Page 49

I remembered reaching across the table and wrapping my hand around Rurik’s wrist. He had let me believe the touch belonged entirely to me, but he’d entered that restaurant knowing my history and the promise Salvatore had placed in his hands. The memories were still true, yet the room around them had changed. I no longer knew whether grief had made me foolish or simply easy to reach.

“How long have you been watching me?”

“Long enough to know you won’t stay just because I ask.”

“Then why are you even here?”

I tried to go around him again. Rurik caught my upper arm, and I tore free before his hand could close completely.

“Don’t touch me.”

“Maddie, listen to me.”

“No. I have spent my entire life listening to men explain why their lies were necessary. Nolan lied because truth might have loosened his control. My mother lied because she thought distance would protect us. Sinclair collects secrets and decides what everyone else can survive.” My voice cracked, but anger kept me standing. “And now you’re telling me I can’t go to my father because another group of men made another decision without me.”

“This isn’t about control.”

“It always feels that way to the person who has the control.”

Rurik absorbed the words without flinching, which only made me angrier. Nolan would have punished me for speaking that way. Rurik simply accepted that I meant every word.

“Cian may be dying,” I said. “I will not sit in an apartment and wait while that happens.”

“He was alive when Sinclair contacted me.”

“When was that?”

“Hours ago.”

The pavement seemed to shift beneath me. Hours. My family had known for hours and decided I didn’t need to. They had protected me so thoroughly that strangers knew what was happening to my father while I stood in a kitchen waiting for water to boil.

I shoved past him. This time, Rurik caught both my arms.

“Let me go.”

“No.”

“I stayed away from my son to protect him.” The words tore free with years of grief behind them. “I stayed away from Salvatore until there was nothing left for me to return to. I won’t stay away from my father and let him die without me.”

Pain moved across Rurik’s face, but his grip held.

“He spent what breath he had left keeping you away,” he said. “I won’t make that breath meaningless.”

The cruelty of that truth emptied my lungs. My father had been hurt badly enough that saying my name had cost him something, and he had spent that cost asking me not to come. Once again, love had become a locked door with a man standing on the other side, insisting the distance between us proved how much he cared.

“If he dies⁠—”

Rurik’s attention snapped to the opposite side of the street.

The change in him was instant. His body went still, but not with the stillness he used when listening. This was the pause of something dangerous recognizing a greater danger.

A dark sedan had stopped half a block away. Its doors opened slowly, and three men stepped onto the street, each dressed too heavily for the warm evening. One stayed near the rear door while the other two looked directly at us. Their hands slid beneath their jackets.

I didn’t know them. Rurik did.

His hold shifted from my arms to my wrist. “Get in the car.”

“Who are they?”