ANNA RELUCTANTLY DECIDED to return home after her mother reappeared. None of us liked it, but it was a decision she forced us to respect.

I hadn’t seen Angel in two days, but I didn’t regret the space. I was still figuring out how to confront him about my mother and had been focusing on not allowing hurt and anger to consume me. The morning after we saved Angel from being beheaded, I watched a report on the news about the perishing of Senator Henry Staten, his son, Aaron Staten, and girlfriend, Erin Andrews, after the home of the senator had burned down in an uncontrollable fire. Angel’s promise to not leave anything left of the Senator to find must have been what kept him away these past couple of days.

I was busy drawing a sketch on a legal pad I’d stolen from the library, something I hadn’t done in months, when Angel stepped out onto the patio looking like he needed a week’s worth of sleep.

“Hey,” he greeted.

“Hey.”

“I thought you might like to know that your friend, Becky, is alive. She was shot in the abdomen, but it went straight through without damaging anything.” I felt a tear slide down my face and quickly wiped it away.

“Thank you.” My voice shook, but I didn’t care. I wanted to see my friends again, but I knew it would never be possible. It was better this way. They were safe.

“Sam also received a package from me this morning.”

My lips parted, but no words came. I had to fight for them. “You paid them off?”

“I thanked them for taking care of you and Caylen,” he corrected. “And because she took a bullet for you.”

I turned away and ran my pencil over the sketch, darkening lines and creating more depth. 

“You’re drawing again,” he observed as he took a seat next to me. I blushed when he took a peek at my sketch. It was a roughly drawn replica of him during one of those rare moments he never allowed anyone to see. Moments usually spent with me. “Have I ever told you how talented you are?”

I smiled feeling myself blush. “You don’t have to suck up. It’s just a hobby.”

“Have you considered doing nudes?”

“No.” I ran my pencil over Angel’s eyes, darkening them. “Most of my drawings are of my mother. I barely remember her before cancer so mostly I imagine how she’d look knowing she was going to live.” I wasn’t looking at him, but I could feel his reaction. When I did look at him, his eyes were empty though his jaw was set. He was never going to tell me the truth unless I made him. “Your father murdered my mother, didn’t he?”

“How did you—” His gaze narrowed. “You read the book?”

I slammed the pad down and stood up. “Then I guess we’re even.” I tried to walk away, determined to leave him once and for all, when his hand closed around my wrist. He was gentle, but his constant betrayal made his touch feel like acid.

“I’m not upset,” he rushed to assure me.

“Well, that makes one of us.”

I tried again to walk away, but he growled impatiently and tugged me down onto his lap. I was facing him with nowhere to rest my hands but on his shoulder. “You shouldn’t have read the book.” I squirmed to get away, but he simply tightened his hold. “You would be dead if my family had caught you.”

“What happened to you being their God?”

I could hear the humor in his grunt. “I got lucky.”

“You wouldn’t have let them hurt me.”

“It wouldn’t have been up to me,” he warned unconvincingly. We both know Angel would have forsaken his crown to kill them for hurting me.

It was the very reason I didn’t understand Angel bending to a dead man’s rules now. It was clear he no longer agreed with them. Maybe he never did. “Augustine doesn’t care about Alexander’s rules. Why do you?”

Angel’s hands squeezed my hips as he leaned forward. His voice menacing as he whispered, “Did you just use another man to emasculate me?”

“I don’t think that’s possible.” I waited until his hold loosened and he sat back to say, “But you aren’t their King, Angel. You’re their prisoner.”

“Maybe. But I’ll wear their chains as long as it keeps you safe.”

“Don’t say things like that.” I closed my eyes to block out the look in his eyes. It felt a lot like love.

“Why not?” I didn’t answer him. How did I put into words how much I loved and hated him? I felt his lips on me and released a blissful sigh.

“Why did Art kill my mother?” He paused from trailing kisses down the column of my neck and sighed.

