Page 53 of Beautiful Ruin

For one breathless moment, I let myself sink into it, allow his warmth to wrap around me like a security blanket. I feel myself drifting, lulled toward the illusion that this is safe. But Rowan ruins all of that with a single devastating murmur.

“Where did you go last night, Sofia?” His fingers never falter in my hair, even as the question hangs in the air. “And how the hell did you sneak out of the estate without triggering a single alarm? You need to stop doing that.”

I ignore the second half because the answer will incriminate Dima who never asked to be involved in this to begin with. It’s not his fault I can be quite convincing when I want something. Rowan only needs to know the bigger scope when it comes to the truth, anyway.

“I went to meet my father,” I say.

This time, Rowan’s fingers do actually still.

“Explain,” he says.

So I do.

I tell him how I hired a private investigator in secret days ago after getting into contact with the police and when my suspicions first began to take shape. How we exchanged careful emails and about finding my father and his possible whereabouts until I was connected to him directly.

It wasn’t until last night that my father asked to meet me in a neutral location, a rundown diner at the edge of the city that is open twenty-four hours. Rowan listens in silence, his body tenser the longer I talk. He resumes stroking my hair, but I feel the restraint in it now, the effort it takes not to tighten into a fist.

“He told me things about my mother.” I swallow around the words, finding it hard to get them out. “About what really happened.”

He shifts, sitting up just enough to look at me. His gray eyes are stormy, searching my face with an intensity that makes my heart stutter. “What could he possibly say after all these years that convinced you to risk everything to meet him?”

Tears well hot behind my eyes because I know what I’m about to say will unravel something inside him too.

The last thing I want to do is hurt him. But sitting on this information and withholding the truth from him are more cruel than revealing it.

“He told me my mother didn’t die in a random attack. She didn’t crash by accident. She was killed. And the person behind it was my uncle.”

For several long heartbeats, he simply stares at me, gray eyes darkening. The hand that was gentle in my hair moments ago now rests heavily on my shoulder, fingers flexing once instinctively before going still again.

I wait for denial or anger to follow. It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if he called me a liar and pushed me away in order to defend the man who has spent the last decade and a half raising him like his own.

Rowan’s jaw works. His gaze drops to the sheets between us, but I see the storm raging behind them. The years of loyalty and blood spilled in Ivan’s name must be immeasurable.

“I’m sorry.”

His eyes lift to meet mine again, his voice a near whisper when he asks me, “You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

18

ROWAN

I’ve heard many impossible things in my life.

Men begging for their lives with a gun already pressed to their temple and promising everything in their name, including their own children. Friends swearing eternal loyalty right before they put a knife in your back. Children crying while their fathers bleed out on the ground from a deal gone bad.

But nothing has ever struck me as violently absurd as Sofia’s quiet, trembling confession.

Ivan?

Killing his own beloved sister?

For a moment I can only stare at her, every instinct I possess rejecting the idea outright. It isn’t just far-fetched, it’s fantastical. Irena Kuznetsova was the only softness Ivan ever allowed himself. I remember the rare grief in his eyes whenever she is brought up in conversation.

Whenever the anniversary of her death comes, he shut himself off from the world, working himself raw and drinking until even I couldn’t stand to watch. A man like that doesn’t fake that kind of pain. It’s impossible to manufacture mourning that deep.

And yet Sofia’s tears are real. Her doubt about her uncle’s love is real. Her father, this stranger who abandoned her before she could ever seek comfort from him, has managed to twist her into believing the most ludicrous, venomous lie imaginable. It makes something ugly and furious unfurl inside my chest. Protective instincts flare in a way I can’t begin to understand though refuse to question.