But she's not innocent. And I'm the one who broke her.
"I'm sorry," she says between bites. "I shouldn't have?—"
"No. You shouldn't have."
She flinches but keeps eating. Good.
She needs to learn that apologies don't erase disobedience.
"I didn't sleep," she says quietly. "I kept thinking about what I did wrong. How I could fix it."
"And what conclusion did you reach?"
"That I can't fix it. That I ruined everything by trying to be someone I'm not anymore." She sets down the fork, meets my eyes. "I'm not the girl who saves people anymore. I haven't been since I was fifteen. But last night, seeing David, I forgot that for a moment."
Interesting. She's closer to the truth than she knows.
"Tell me what you did wrong. Exactly."
She takes a breath. "I questioned your authority. In front of your men. About someone who was threatening to expose your operation."
"And?"
"And... I showed weakness. Mercy. Things that have no place in your world."
"My world." I lean back in the chair. "Is that what you think this is? My world that you're visiting?"
"Isn't it?"
"If you stay, it becomes your world too. Every brutal part of it. Every violent decision. Every death on my orders would be on your hands, too, because you chose to be mine, knowing what I am."
She meets my eyes. "I know what you are."
No. She doesn't.
She knows the surface—the dangerous man who has an underground empire, who trades in violence and degradation.
She doesn't know I’m the monster who murdered her parents.
The beast who shaped her entire life with two bullets when she was too young to understand what was happening to her.
"You know pieces," I correct. "Fragments. You don't know the worst of it."
"Then tell me."
The invitation hangs between us.
I could tell her right now.
Watch her face transform from hope to horror.
Watch her realize she's been begging her parents' killer to keep her.
Instead, I say, "Last night, you proved you're not ready for the worst of it."
"I can learn. I can be better?—"
"Yes. You can. And you will."
