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For years, I had carried the private, horrible wish that someday Father would pay for that.

Apparently, someday had arrived.

And beneath the shock, beneath the nausea, beneath the fact that the man on the floor was my father, relief rushed through me so strongly my knees nearly gave out.

He was dead.

Ciro Delgado was finally dead.

And he could never own another second of my life.

The guilt came immediately after.

I pressed my lips together.

My mother was gone.

Now my father was dead.

That left me with no parents. No family. No one in the world I belonged to.

A burst of gunfire cracked somewhere beyond the cellar.

I flinched.

“He’s dead,” Lachlan said softly. “You’re not.”

I turned back to him. His eyes dropped to the key in my hand.

“Key, Isabella.”

Right.

I hadn’t come down here to mourn a father I’d never really had.

I had come for Lachlan.

I rushed behind the chair and dropped to my knees.

My hands were shaking badly enough that the key scraped against the first cuff several times before I found the lock.

“Hold still.”

“I’m the one chained to the chair, Mouse.”

A breath escaped me that might have been a laugh if anything about the room had been funny.

The lock turned, and the cuff popped open.

Lachlan yanked his right hand free and brought it around in front of him, flexing his fingers.

I moved to work on the other one.

He twisted his wrist to give me better access, and this time the key went in on the first try.

Click.

His second hand came free.