“What would you have done in my place?” I ask softly. “Everywhere I go, everywhere I turn, there’s another man trying to use me to gain power. I don’t want to be a pawn anymore, Kian.”
“Then don’t be,” he says. “Be a player.”
“How? I’m tied down now.”
He narrows his eyes. “What does that mean?”
I drop my hand from my stomach. “I made a deal with Rokiades, Kian. You saw it.”
“Fuck the deal. You’re not really going to marry that puffed-up old goat, are you?”
“I don’t have a choice.”
He slams his hands against the door and I gasp, taking a step back automatically as the metal clangs harshly in the frame.
My guards start moving forward immediately, but I hold up my hand to stop them. “It’s fine,” I say as they fall back into place. “Stay where you are.”
“Look at you,” Kian says bitterly. “Falling into the role perfectly.”
“Why are you so angry?” I ask, defensiveness coursing through my body. “I did this for you!”
“Yeah?” he says, his eyes dark with anger. “But why did you do this for me? You ran before, and now you’re willing to give yourself for Rokiades just to save me. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Then you haven’t been paying attention,” I snap. “I wanted freedom. That doesn’t mean I don’t care about you.”
I’m so angry that I allow myself to say the words before I can think twice about them.
He stops short. His expression grows complicated. “You care about me, huh?”
The silence is thick and tense. There’s no turning back now. And I don’t want to be a coward. “I didn’t lie, you know,” I say. “That last hour we spent together before I ran, nothing I told you was a lie. I don’t think even I realized it until then.”
I shake my head.
“But it’s hard for me to know who to trust. Every man I’ve ever met has betrayed or abandoned me sooner or later. My father, my brother, my husband. And now they’re all gone and I have to continue.”
“Your brother’s not gone.”
I frown. “What?”
“I fished Drago off the yacht before it blew up,” Kian tells me. “Saved the fucker’s life, even though he doesn’t deserve it.”
“You… saved him?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
He hesitates. The silence is heavy, and I try to read between the lines. “You saved him for me… didn’t you?”
“I might still decide to have him killed,” Kian says gruffly.
I almost smile. “So you care about me, too?”
“Jesus,” he groans. “I thought that was fucking obvious when I was trying to keep you out of Rokiades’s clutches.”
“How could I not think that was about a power play? About keeping me as a bargaining chip?”
“I suppose I can’t blame you,” he admits quietly. “I just wish you had trusted me.”