Chapter 15

Quinn fled.

She invented an errand in the city, grabbed her coat, and was out the door before Julian could say anything else. Behind her, she heard him give a quiet instruction to one of his staff.

She didn't look back.

She drove for twenty minutes without a destination, let the car carry her, and eventually ended up in a shopping district. She parked and walked, needing the movement, needing the noise.

Julian's feelings for her — she'd known about them for three years. This wasn't new. The problem was the thing she'd noticed in herself that morning: some part of her that was no longer as quiet as it should be.

She couldn't afford that.

Can I love someone again? The question sat in her chest like a stone she didn't know what to do with.

She turned a corner.

Footsteps.

Her instincts fired before the sound had properly registered. She pivoted hard.

The face in front of her was tired and pale and still striking, and it was the face she had most hoped never to see again.

Holden.

"Quinn—"

She got three syllables of his name out. Then something struck the back of her neck, and the world tilted, and she felt herself going down.

He caught her before she hit the ground.

Holden held her against his chest, face pressed into her hair, and for a moment he didn't move.

"Finally," he murmured. "You came back to me."

Quinn woke to a ceiling she recognized.

He'd brought her back to New York. To the estate.

She sat up, and the movement pulled at something on her wrists and ankles. She looked down.

Chains. Long ones, bolted into the wall.

She stayed very still for a moment, processing this.

"Holden!"

The bedroom door opened. He was in casual clothes, unhurried, expression soft in a way that somehow made everything worse. He walked to the bedside and held out a glass.

"You're awake. I thought you might be thirsty." His voice was careful, almost tender. "Just drink a little."

Quinn looked at the glass and knocked it onto the floor.

The sound of breaking glass scattered through the room. Holden glanced down at the shards, and something moved across his face — controlled very quickly.

"It's all right," he said. "Tell me when you want something."

"Let me go."

"No."

The word dropped flat. His face had changed — something that wasn't tenderness and wasn't warmth, but was somehow worse than either.

"There's no way I'm letting you go again. Not this time."

Quinn's hands balled into fists. "You are the person who handed me to those men. You are the reason Abby is dead. If you think—"

The word Abby hit him in the throat. She watched it happen.

His voice went very quiet: "Don't. Don't do that."

"You know what you did."

He was shaking. "I will fix it. I'll spend however long it takes—"

"Just swear to me. Swear you won't leave. Swear this marriage is real, that you'll stay mine — and I'll take the chains off."

The promise would have cost her nothing. She knew how to lie. She opened her mouth.

And then stopped.

Holden's eyes had gone very still. "Swear it on Abby," he said. "Swear on her name. If you're lying, let her be the one who pays for it."

The coldness that went through Quinn was total.

He was willing to use their dead daughter's soul as a hostage.

"No," she said.

"I won't. Because you know exactly why." She met his eyes. "I'm not lying. I've already married someone else."