Page 54
“Her name wasn’t in the files.”
Rurik’s gaze remained on the road. “That doesn’t mean she wasn’t there.”
The files had already made the world feel infected. Every name connected to another, every payment concealing a life someone powerful believed could be purchased. I’d wanted the pages to contain the whole horror because a horror with edges could eventually be escaped. Sylvia’s absence meant the records had never shown us where those edges were.
“How powerful is she?”
“Powerful enough that Sinclair warned me not to underestimate her.”
Sinclair didn’t waste fear on men he could destroy. Hearing that caution attached to a woman I’d never known existed tightened something beneath my ribs.
“What does she want from me?”
Rurik’s silence squeezed around the answer.
“Tell me.”
“She wants you to take her place.”
“At the Society?”
“Yes.”
The word seemed to shrink the car around me. The files had reduced children to entries and bloodlines to leverage, and Sylvia expected me to sit at the center of it. Revulsion crawled across my skin as if the Society had already touched me simply because her blood moved beneath it.
“Why me?”
“Because you’re her granddaughter. A woman carrying her blood.” His gaze remained fixed on the road. “You are her legacy.”
Legacy. Another beautiful word hollowed out and filled with ownership. Salvatore’s legacy was Henry laughing beneath a Montana sky. Mine was supposed to be an empire built from secrets, ruined families, and children who had never consented to becoming valuable.
“I don’t want it.”
“She isn’t asking what you want.”
The certainty in his voice frightened me more than the threat itself. Sylvia hadn’t sent men to offer me a place in her life. She had nearly killed Cian because she believed blood had already decided for me.
“She thinks she can force me to run the Society?”
“Consent is irrelevant to Sylvia St. James.”
My hand tightened around the edge of the seat. I’d spent my life being punished for blood that wasn’t mine. Nolan had looked at me and seen another man’s child. Now a stranger looked at the same blood and believed it entitled her to everything I had left. Neither of them saw me. They saw proof of what they hated or what they intended to own.
“Then turn around.”
“No.”
I grabbed the door handle. The lock held beneath my fingers.
“Let me out.”
“Not while those men may still be searching the roads.”
“You said we lost them.”
“I said they were no longer behind us.” Rurik glanced toward the empty mirror. “That isn’t the same thing.”
I pulled the handle again, hating him for the useless movement. “You don’t get to decide where I go.”
