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Time returned to normal, but my blood remained frozen.

“Tell me the truth.” She gestured at the photos, her voice trembling. “Did you do it?”

* * *

AYANA

It was silent enough to hear a pin drop.

Vuk stared at me, his knuckles white around the photos—the gut-churning, blood-soaked photos that had haunted my nightmares for the past four days and made all my food taste like cardboard.

They rested in the same hands that had held me. Touched me. Comforted me.

I couldn’t imagine them being responsible for something as brutal as what happened to the man in the pictures. I didn’t want to believe it. There had to be another explanation.

Someone had either left them as a sick joke, or they were trying to frame Vuk. While I’d suspected Vuk’s idea of justice crossed the line of what was technically legal, I never thought he’d be capable ofthat. There was also a difference between suspecting something and seeing it laid out in macabre detail.

Tell me it’s not true. Please. Tell me it’s not true.

His response shattered my fragile tendril of hope.

“I did.”

My stomach plunged over the side of a cliff and straight into the icy waters below. The cold consumed me as I blinked, trying to match the implication behind his words and his stoic expression. It was like someone had slammed a gate shut over his face and turned the man I knew into a stranger.

I did.

“Okay.” What a stupid, inane reply, but I couldn’t grasp the right word amongst the thousands swirling through my head. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything except stand there and watch my world crumble around me. “Do you…” Once again, the words escaped me.

“Do I regret it?” Of course Vuk understood what I was trying to say. He always did. “The only thing I regret,srce, is that I didn’t have more time to work on him.” There wasn’t a single trace of remorse in his voice.

Saliva vaporized in my sandpapered throat. The room was spinning out of control, and I had nothing to hold on to except the tatters of what used to be.

Vuk swallowed the distance between us with two strides. He held the photos up. “This is the man who shot Jordan. The man who almost killedyou. For that alone, he deserved worse than what he got.” His voice was arctic, but his body was an inferno. Heat poured off him like a living, breathing reminder of his duality.

The businessman and the criminal.

The protector and the murderer.

The man who could kiss me so tenderly one day and kill so viciously the next.

“In my world, justice comes in one form: retribution.” Vuk cupped my cheek, his touch unbearably gentle. “I told you I wasn’t a good person,srce. You should’ve believed me.”

I closed my eyes, trying to reject his words even as I savored the warmth of his palm against my skin. My breaths escaped me in tiny, gasping puffs.

I was hyperaware of how isolated we were. The shooting range was always empty besides us, and it was located at the very back of Valhalla.

If I screamed, would anyone hear me? If they did, would they come to my rescue?

My mind brushed aside the hypotheticals as they popped up. Despite Vuk’s admission and the evidence of his cruelty, I wasn’t afraid. Anxious, yes. Stunned, definitely. But I didn’t feel an ounce of the fear that’d engulfed me when I’d been alone with Wentworth or when I saw a bullet streaking toward me at the wedding.

No matter his crimes, I didn’t believe for a second that he would hurt me.

“Look at me.” Vuk’s command wrenched my eyes open. His stare burned into mine, equal parts unyielding and desperate. “This is who I am, Ayana. What I did to the man in these photos doesn’t compare to what I did to those responsible for my brother’s death. If I had the chance to go back in time, I’d do it all again a hundred times over.No oneharms the people I care about and walks away intact.”

My vision blurred. Part of me wanted to scream. Why couldn’t he lie and let me live in blissful ignorance? Why couldn’t he give me leeway to pretend nothing had changed? Why did he have to be so crushingly honest when it meant we’d never be the same?

“I won’t hurt you. Ever,” Vuk said. “If you walk away right now and say you never want to see me again, I’ll respect your wishes. But I can’t pretend to be somebody I’m not. What’s done is done, and if someone came after you tomorrow, I’d deal with them the same way I dealt with the shooter.” His tone was hard. Ruthless. “It’s in my DNA,srce. I can compromise, but I can’t change the core of who I am. No matter how much I wish I could.”