“She wanted to be with him, and when he wouldn’t leave my mother, she threatened to expose them.”

“So he chose to kill her rather than face the consequences?” I pushed against his shoulders and stood to my feet. “I was practically an orphan because of him.” With my mother dead and my father avoiding me, there had been no one but Angel. He was the closest thing to family I’ve had since my mother was murdered. “How did she die?”

He shook his head and stood up. I didn’t know what I would do if he walked away from me.

But then he held out his hand to me. “Come on.”

“No.” His hand dropped. “I’m not going anywhere with you until I have answers.”

“The answers you need can’t come from me because I don’t have them.”

“Then who does?”

 

* * *

ANGEL HADN’T SPOKEN since we left Attica. The drive to Chicago had been long and uncomfortable, which he spent smoking. When we sat down across from my father, the tension only multiplied.

“You know how to make your old man’s day,” Theo greeted. The growth covering the lower half of his face hadn’t been there the last time I saw him. His hair had also grown into a greasy shag. Suddenly, I felt all-consuming guilt. Two months ago, I came here asking him to help me steal from the most dangerous man in Chicago and then fell off the grid with no word.

I took his hands in mine. I’ve missed their strength and warmth. “Daddy, I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you I was okay.”

“It’s fine, baby girl. You’re here now.” I’d believe that if his hands didn’t tremble.

“What have you been doing to yourself? You don’t look well.”

“It doesn’t matter now.” His attention shifted to Angel. “What brings you by?”

I didn’t want to say the words because saying them meant never being able to take them back. “I—I know about my mother’s death.” Daddy’s eyes flew back to me. “I know Art had her killed because of their affair.”

He turned his accusing eyes on Angel again. “You told her?”

“She found the truth in the book.” They seemed to have some silent conversation that ended with Angel shaking his head and Theo nodding.

“Baby girl, please understand why I didn’t tell you. Her death was hard enough on you.”

“And you, but yet I never lied to you.” When he hung his head, I grabbed his chin and lifted until I could see his eyes.

“How did she die?”

“I don’t think—”

“No,” I ordered before he could deny me. “No more lies. No more secrets. I have a right to know.”

He once again turned his attention to Angel, who said nothing, did nothing but wait for my father to prove he was the man I held in my heart. “Victor suffocated her while she slept.” His voice was pained as his eyes glistened with unshed tears. I felt pain—not the torpid pain that eventually came because time was sometimes merciful—but the agonizing pain that immediately came because death was sometimes unmerciful.

I didn’t lose my mother. She was taken from me.

I pulled my hands away and took a deep breath. “And my marriage to Angel?”

His handsome features twisted until he was a broken shell. “I’d hoped that you’d never find out, or at least, not a day before I could explain why I gave you to him.”

“I know why, Father.” I had never spoken to my father this coldly. “It was easier for you if I belonged to someone else. I wouldn’t need you anymore. You told yourself you were protecting me to ease your conscience, but you didn’t just marry me to Angel. You sold me to a dead man’s legacy. How could you?”

“I’m sorry, baby girl. Please forgive me.” Through his eyes, I saw his heart breaking.

But he’d broken me long before I’d broken him.

“I don’t think I can, Daddy.”

I would no longer be the naïve little girl who would climb on his knee to beg for his love and attention.

 

* * *

 

“ YOU HUNGRY?” he asked after closing the doors of the estate. Angel barely kept his eyes off me during the ride home…here. He sat close, making sure we touched from head to toe. His mood was completely different from the car ride to the prison.

“Not really. Um… can we talk in private?”

He didn’t respond except to place his hand on the small of my back and lead me to one of the staircases. I didn’t speak, and neither did he as we walked through the east wing until we reached just another of the many rooms. It would be easy to get lost in a place like this. It was exactly the future I feared.

