“That’s not what I’m talking about.”
“Then what are you referring to?”
“Brussels.” I take a step closer. “You planned it. Me being there at the same time as Samuel. And Paris. You took your cunt of a wife off the fucking radar so I could have a week. And then you offer to help get me out of the hell-hole she put me in.” My jaw clenches. “Why?”
There’s a moment of perfect silence.
Rowan watches me with the same unblinking intensity I use on targets—cataloging every micro-expression, every shift in my posture, every flicker of rage I can’t quitebury. He reads me like he’s flipping through pages he’s memorized long ago.
He tilts his head slightly, the gesture almost clinical.
“Because despite what you might think, I care for you like a son.”
“Bullshit.”
"You think Samuel's the kind of son I wanted?" Rowan's voice stays even, but something underneath it shifts. "A boy who learned to wear suits before he learned to stand up straight. Who has never once in his life been tested and come through it changed." His eyes hold mine. "I watched you survive things that would have broken most men before you were old enough to shave. I watched you become something extraordinary under circumstances that were never fair and never kind.”
“Great. I have a fan,” I deadpan.
Rowan stands, straightens his navy suit jacket. “I stopped it.” His jaw clenches, a tiny-tell he’s losing composure. “I stopped the abuse. After I found you in that room with your face cut open,Istopped it.”
“It stopped because Mary found out.”
Ian stiffens beside me, and I hear him swear under his breath. I haven’t told anyone about that part. The part where my own sister betrayed me, sold me out for Egyptian cotton sheets and fucking fairy lights.
“Mary found out,” I continue. “So you had to stop it.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, son.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“You think I’d let a little girl tell me what to do? Dictate my next move? I stopped what Valeria was doing to you because?—”
"Because you needed him broken," Ian chimes in.
The room goes very still.
Rowan looks at Ian. Ian looks back at him with the flat, unimpressed steadiness. "You needed him broken so you could build the weapon," Ian continues. "And when the teenage boy broke, you swept in like a knight in shining fucking armor."
Rowan stares at Ian for a long moment. The kind of look that takes a full inventory and reveals nothing. Then he looks back at me.
"Mary was always the leash," he says. "But I knew it was only a matter of time before that blew up in Valeria's face. Before the truth came out." He moves to the floor-to-ceiling windows, unhurried, hands clasped behind his back, looking out into the pitch black of the mountain night. "Then Sophia came along."
Nobody speaks.
"At first I thought Valeria and I were on the same page where Sophia was concerned." He glances back at me, just briefly. "We weren't. I understood that quickly. For me, Sophia was an anchor. The thing that would finally make you reachable. Make you capable of choosing freely."
I narrow my eyes. “Choosing what freely?”
“Me.”
I scoff. “I would never choose to be your fucking weapon.”
He glances at me. “Love and revenge are the two greatest motivators.”
“You thought if you let me keep her and hand over Valeria I’d what? Pledge my undying loyalty to you?”
He doesn’t reply. Merely smiles, which is reply enough.Then he gazes back out the window. "It didn’t take long for me to realize that for Valeria it became something else entirely. It stopped being about the weapon, the asset." He looks at me directly. "It became about the man. And my wife's obsession with owning him."
