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“For what happened to my sister.”

My jaw locks so hard, pain shoots through my teeth. That fucking bastard. “What the fuck? Are you serious?”

“Yes,” she stutters and a tear runs down her cheek.

I cradle her face, noticing her distress. “Baby, that wasn’t your fault. It was your father’s fault.”

She shakes her head and reaches for more tissue from the box. She dabs at her eyes, but more tears come. “It was my fault.”

Seeing her like this… it breaks me. “How is it your fault?”

“I… I was the reason we got caught. I planned to sneak away from our guards so we could go to the prom. That’s how we got taken and there was no one to stop it from happening because of me.”

I reach for her hand and cover it with mine. “Printsessa, you can’t blame yourself for that. You weren’t to know what was going to happen.”

“I know, but I knew why we had guards and I knew how important it was to keep ourselves safe. I just… wanted to feel normal for one damn night. But it cost me my sister. So he’s right. Papa is right.”

I give her hand a gentle squeeze. “The men who took you were just waiting for the right moment.” That’s what it sounded like to me. “If it didn’t happen that night, it would have happened some other time.”

“I want to believe that. It’s logical, but… I can’t explain the part where my sister died to protect me. She died saving me.”

“I… didn’t know.”

“They were going to kill me, but she stopped it from happening,” she breathes. “That’s not something that could have happened any other time. It happened then. And I saw it. I watched that monster cut her throat, then shoot her to make sure she was dead.”

A stone drops in the pit of my stomach.

Jesus. I never imagined she saw all of that.

She dries more tears. “And the worst thing is the man walked away.”

That gives me pause. Corrado boasted about how he obliterated everyone involved in the scheme. “He got away?”

She nods. “I saw him escape. There was a group of them, he was one of the leaders. He escaped when my father’s men came to get me. He was never found.”

That’s quite different from the story we all know. “Hey, no more of this tonight. You need to get some sleep.”

“I’m not sure I can.”

“How about we do this, I lie next to you and you take it from there.”

She nods and gives me a soft smile. “Thanks, Lev.”

“You don’t have to thank me for that.” I lean forward and brush my lips over hers. “Come here.”

I pull her into my arms once more and we lie next to each other. I pull her close so she can rest her head on my chest.

“Your sister wouldn’t want you to blame yourself, printsessa. She’d want you to live and be happy. Do you hear me?”

“Yes.”

“Then believe me.” I don’t tell her that her sister would have accepted death before it came, but she loved her enough to risk her life anyway. That’s how I felt about my sister. When you jump in front of a shower of bullets, only death can come for you. I just got lucky and lived to tell the tale.

When I wake the next morning, Gabrielle is still asleep. She drifted off in the night, then I fell asleep too.

I get out of the bed and leave the room quietly to make a phone call. There are new things on my mind.

It’s just gone seven, so it’s midday in Morocco now.