Pure, burning anger.
“So,” she says, voice sharp. “Markov.”
I go still.
“How long were you standing there?” I ask.
“Long enough,” she snaps. “Long enough to know you’re still lying to me.”
“I’m not—”
“Don’t,” she cuts in, stepping back as I move toward her. “Don’t come any closer. You don’t get to loom and intimidate your way out of this.”
I stop. Slowly. Deliberately.
She laughs, harsh and broken. “Do you have any idea how many years I’ve spent chasing ghosts? How many doors I knocked on? How many forms I filed, names I traced, favors I begged for?” Her hands ball into fists. “And every single time, I hit a wall. And now I find out that wall had a name.”
“Raelyn—”
“My father,” she continues, voice cracking, “didn’t just vanish. Someone made him disappear. Someone powerful. And you knew. You’ve known.”
“I knew pieces,” I say evenly. “Not everything.”
Her eyes flash. “That’s a lie.”
“It’s not.”
She shakes her head, hair falling into her face. “You keep saying you’re protecting me, but all you’ve done is decide whatI’m allowed to know. You married me to control me. You drag my father out like a weapon every time I question you.”
“That’s not—”
“You use him,” she says, stepping back again when I try to speak. “You use his name to justify keeping me here. Like I’m some debt ledger you inherited.”
Silence drops between us, thick and dangerous.
I take a breath. Slow. Measured.
“You aren’t a pawn,” I say. “And you aren’t stupid. But you’re alive because I moved faster than the men who would have broken you to get to him.”
Her jaw tightens. “You don’t know that.”
“I do,” I say quietly. “Because I know them.”
She swallows. For a moment, the fury wavers—just a fraction—and something wounded flashes through.
“Then tell me,” she demands. “Tell me everything. Not pieces. Not warnings. Not ‘trust me.’ The truth. All of it.”
I stare at her.
Too long.
Instinct screams to pull back, to retreat into strategy and distance. Discipline tells me this is the moment I either secure control—or lose it forever.
I move.
One sharp step forward. She doesn’t have time to retreat before my hand comes up, closing around the back of her neck. Not tight. Not painful. Just firm enough to still her. To make her feel exactly where she stands.
Her breath catches.