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“Most beautiful girl there is.” Trevan’s words were coarse and scratchy.

My heart panged.

He slipped his other hand beneath my cheek that was pressed to the pillow, framing my face in both hands. “Hate that you needed to seek it out that way. That we stopped you from⁠—”

My head shook. “I know why, Trevan. I get it, and I get why you suggested what you did earlier tonight. But I also know that it’s a part of who we are. That I have to be extra cautious. That I can’t do what I did that night.”

Not with Kent Ellison and not when I was eighteen.

But both times I’d been desperate.

“I felt like I was drowning, Trevan. Like I would suffocate if I stayed behind those walls for a second longer. Like I might miss my chance at being loved.”

Pain sheared through his features. “You are loved.”

“Not like I ache to be.”

His big body trembled the mattress beneath us. A chaotic spiral of darkness and light.

I forced myself to continue. “They tied me up, shoved me in the back of the car. Beat me.”

Violence skimmed his flesh. I could feel it. The urgency to set it free.

“They took me to his compound and locked me in that room.” I blinked as I was taken back to it. To the isolation. The gutting, constant fear. The way time had seemed to warp and my mind had threatened to crack.

“I was tossed onto a dirty, threadbare mattress. Hands bound. It was dark. So dark when they shut and locked the door.”

Terror ricocheted through me. A violent, beating memory.

“I remember the sliver of light when Kent Ellison came through.”

A man who was probably in his late fifties. Attractive if it weren’t for the torrent of wickedness that oozed from him.

“He knelt beside me and ran a knuckle down my cheek.” I choked over the words, and a crash of intensity flash-fired out of Trevan.

“His voice was soft as he told me I was such a stupid, pathetic girl.” I blinked through the vision, the way terror had locked every cell in my body. Sweat drenching my skin even though it was excruciatingly cold.

“He stroked my face while I wept, and he just had this…smile the whole time. It was so twisted. Like he was doing me a favor when he told me he was only going to take a little of me, but he was going to spare me from what I deserved to give my brother a chance to come to his senses.”

Only he had no idea who my brother really was and what he and the Crimson Crows really stood for. Had no idea what was coming for him.

Aggression bunched the muscles of Trevan’s arms, his words grit. “Did he?”

I sniffled with a ragged shake of my head. “No. He just tormented me with the idea of it. Each day, taunting me that Silas still hadn’t come, and soon, I’d be the one who paid for his disobedience.”

The guys from Sovereign Sanctum had broken me out. Came for me in the middle of the night.

I’d been so scared when the door had opened once again. Thought Kent had finally come to make good on his threats.

“I wanted to come for you.” Spikes of pain speared through Trevan.

“You were also trapped.”

In the shadows, I could see the veins in his neck bulge. “I should have broken out. Did whatever it took to get to you. I’m so fucking sorry. So sorry I failed you.”

“You didn’t. I was the one who left.”

“You were only trying to live in a world that’s not worthy of you. In a world that is too grim for all your goodness and light.”