Page 57

“Every day,” I agreed, because he had nearly died before I learned I was allowed to call him my father, and denying him my voice felt too cruel. “Get better, Dad.”

“Come back to me.”

I ended the call without replying. Promises had become dangerous things. Salvatore had promised me years, and Mom had promised there were no more secrets. Every promise I trusted eventually opened to reveal the lie folded inside it.

When I lowered the phone, Rurik was gone. The interior door stood open, revealing a narrow hallway lit by a single lamp. I followed because the garage was cold, because walking into unfamiliar woods would have been pointless rebellion, and because anger had not made me reckless enough to run blindly into the dark.

The house beyond the garage was clean, spare, and impersonal. No photographs lined the walls. No abandoned cup suggested someone had stepped away and meant to return. Heavy curtains covered every window, and three locks waited above the front-door handle.

Rurik stood in the kitchen with both hands resting against the back of a chair. A paper bag waited on the counter beside several bottles of water, a first-aid kit, and enough canned food to survive a siege. He had removed his coat, but the holster beneath his arm remained visible.

“Your room is at the end of the hall,” he said. “There are clothes in the dresser. The bathroom is across from it.”

“How long am I supposed to stay here?” I remained near the hallway, refusing to enter far enough for the house to close around me. “A night? A week? Until everyone I love stops looking?”

“I don’t know.”

“You always have an answer.”

“Not when the answer would be a lie.” Rurik nodded toward the phone still clenched in my hand. “Keep it. Your parents and O’Malley can reach you through it. No one can trace the signal to this house.”

The words loosened something inside my chest, but gratitude felt too close to forgiveness, and I wasn’t ready to offer either. “And if I tell them where I am?”

“You don’t know where you are.”

The reminder sent anger through me again. I crossed the kitchen and placed the phone on the table before I threw it at him. “You planned this.”

“I planned for the possibility that Boston would become unsafe.”

“You planned to take me.”

“I planned to keep you alive.” His gaze held mine without asking me to accept the distinction. “What I did after the shooting was wrong. I would do it again, but I will not insult you by pretending that makes it right.”

There was no defense to attack. He had already removed it, leaving the ugliness of his choice exposed between us. Somehow, that made it harder to hate him cleanly.

“I’m not hungry,” I said.

“You haven’t eaten since morning.”

“I said I’m not hungry.”

Rurik stepped away from the chair. “Then don’t eat.”

He took a bottle of water and walked toward the front room without another word. He didn’t order me into the bedroom or stand in the hall to ensure I went where he wanted. He simply left the kitchen, trusting me with the phone, the knives in the wooden block, and the knowledge that three locks separated me from the road.

I remained beside the table until exhaustion made standing painful. The bedroom at the end of the hall contained a narrow bed, a dresser, and another curtained window. A folded shirt and pair of sweatpants waited on top of the blanket. They were my size, which meant Rurik had prepared for me before Boston or had instructed someone to do it during the drive.

I shoved the clothes onto the floor and lay down fully dressed.

Sleep didn’t come. Every time the house settled, I heard gunfire. Every vehicle on the distant road became the one carrying Cian away from me. When I closed my eyes, Salvatore appeared with blood beneath his shirt and an apology already forming upon his mouth.

Sometime after midnight, I heard Rurik moving through the kitchen. A cabinet opened, water ran, and the quiet scrape of a chair followed. He never approached my door. He didn’t ask whether I needed anything or use my silence as an invitation to enter.

That restraint became the first thing I trusted about him.

The sandwich he had left beneath a covered plate was still on the kitchen table when I emerged shortly before dawn. Rurik sat near the front window with the curtain lifted by less than an inch. A pistol rested against his thigh, and a cup of untouched coffee had gone cold beside him.

He released the curtain when he saw me. “Cian called while you were sleeping. He says he’s okay. They are keeping him in the hospital for several days.”