Page 74 of Scarlet Chains

Another manipulation.

Don’t fall for it, Ilona.

He’s proven he’s capable of playing whatever role serves his purposes. The gentle masked stranger was just another performance, another way to control me.

But if that’s true, why does he look like he’s in pain?

“I’m sorry for not telling you,” he says finally, his voice quieter than I’ve ever heard it. “I’m sorry about everything. I love you, Ilona.”

The words make my head spin. “You love me?” I laugh, but the sound carries just bitter disbelief. “You don’t even know what that word means.”

“I know what it means to need someone more than air,” he says, and something in his tone makes me look at him more closely. “I know what it means to want to protect someone even if it means protecting them from yourself. I know what it means to lie awake at night thinking about someone’s smile, their laugh, the way they look when they’re peaceful.”

His words should sound romantic, but instead they feel like another violation. He’s describing feelings that should be precious, sacred, but coming from him they feel tainted by everything he’s done.

“You killed my father!” My hands curl into fists. “Whatever you think you feel for me, that doesn’t change what you did.”

“I know.” He doesn’t try to deny it, doesn’t make excuses. “I know I can never undo that. I know I can never give him back to you or take away your pain. But Ilona, if you’ll just let me explain—”

“Explain what?” I interrupt, my voice rising. “Explain how you justified murdering another human being? Explain how you managed to hold his daughter while she cried for him? Explain how you can claim to love someone whose life you destroyed?”

Each question is a weapon, and I watch them land with a satisfaction that should probably worry me. But right now, causing him pain feels like the only power I have in this situation.

“He wasn’t innocent,” Osip says quietly, and something in his tone makes me freeze.

“What?”

“Your father wasn’t innocent, Ilona.”

The words don’t make sense. They bounce off my understanding of reality like stones skipping across water. “That’s not true.”

But a sinking feeling is building in my belly.

“It is true. And I can prove it, if you’ll let me.”

I stare at him, searching his face for any sign of deception. But there’s only a terrible sincerity in his eyes, a gravity that makes my stomach drop.

“You’re lying,” I say, but even as the words leave my mouth, I can hear the doubt creeping into my voice.

The things Stanley said about my father.

“Your father… It was… complicated, Ilona. And what happened…” He scrubs a hand over his face. “It wasn’t meant to happen.”

“I don’t know what to say,” I whisper. And I don’t. My mind feels pulled in a dozen different directions by revelations that change everything while changing nothing at all.

“Then don’t say anything,” he says gently. “Just listen to me, please.”

I look at him— really look at him— and see both the stranger who comforted me and the man who destroyed my world. They exist in the same body, the same face, the same voice that’s asking me to listen to truths I’m not sure I’m strong enough to hear.

But I’m already in too deep to turn back now. Already drowning in questions that demand answers, even if those answers will destroy what’s left of my peace.

So I close my eyes, take a shaky breath, and whisper the words that will either save me or finish breaking me apart:

“Okay. I’m listening.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Osip