Page 142 of Twisting Beauty

I was not letting her step away from this. I was not letting her hide from me.

I clamped down on a bitter breath as a question built up like a pressure in my chest. If she answered wrong, it would ruin me.

I knew exactly what it would cost me to hear the answer.

I asked it anyway, because not knowing would destroy me slower.

“Do you love him?”

She went still in my arms.

My whole body tensed, bracing for her response, a part of me already deciding that I didn’t care if she loved him. That I would do whatever it took to win her over. Already calculating what I would take from him if I had to.

“I…” Her voice softened, and that softness scraped something raw inside me. “I care about him.”

Not love.

Not love.

The relief hit hard enough to hurt.

But she was still protecting him, still hiding him from me.

He was still a threat. And if he was resorting to spying on her, then he was a threat to her. Even if she didn’t see it.

And I did not share what was mine.

I did not let her go. Not yet.

I pulled out my mental dossier of the plague doctor, running through the details.

Broad shoulders. Tall. Salt-and-pepper hair above the silver beak. Dark eyes through the slits in the mask. Deep voice with an Irish accent under his fake Russian one.

The man had been familiar even then. I had not known why. I knew now.

He was the man I’d caught her with behind the Ravenwood library annex.

The Magdalene doctor.

I overlaid their memories. Yes, that was him.

I let my eyes drop to the floor where the camera lay smashed on the rug.

The man had hidden a camera in her bedroom to keep watch on her. He put it there himself.

That was his weakness.

She was his weakness.

I now had his face.

And I knew where to start.

Magdalene.

I’d hunt him down. Make sure that he no longer posed a threat.

To her.