Page 55 of Beautiful Ruin

Sofia turns to look at me. “Obviously because they were running away together and my uncle didn’t want his sister leaving.”

I shake my head. “Why kill her, though? Why go to that extreme if he only wanted to prevent her from running away with a man he didn’t approve of?”

She closes the laptop with a sharp click and turns in my lap to face me fully. “It makes sense if you believe my uncle is not the man he pretends he is. I’m meeting my father again tonight to discuss more of what happened back then. I think you should come with me.”

The refusal is instant. “Absolutely not.”

Her face falls. “Rowan⁠—”

“No,” I repeat. “You are not leaving this estate, and I sure as hell am not escorting you to a man who is obviously trying to manipulate you.”

“He’s not manipulating me,” she snaps back.

“He is, Sofia. You’re just too close to see it.”

Anger flashes in her eyes. “You think I’m stupid? You think I can’t tell when someone is lying to me?”

No, I don’t think she’s stupid, that is the damn problem. If she were, it would be easier to dismiss her conclusions as grief-strung nonsense and lock the door behind them without losing sleep over wondering whether they were true or not.

Reality is much worse than that.

“I think you’re desperate,” I fire back, the words harsher than I mean them to sound. “For answers and a connection with someone outside these walls. Enough to believe whatever story your sperm donor feeds you.”

She recoils as if I slapped her. Her mouth parts, but no sound comes out.

I should apologize.

While I always mean what I say, this isn’t the way I want this conversation to go. Taking back the words in order to soften them, or do something to stop the look on her face from settling permanently into memory, would solve everything. But I am too angry to feel rational in this moment. There is too much at stake to be treating this delicately.

“That’s not fair,” she whispers.

“The truth isn’t fair, Sofia. Get used to it.”

Her face tightens at that.

She shakes her head and quickly pushes away from me.

That is the part I am least prepared for, the sudden absence of her warmth pressed against me. The space where she had been is cooling too quickly now, as if her body had been the only thing keeping the room from turning back into the cold mausoleum this house has always been. One moment, she is close enough for me to feel the tremor rolling through her entire body, and the next, she is crossing the room to get away from me, pulling herself back together with shaking hands and a shattered expression.

I almost reach for her.

Her next words are venomous as they spill out of her. “You just don’t want to believe it because it would mean everything you’ve built your life on is a lie. Ivan isn’t who you think he is. Your loyalty has been for a man capable of murdering his own sister despite claiming that he loved her.”

My jaw clenches so hard, pain sparks up the side of my face.

“Think about that,” she spits out at me.

I do.

That is the terrible truth of it all.

I have been thinking about it since the coroner’s office. Since the file was laid out on my lap and told us the gun that killed her mother was nearly identical to the type used to almost kill my pseudo-father. I’ve been thinking about this since Nikolai’s warning first curled around my throat and refused to let go.

My muscles tremble with restraint as I fight the urge to snap at her and force the accusation back into the dark, decrepit box where it belongs. Ivan killing Irena is too obscene to imagine, let alone entertain. It is a blasphemy against the version of him that I know like the back of my hand. There is no faking grief like that. I have seen the way he looks at Sofia like she is the last living ember of something he failed to save all those years ago.

But in the back of my mind, something else nags at me.

A different truth. Men have loved what they destroyed before to get what they want, to satisfy whatever desire they may carry that is unattainable without sacrifice.