Page 48 of Ruthless Savior
"I don't know, Leila."
She stares at me, wrapping her arms around herself as if she’s cold. "So I'm supposed to just... disappear from her life? Leave her wondering what’s happened to me?”
“I’m sure your mother has shared that she’s heard from you.”
“Except I can barely tell her anything. I don’t think the little bit I’ve been able to give her is going to make her or Alicia feel all that much better.”
“We have a deal.” I let out a sharp breath. “I’m taking care of your responsibilities at home. You follow the rules here to stay safe. This is one of those rules. No visits. No unnecessary calls. You stay here, you wait this out.”
She flinches back. "Right. Of course." Her voice is quiet, but I can hear the hurt underneath. "I forgot my place for a moment."
Fuck. I resist the urge to run my hand through my hair, my own frustration welling up. "That's not what I meant."
"Isn't it?" She glares at me. "I'm not your houseguest, Ronan. I'm a problem you're managing until you can be finished with me."
"You're under my protection." The sentence sounds tired even to my ears, but it’s the best I have. It’s incredible, frankly, how quickly so much has fallen apart in a couple of weeks. I’m sure Leila feels the same.
"Same thing, isn't it?" She moves toward the door. "Thank you for clarifying the situation. I won't bother you with any more requests."
She's gone before I can respond, leaving me sitting in my office feeling like I've just kicked a puppy. But I tell myself it's for the best. Even if she starts to hate me, it’s better than what was brewing between us before.
Even if I still ache to taste her again, to find out if every part of her is as sweet as her mouth.
My phone buzzes, jolting me out of my thoughts before they can take over. Tristan's name appears on the screen, andI answer, hoping it has nothing to do with my most recent conversation with our father.
“I hearthere’s trouble in paradise,” Tristan says amusedly. “Except it’s not really paradise where you are, is it? Dad said it’s about to snow again. Twenty degrees?”
Despite everything, I find myself smiling. "Closer to fifteen, actually. And yeah, it's supposed to snow again tonight."
"Fuck that. I'm never coming back to Boston in December." There's the sound of ice clinking in a glass. "Dad told me what the hell you’ve got going on there. A twenty-something-year-old girl living in the mansion, and now the Russians are threatening to break the alliance over her? Please tell me there's more to the story than that." His usual levity is there in his voice, but I can hear the concern in it.
I lean back in my chair, suddenly feeling exhausted. "There's more."
"I'm listening."
I explain it all to him: finding Leila in the cage in Rocco’s warehouse, the debt that she took out with Neil Sawyer, her default on it, and how it led to her getting sold to Rocco. How I brought her home to keep her safe and realized that I’d put a larger target on her back, the meeting with Ilya and his insistence that I should give her back, my father’s agreement with that.
“I killed Neil,” I say flatly. “He didn’t have all that much useful information about Rocco that we didn’t already have, but I made damn sure of it.”
"So let me get this straight," he says when I'm finished. "You rescued a girl from sexual slavery, and now Dad is pissed because you won't throw her back to the wolves?"
"That's a simplified version, but yeah, that’s basically accurate."
"Then Dad can go fuck himself."
The casual dismissal of our father's opinion surprises me. "Tristan?—"
"No, Ronan. I'm serious. What you did was right, and if the old man can't see that, it's his problem, not yours." There's steel in Tristan's voice now. "You've spent your entire life trying to earn his approval. Maybe it's time to stop caring what he thinks."
"He's our father. The head of this family."
"He's a sixty-two-year-old man who's spent the last six months in Miami because he can't handle the cold anymore, and because he likes trying to bully me since you’ve always made him happy before this. You're the one running operations, making decisions, keeping everyone alive. His opinion matters, but it doesn't outweigh your conscience."
I want to argue, but there's truth in what he's saying. Our father handed over day-to-day operations to me two years ago, when my betrothal to Siobhan became official, but he's never stopped trying to control every decision from behind the scenes. And Tristan is right—he has moved mostly to Miami so he can micromanage Tristan, since until now, he’s had no complaint with me.
“Is there something more with this girl?” Tristan asks, and I frown.
“Does that matter?”
