“You should not be down here,” he censured.

It was bizarre seeing him existing in this dungeon so indifferently—this man I’d known for years, who was insanely picky about his Americanos and had an allergy to cheap cologne and traffic.

“Nobody told me I couldn’t be,” I returned, hiding my uncertainty of how Ronan would feel about it if he found out. Not for my own sake, but Ivan’s.

“I am telling you now. Go back upstairs.”

On my way to his cell, I ignored him and gingerly stepped around a bloody plastic tarp on the floor.

“Mila.” It was a frustrated growl. “There is blood everywhere. I do not want you to pass out and hit your head on the cement floor.”

As I reached him, a small smile appeared at the memories of him pushing my head between my knees after many altercations with O-negative while he murmured accented, encouraging words—especially one cheerleading pyramid fail where Ivan jumped over a fence to reach me, which aroused the entire team’s envy. I’d always taken his presence for granted. I refused to do the same with his life.

Reaching through the bars, I wiped some fresh blood from his busted lip. His hand lashed out and gripped my wrist, a sudden wave of discontent rising in his eyes.

“What the fuck has he done to you?”

I blinked. “Nothing, really.”

“Nothing, really?”

“Well . . .” I swallowed. “I saw him cut off a man’s finger, shoot someone in the head at the dinner table, and, apparently, he murdered another few in the driveway. But things have been going okay for me.”

For a heavy second, Ivan watched me as if I was crazy before he released my wrist. “Nothing about this is ‘okay.’ You should be home where you belong, not—” He glanced around with disgust. “Here.”

Here.

Stay here.

You belong here.

Ivan’s voice, past and present, flashed through my mind, and like a puzzle piece clicking into place, I finally understood why I never fit in at The Moorings. The neighborhood was a shiny cage masquerading as paradise, and Ivan was compliant in my confinement from the beginning.

“Is ‘home’ supposed to be Miami?” The pent-up frustration of living a lie bubbled out of me. “The place Papa left me for months on end so he could go murder people—boys—in Moscow?”

“You do not know what you speak of,” Ivan returned with heat.

“Maybe not. But I do know I have family here—family I desperately wanted. Was I ever meant to know the truth? Or were you and Papa planning on lying to me forever?”

He tried to mask his expression, but he couldn’t hide a flicker of the truth in his eyes. I was supposed to marry Carter and live the life of a quintessential housewife even though they both knew it would slowly kill me inside.

“Your papa was only trying to keep you safe.”

There was a difference between caring about someone’s well-being and just keeping them alive. My father had always maintained the latter, and while I knew he loved me, the former was never a concern of his. Weight settled heavily on my chest, the burden pulling all resentment down until I only felt an ache that split my heart in two.

“You shouldn’t have come for me,” I whispered.

“Do you think I would leave you here to die?”

The closest I came to dying was halted by D’yavol’s fingers down my throat.

“He isn’t going to kill me.” I suddenly knew it with conviction. “He wants Papa, not me.”

He watched me intensely for a long second. “He sure is taking his time then, is he not?” The tone of his voice settled so thick in the air, it strangled the oxygen and slowed the beat of my heart. The unstable energy refused to disperse even after he spoke again. “You are really unharmed?”

“I don’t want to talk about me,” I said quietly. At the moment, my psyche wasn’t a refined place. Half of it still lay upstairs, leaking out at Ronan’s feet across the marble floor.

“Well, I do. And I think you owe it to me.”

I flinched, understanding the innuendo in his voice. I was the one who got him into this mess. I may be the one to sign his death certificate. Tears burned the backs of my eyes.

He sighed. “I did not mean it like that. I should have assumed you would go to Moscow. I should not have been distracted by that waitress.”

A quiet laugh escaped me even as a tear ran down my cheek. He reached through the bars and wiped it away. His knuckles were busted to match his appearance: torn-open dress shirt stained with dirt and mud. He was even missing his shoes and socks. It was such an odd sight, a miserable sound between a laugh and a sob arose.

He glanced down at my source of amusement, then chuckled. “They did not want me to hang myself with my shoelaces. Took my belt too. Grebaniye ublyudki.” Fucking bastards. Grasping the bars, he slid his gaze down my body with narrowed eyes like he was trying to see into my soul. “I thought you would be . . . different.”

He assumed he’d find me a ghost of myself, not dressed in bright yellow without a physical wound in sight.

“I’ll admit, being locked in his guest room for days on end really sucked, but other than that, it hasn’t been the worst situation for me.”

His presence exuded frustration. “Why must you always make light of things?”

“I’m not. I really haven’t been treated that poorly.”

He released a caustic sound and pushed away from the bars to pace. “You have been degraded, drugged, held captive, poisoned, and God knows what else. I would hate to see what you consider poor treatment.”

“How do you know all that?”

He cast me a dark look. “I have my ways.” Continuing to walk the perimeter of his cell, he said, “The blood thing. How did that disappear, Mila?” His anger burned like fuel against my skin.

I chewed my lip nervously. “A walk in the underworld, I suppose.”

“Which you seem to be handling well.”

It felt like he was accusing me of something. “Don’t look at me like I’m happy about these circumstances just because it rid me of my phobia. I’d rather be fainting at a mud run again in Miami than have you locked up here and my papa’s life in jeopardy.”

“Interesting you have not said anything about your own situation.”

I grew flustered. “Of course I don’t want to be a prisoner anymore.”

“You seemed so . . . comfortable”—he almost sneered the word—“with your kidnapper in the dining room.”

My throat felt thick. “It was breakfast, Ivan, not a cozy heart-to-heart.”

He made a noncommittal noise. “You know they do not call him ‘D’yavol’ for nothing, do you not?”

“I’m aware.” This conversation couldn’t be more uncomfortable if bugs were crawling beneath my skin. I never said the right thing when I was unsettled. “He doesn’t like sugar in his tea.”

Ivan shot me an aggravated expression.

“I have no misconceptions of who he is, but don’t pretend you’re a saint. You work for my papa. If you want to discuss my fear of blood and where it began, you should talk to him.”

“Your papa has never mistreated you.”