The room he locked us in smelled like leather and smoke. He moved behind the desk made of burl wood, intricately carved edges completed with golden leaf detail, and a rich finish. I sat on a sofa that looked like it belonged in a castle five hundred years in the past.

“What’s up?” The casualness of his question was forced. Just days ago, Angel had said he knew what was in my head as well as in my heart. If that were true, then he’d know what I was ready to demand.

“I think it’s better for both of us if I leave.”

“Why is that?” His voice was empty of curiosity, surprise, or anger.

“Because of all the things you’ve done to me and all the things you will do.”

I could see the first crack in his facade. “You promised you’d stay.”

“I promised I’d try. But Angel, letting my father go left a hole in my heart, and I don’t know how to fill it. Staying here will only make it bigger.”

I didn’t miss his flinch. “You know I can’t let you leave.”

“I’m done being scared! If you have to kill me, do it or let me go.”

His gaze narrowed. “What are you so eager to return to, Mian? That pathetic apartment and an empty stomach?”

“Freedom.”

“You’re not a prisoner,” he said through gritted teeth. It was nothing I hadn’t heard before.

“No, I’m not a prisoner, Angel. You are. You’re chained to Alexander’s legacy, and that may be fine for you, but it isn’t for me.”

“Even if you have to spend the rest of your days tied to my bed. You aren’t leaving. Three years ago, I let you go because I thought you’d be better off, and when you tried to steal from me, I found you starving, desperate, and the mother of a baby you can’t protect.”

“Fuck you.”

He scoffed. “You’re the same naïve girl you were when you were sixteen, only this time you’re mine. You’re not leaving.”

“If you don’t let me go, I’ll never stop trying to get away from you. Every time you walk out that door, you’ll wonder if you’re coming back to an empty home because, deep down, you know one day I’ll succeed.”

“You run, I’ll chase. If this is how we spend our lives together, then so be it. I won’t let you go again knowing what will happen. I won’t let anyone hurt you. Not as long as my ring is on your finger.”

With a yank, I ripped off his ring and tossed it at him. It bounced off his chest and fell on the desk. “The only one hurting me is you.” I saw his flinch just before I turned and fled. I hated him, not for making me stay but for the reckless part of me that wanted to stay.

I was too busy fighting the tears as they came to see him until we collided. Thanks to his quick reflexes, he caught me before I could fall.

“Easy, short stuff. You trying to take me out?” Augustine’s blinding smile broke through my tears. “I should warn you that I’m not a cheap date.” I was ashamed of the hiccup that escaped when I tried to force a laugh through my sniffling. “Now that was pitiful. I know you can do better than that. That was my best stuff.”

“Then you shouldn’t quit your day job,” I quipped.

“There she goes!” He whooped. My laugh this time was real. “Anyone tell you you’re a smart ass?”

“Anyone tell you’re rude?”

“I might have heard it a time or two.”

“You should work on that.”

“Not gonna.” His smile was quick and easy, and I had the feeling it had charmed the panties off many women. It was too bad my heart, and my panties were forever wedged under Angel’s boot.

“I better go.”

“Not until you tell me why my cousin made you cry.”

I hesitated. Would it be stupid to confide him in? If anyone would understand my need to decide my fate, wouldn’t he? “He won’t let us go.”

He seemed to contemplate something before saying, “I can understand why.”

I eyed him suspiciously until he chuckled. “I didn’t mean you.”

“Ouch.” I feigned hurt before saying, “I didn’t know there was someone special.”

He shrugged. “There isn’t. I just said I understand.” I couldn’t tell if he was lying. He was just that good at it.

“You won’t live your life based on Alexander’s rules. Why should I?”

“I can take care of myself.”

“God, you sound just like him.” Deciding I was wrong about him, I quickly moved around him. Just when I thought I had an ally…

I didn’t get far when his hand closed around my arm. His gaze bore into me, and in the emerald, I could see whatever demons Augustine kept locked away clawing at the walls.

“Running won’t make you free.”