I glimpsed in the corridor. She looked far too glamorous to be in an underground sewer, but there was also something kind of scary about her.
“Any other questions?” Ruslan prompts, interrupting my chaotic wandering thoughts.
“So you killed a cop. Aren’t you scared of going to jail?”
The noise that escapes Ruslan sounds close to a genuine laugh. “Those fuckers weren’t cops, at least notrealones by any definition.”
“Who were they?”
His upper lip swells as his tongue moves over his teeth. “They were members of a crime family. From one of the families who want you dead.”
“Because they think I crashed their plane and ruined their deal,” I whisper.
“Or you know who does.”
“That’s why he kept asking me what family I worked for every time he hit me.” My jaw throbs at the memory and I grip tightly at the bedsheets beneath me. “I kept telling him I knew nothing, but he wouldn’t believe me.”
“I believe you.”
Such a simple statement catches me by surprise and my gaze locks onto him. “You do?”
“Yes. Either you know nothing or you don’t realize you know something. Either way, I don’t think you’re some kind of mastermind.”
“What if I’m tricking you?” My head tilts as I study the crinkles around his eyes and the subtle way his jaw rocks back and forth.
