I couldn’t breathe. Everything stood still as my brain processed what had just happened.

“Dahlia,” Ivan said, reaching for me. My vision swam, and a roar filled my ears. It took me a few seconds to realize it was my screaming. He’d killed my father. Ivan’s uncle killed my father.

“Why would he do that? Why?”

“To teach me a lesson about avenging wrongs against the family,” he said, his voice deepening like he had to force those words out past a lump in his throat. “To make sure I never went against him. Wouldn’t make a mistake like that again,” he said, the muscles flexing in his jaw. He touched my arm, and I ripped it away. I steadied myself against the wall as the room tilted.

He reached for me again, but I shrugged him off, rushing from the room and launching myself into the bathroom. Bile rose in my throat as it felt like everything I’d ever eaten came racing out.

It was my fault. If I hadn’t flirted. Hadn’t run off with him that night after the fight with my dad. If I hadn’t gotten involved with him in the first place, none of this would have happened. The dry heaves kept coming as I buried my head in the bowl.

I jumped as something cold gently landed on the back of my neck. I skittered away from his touch and pressed myself against the wall, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. I stared at Ivan, tears soaking my cheeks. He crouched in front of me with a washcloth in his hands. It was written all over his face. Guilt.

“You knew this whole time.” My voice cracked.

He dropped his head before glancing up at me and nodding. “I did.”

“And you didn’t tell me?” My voice was hoarse, choked with emotion. I wanted to scream in his face and pound on his chest.

“I did what I could to protect you. I stayed away once I learned how far my uncle would go to keep us in line. To keep us under his control.”

“He came to me.” I clenched my fists so tightly my fingers ached.

“He what?”

“He came to me like he was doing me a favor. He said he was sorry about what happened to my dad.” I could barely get the words out. The crater of guilt and anger tunneled deep in my chest. “He said he was sorry, and he said he came with a warning. A warning about you.”

Ivan got down on his knees in front of me, trying to take my hands. I snatched them away.

“He showed me pictures. Pictures of men he said you’d killed.”

Ivan shook his head grimly. “The men responsible. I—I couldn’t look at them knowing what they’d done.” His voice caught.

“Those men you killed were the ones who killed my father?”

“It was my last act of defiance. He allowed it. Condoned it, knowing I needed to get my revenge, but his terms were clear. Never see you again. Never go against him again.”

Ivan nodded his head slowly, like he was afraid to scare me off with that answer. Shame slammed into my chest at the satisfaction I felt knowing they were dead. The men who’d ripped my father away from me were gone too.

“What else did my uncle say to you?”

“He said that getting involved with you might lead to something like that happening to me. His threat was clear enough.” I shuddered as I thought back to the way he’d looked at me, like I was a specimen under a glass dome. It still didn’t explain how things ended up spiraling so far out of control.

“Why did you come back now? Why did you come to me?” I said, almost pleading. The careful balance of my life had been upended the minute he came to my door. The anger inside me threatened to boil over. So many lies over so many years. His uncle had threatened me. He’d shown me what Ivan was capable of, but it was him who was the real monster. I was so stupid not to put that together. My dad died in a car accident. It never crossed my mind that it had anything to do with me. No one knew about Ivan. At least I thought no one knew until his uncle showed up. “You should have stayed away from me.”

“As if I could. There is nothing I’ve done that hasn’t been to protect the people I cared about. Whether it was shutting off my humanity to do the things Sergei needed me to do or ripping out a part of my soul and leaving you behind. I never wanted this life. Never. But I knew if I didn’t fall in line, everyone I cared about was at risk.”

“That’s why you left me that night. Not just because of the police, but because of your uncle.” It dawned on me how much worse it may have been had I not been tucked away in relative safety. Suddenly my father asking them to throw the book at me wasn’t about heaping even more punishment on me. He was trying to protect me, not from my bad decisions or teenage rebellion, but from the real threat of Ivan’s uncle.

“He was having me watched. He was not happy about how things turned out. And once he found out which division your dad was in…I had to pay my penance, but I had no idea he’d visited you. I’d have stopped him if I could.”

