Phoenix's jaw tightens. "Get out."
The man scurries away, but instead of checking whether I'm alright, Phoenix rounds on me, gripping my arm painfully.
"Enjoying the attention?" he hisses. "Is that why you wandered off? Looking for someone else to fuck?"
I stare at him in disbelief. "Are you serious?"
“Playing the tease seems to come naturally to you."
Something snaps inside me. Without thinking, I throw my champagne directly in his face. The room falls silent as the liquid drips down his shocked features.
"How dare you," I whisper, trembling with rage. "You dress me like a prostitute, parade me around like a conquest, let your friends talk about me like I'm not even human, and then wonder why your men think you’ve offered me up to them?"
Phoenix's eyes are dangerous, his breathing heavy as he wipes champagne from his face. For a moment, I think he might strike me.
But I’m undaunted as I continue. "You did this." I gesture at my dress. "You created this spectacle. You wanted me humiliated. Don't you dare blame me for the consequences of your sick game."
The silence in the room is thick. Everyone stares, frozen in place, witnessing my defiance and Phoenix's fury. The champagne drips from his face onto his expensive suit. Each droplet feels like a death knell.
“Come with me.” Phoenix grips my arm again and hauls me out of the room.
"Phoenix—" Blaise begins.
“Don’t.” Phoenix glares at him as he drags me out of the room and through the hall to his office.
When we're finally alone, Phoenix pushes me against the closed door. "You want to talk about humiliation?" he growls. "How about the humiliation of discovering the woman who said she loved you, that said she’d never loved anyone else before, was a fucking liar.”
My brow furrows wondering what he’s talking about.
“Or worse, learning she was using you while her family plotted to murder yours? That she said nothing as they set fire and burned my family alive."
For the first time, I see pain in his handsome features. I see the horror and grief he must have felt as his house burned with his parents inside. Something inside me breaks. Ten years of guilt and grief come pouring out.
"I loved you," I whisper. "I loved you so much?—”
“Bullshit!” His hand slams on the door next to my head, making me flinch. “You used what you learned from me and helped them?—”
“I didn’t.” I shake my head. If he believes nothing else from me, I desperately want him to believe that I was not complicit, at least not knowingly or willingly, in his family’s destruction. “I had no idea… until…” I’m not sure I should tell him what I know.
“Until what?” His hand slides over my chest and upward toward my neck. He doesn’t squeeze but the threat is there.
“It was too late. They’d already taken my phone and locked me away when my father told me what he’d done. He said you were dead, but I prayed you weren’t. I prayed you’d still come for me.” I haven’t cried since that day, but the pain of it is back, so perhaps that’s why tears spill down my cheeks.
His expression flickers with confusion. "How can I believe you?"
"If you had come back for me—if you had just checked—you would have known I had nothing to do with it. I was a prisoner in my own home, just like I am now. The only difference is the jailer."
Phoenix steps back as if I've struck him. "You're twisting everything. You used me. Your family?—"
"My family is not me!" I shout. "I am not Hampton Kean. I am not Ronan. I was eighteen years old and in love with you,and they destroyed that because—” I stop because he can’t know about Brigit. I can’t risk what he might do.
“Because what?” He looks so tormented that a part of me wants to soothe him.
“You know why. Your father didn’t want us together.”
"You could have warned me," he insists, but there's less conviction in his voice. “I showed you how to break out.”
“I didn’t know what they were planning, but if I could have gotten out, I would have. All I wanted back then was to be with you. Like you, my father put guards on me. One slept in my room. Practically watched me in the bathroom. What should I have done, Phoenix? Peed on them?”
