“Yes.”
“So, you allowed me to come here, too.” I step toward him as red-hot rage burns through me. “That file,” I say, pointing behind me without looking. “‘D.V. Contained.’ That’s your word for what happened to him after he killed my father.”
His gaze doesn’t follow my gesture. It stays on me. “Yes.”
“No trial. No consequence. No…” My voice sharpens. “No justice. Just containment. A relocation you documented like a change in inventory.”
His expression doesn’t shift. “It was managed.”
“Managed,” I repeat, the word tasting wrong in my mouth. “That’s what you call it when your son murders an ally.”
“It’s what I call maintaining a system that would have fractured if I hadn’t.”
The calm of it, that’s what snaps something. I cross the remaining distance between us before the decision fully forms.
“You chose him,” I say. “You chose him over my father. Over the alliance. Over your own code?—”
“That’s enough.”
“No,” I say, louder now. “You don’t get to decide when it’s enough. Not when you?—”
My hand moves before I authorize it. He catches my wrist before it lands. The impact that doesn’t happen echoes all the same, reverberating up my arm, into my chest.
His grip tightens just enough to stop the second attempt. “Evie.”
I try to pull free. He doesn’t let me.
“Let go,” I say.
“No.”
“Let go,” I repeat, sharper.
“Not if you’re going to do that again.”
“Do what?” I push against him, the distance between us collapsing. “React to you like you deserve?”
His other hand closes around my other wrist before I can move it. Then I’m moving backward. The wall meets my spine a second later. Air leaves my lungs in a controlled exhale I don’t recognize as mine.
He steps in. Too close. Always too close when it matters.
“You think this is about what I deserve,” he says. “It isn’t.”
“What is it about, then?” My voice sharpens. “Control? Containment? Deciding which truths I’m allowed to touch and which ones you remove before I get there?”
“Yes.”
The answer is immediate. Unapologetic. My breath catches for half a second.
“That’s the problem,” I say. “You think you get to decide everything. What matters. What doesn’t. Who pays for what your son did?—”
His head dips slightly, just enough to cut across the line of my next word. “Be careful.”
“Or what?” I push forward again, even pinned. “You’ll contain me, too?”
His lips crash to mine, hard enough to split skin. Teeth. Blood.
I gasp, and that’s a mistake, because he takes the opening and drives his tongue in, hot, salty-sweet, flooding me with violence.