I bit back exactly what I wanted to say, but my anger eased a little when Ivan dropped his head and stared at his fisted hands. When he looked back up, there was a shimmer in his eyes. They were filled with pain and regret and shame. Those were so many of the same feelings that had threatened to drown me over the years.

“If I walked out that door right now, would you let me go? Would you leave me alone and never bother me again?” My hands were balled up into fists.

“I won’t lie to you anymore. No.”

So many more lies than I’d thought possible. I’d thought my discoveries had ended and I knew the whole story, but it was so much worse. Why hadn’t my dad told me of the real danger lurking out there? Why hadn’t Ivan told me who he really was all those years ago?

“Why didn’t he tell me?” I whispered. But I knew. I had still been an angry, rebellious, barely eighteen-year-old.

“He did the best he could. He did everything he could to protect you,” Ivan said, his voice quiet. Barely above a whisper. I flinched as he held out the damp cloth to me again.

“You spoke to him after the courthouse?”

“I did.”

“You told him all of this?”

He nodded.

“Why? Why would you go to him? Why would you two even speak about this behind my back?”

He cocked his head to the side. “Once he knew what was at stake, he made sure you wouldn’t get out early. I would have thought you’d pieced that together already. There isn’t anything in this world I wouldn’t do for you.”

I opened my mouth to ask the one question, but he cut me off.

“But I won’t leave you. I can’t leave you. Walking around for the past ten years was like walking around without a soul, without my humanity. You’ve given that back to me. You’ve made me whole.” He ran his knuckles along my cheeks, wiping away the last of my tears. “Because I love you. I have always loved you and will always love you, Dahlia.”

My head snapped back like I’d been slapped. So many years of so many doubts and regrets, and the two people I’d cared about the most made a decision that would completely change my life and didn’t even tell me.

His words sliced through me. That little nagging voice in the back of my mind, the one I’d silenced, had been saying the same thing for a long time, but I didn’t want to believe it.

I stood, pushing myself off the wall and launching myself at him. “You didn’t think I deserved to know that my life was in danger. That I could have been killed. That my father still loved me. That you still loved me,” I shouted, pressing my hands against his chest, trying to push him away. He wrapped his hands around my wrists, his touch so gentle, like he was afraid I might break. His own eyes glittered with moisture, but I knocked his hands away.

“There are so many things I’d have done differently.” He wrapped his arms around me even as I dug my hands into his chest. Every muscle in my body tensed as he held me closer, pressing my body against his and not letting me go.

My struggle stopped as the cage of his arms kept me still, but the tears I’d held back for so long slammed into me with full force. I’d been so alone and scared. Everyone I loved had been ripped from me, but he was standing right there. That piece of me I’d thought was gone forever had come back to me, no matter how much I tried to deny it. Ivan was deep under my skin, even deeper than I was under his.

And just as quickly my hold was reversed. I wasn’t pushing him away. I had my fingers wrapped around his shirt, dragging him toward me as I buried my face in his chest. His smell, cedar and lavender, filled my nose as my tears soaked his shirt.

A tension I hadn’t realized I’d been holding broke free like a dam, the weight of it all crashing over me and threatening to consume me. His hands were no longer holding me still. No longer caging me in. They rubbed their way up and down my back as he murmured against the top of my head.

“It was never your fault. Never. I’m sorry you ever thought that. That I didn’t tell you. That I disappeared. I’m sorry your dad didn’t get to tell you. I’m sorry for so many things.” His lips were beside my ear as he told me all the things I needed to hear, to release a small part of the guilt I’d let gnaw at me for all these years. I’d been so focused on what I’d done that I couldn’t see how much he cared.

My hands still fisted around his shirt, I stared up at Ivan. The weight of everything made it hard to focus. My head swam as my body went numb. He ran his hand down my hair, making comforting sounds and rocking me. There wasn’t anything I could do to escape what happened, but I needed Ivan to keep my head above the crashing waves that threatened to swallow me up.