Page 12 of Wicked Brutal

“Everything.”

She sat down in the nearest desk, and I took the one beside her, and then Ally told me. Not all at once. I had to pull some of it out of her; other pieces came so fast she stumbled over them. Roman had told her when she was fifteen. Tremblay had wanted the arrangement, Roman had agreed.

“Arrangement,” I repeated. “You’re his daughter, not a fucking merger.”

“To my father, there’s not much difference.”

“What does Tremblay get?”

She was quiet for a second, and then she said it, flat, staring at the desk in front of her. “Me. Untouched.” My whole body went cold. “That’s part of it,” she went on, and her voice was very careful now, the way it got when she was holding something at arm’s length so it couldn’t cut her. “It’s a term. An actual term. My father promised him I’d come to the marriage — pure. That’s the word they use. Pure. Like I’m something in a case. It’s part of what makes me worth whatever Victor’s paying for me. So I can’t.” Her eyes came up to mine, wet and steady. “I haven’t. With anyone. Because the second that stops being true, I stop being worth the arrangement, and I don’t know what my father does then, but I know it isn’t let me go.”

And I understood. All at once, the whole shape of it, the thing that had been sitting behind her eyes on my bed in August. “That’s why you stopped,” I said. “In August. That’s why you—“

“It wasn’t that I didn’t want you.” Her voice broke on it. “God, Ryan, it was the opposite of that. It was that I wanted you so much I almost did the one thing that gets me killed. I stopped because I was protecting both of us. And then I couldn’t even tell you why, so I just — I let you think I wasn’t ready, and then school started and I ran, because loving you and staying near you and keeping that promise all at the same time was going to get somebody hurt, and it was going to be you.”

“Has he touched you?” I asked. “Tremblay.” Her silence lasted too long. “Ally.”

“Yes.”

My hands curled. “How?”

“Not — not that. He touches my waist. My back. Sometimes my face. He kissed me once. My mouth. My father was standing right there.” She wiped her cheeks. “That’s what I let him have, because I have to let him have something. And I count the whole time. I go somewhere else in my head and I count until it’s over.”

I walked to the windows. “Your father knows,” I said. “About all of it. The promise. Tremblay.”

“He made the promise.”

I closed my eyes. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

“That’s why I couldn’t tell you,” she said, and I turned. “Look at you. You’re already—“

“I’m not angry at you.”

“I know. But you’ll do something.”

“Yeah.”

“Exactly.” She stood. “If my father ever finds out I love you — if he finds out you’re something I’d break that promise for — he uses everything, Ryan. He uses Tobias. Especially Tobias.” Her face crumpled. “And my mother can’t help me. She’s scared of him, she’s depressed, she drinks, she stays in that house and pretends nothing’s happening because that’s the only way she survives it.”

“And you?” I asked. “How do you survive it?”

She looked at me. “I do what he wants. Until I can get Tobias out. That’s the whole plan. That’s all I’ve got.”

“Does Roman know that’s what you’re waiting for?”

“No.”

“Good.” I moved closer, and this time she didn’t move away. “You should’ve told me.”

“I was trying to protect you.”

“By making me think you regretted me?”

“If you hated me, you’d leave me alone.”

“No.”

Her eyebrows pulled together. “No?”