He’s right. He could have just smothered me in my sleep if he had really wanted me dead. It’s small comfort, though.
“I’m an excellent shot,” Kian continues. “Trust me—it wasn’t my bullet that got you.”
“Trust you?” I scoff sarcastically. “Sure, that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
“Need I remind you that, without me, you would have been raped?”
The word sends another bolt of pain through my body. But this time, it’s all internal. There’s no amount of time that’ll heal the scars inside of me. Thanks to the drug cocktail that Greek asshole fed me, everything feels so fucking fresh. I look down, trying to stuff my feelings back inside the cave they’ve been unearthed from.
When I look back up again, Kian is staring at me searchingly. “Let me guess: your brother planned on marrying you off to Yannis.”
Even his name sounds sinister.
“My brother is a coward,” I snap, not even caring how Kian interprets that. “This was probably the easiest thing for him to do that would increase his power.”
I don’t have to speak to my brother to know what he was thinking. It’s not like I don’t know what he’s capable of. But I did think I was safe from this kind of thing.
Especially since I feel like I’ve paid my dues. Drago tried this once before. It almost killed me. He swore he’d never do it again. That he’d keep me safe. And, fuck me, I believed him.
I see now how naïve that was. The silly, desperate hope of a girl who had nothing else to cling to.
Kian scoffs. “Yannis Rokiades is not the type of man to just give up power,” he says. “He would have married you and killed your brother.”
“At this point, I don’t care.”
He raises his eyebrows and I feel the need to clarify.
“I meant the last part,” I say quickly. “I don’t care if he’d decided to kill my brother.”
“Speaking of the devil, where is your brother?”
I shake my head. “I genuinely don’t know. I don’t think anyone knows at this point.”
“My men have been trying to track him for days,” Kian says. “It’s clear that someone’s helping him.”
“He doesn’t have as many friends as he thinks he does,” I say bitterly. “He’s probably just running.”
“He wouldn’t leave you behind.”
I snort with dark laughter. “If it was a choice between saving me or saving himself, he’d pick himself every fucking time. In fact, he has done so in the past. Frequently.”
“And yet you stayed with him.”
There’s no judgement in his tone. But I feel judged anyway.
A part of me is aware that I’m projecting. Because I know I should have fought harder, been braver. I should have left a long time ago and tried to get out of the city, away from my brother.
“I had no choice,” I say lamely, straining to believe the words coming out of my mouth.
“Everyone has a choice, Renata.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” I snap. “When you’ve got money and power and a family who’s got your back, it’s easy to preach to other people about their fucking choices. I may have been born into the same kind of family as yours. But my sense of security died with my father. You saw to that. I was under my brother’s thumb. I’ve been with him since I was five years old. And when I was old enough to know the kind of man he was, it was too late.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means… It means he broke me,” I say, without revealing too much.
I don’t need understanding from Kian O’Sullivan. All these men are alike. Whatever I tell him now, he’ll just use against me later. I’m not fucking falling for it.