Page 77 of Deadly Oath

“Oh, Sabrina.” Kian clicks his tongue. “I didn’t want to just kidnap you and lock you up here, force you, and make you miserable. There was no pleasure in that. I wanted to make you fall for me. I wanted to give you everything you thought you wanted, so I could rip it all away from you. And I’ve done exactly that.”

A fresh wave of grief rolls through me, and tears run faster down my face. “I don’t know why you think this is right,” I whisper, my voice broken. “I had nothing to do with what happened. They came afterme. I didn’t ask for it. My father didn’t ask for it. And I losteverything! My family, my home, and now—” My voice breaks entirely, but Kian just glares at me, his jaw tightening.

“My sister losteverything,” he hisses. “And as for your father, you have no idea what you’re talking about. Your family is at fault for this. I can’t go against your father, not without starting a war I’m not equipped to win. But I can punish you. And now you’re worth nothing to him.”

“He’d start a war if he knew what you’ve done!” I fire back, and Kian snorts.

“You mean nothing to him,” he says flatly. “And you never did.”

31

KIAN

Isee the moment that hits home. Sabrina reels briefly, then shakes her head. “I don’t know what that means,” she whispers brokenly. “But I’ll find out. I’ll?—”

“You’ll find outnothing,” I snap at her. “You’ll stay here, in this room, for the next nine months. You’ll be a good girl, or I’ll make things progressively more unpleasant for you, until you learn to behave. Your days of being a spoiled, pampered fucking princess are over, Sabrina Petrova. It’s time to take the fate that should have come to you in the first place. It’s time to pay for the hurts your freedom caused others.”

I’ve been rehearsing those words for so long. I thought about what I wanted to say to her on the drive to the airport, on the flight here, on the ride to the estate. I felt my skin crawl every time she touched me on the way here, felt myself winding up for the moment when I would shatter her world, just as I planned, just as I’ve so carefully set up. The moment when I would pull the rug out from under her.

It was supposed to feel satisfying. Like victory. But instead, I feel hollow. Like I’m rehearsing a speech I learned but am no longer sureI believe in. Like I’ve followed a plan to the letter, only for the moment of success to fall flat.

Sabrina looks miserable. Broken. Grief-stricken and terrified. Everything I saw in my sister’s face, when she was found. Everything I wanted Sabrina to feel, everything I’ve nurtured in my cold, stony heart since the day Ailin was brought back to me. And yet?—

Spoiled, pampered princess.That was what I had expected to find, that day when I showed up at her door, beginning to put the wheels of my plan in motion. And during that first conversation in her kitchen, when she looked at me over her coffee mug with cold suspicion, I thought I had found exactly that. The woman I’d expected to find, when I set out to hunt down where Sabrina Petrova had gone, so I could make her pay for what had happened to the woman kidnapped in her stead. My younger sister. The only woman I’ve ever loved in any way, the only one I ever swore to protect.

Until I stood at an altar and made those vows to Sabrina.

They weren’t real. They’d been lies from the moment they came out of my mouth. So why is guilt flooding me now, sending sweat prickling down my spine, making my stomach twist and the hate I feel turn in on myself? Why do I feel like I’ve tormented something innocent, like I’m some kind of monster who has broken a woman for sport?

That’s what I’ve done, but shedeservedit. It’s her fault Ailin suffered.

Isn’t it?

For a moment, I can’t say anything else. Sabrina is crying too hard to speak. And the moment of victory that I thought would eclipse all the others feels like I’ve stabbed myself with my own knife.

Because you know, Sabrina isn’t what you thought she was. She isn’t some cold ice queen who would gladly have handed your sister over to save herself.

I shouldn’t have taken the time to get to know her. I should have given up on the part of the plan that involved wooing her, making her fall for me, and going straight for the heart instead. I should havebrought her here, gotten her pregnant, and waited to take the child from her. That would have been revenge enough.

And then how would you have been any different from the men who took Ailin? How are you any different now?

It’s as if all of that is only hitting me now, too late, when I’ve already played out my plans to completion. I’ve been able to think of nothing but blind revenge since the moment Ailin was brought back to me, since I found out what happened to her and how shattered she was by it. I went heedlessly for the only person who I knew was vulnerable to me, the person I could strike at without consequence, and now?—

Now, I feel as if I’ve been caught in my own trap. I got to know Sabrina, while I was playing small-town sheriff. While I was making her fall for me. I found out that she can be self-conscious. That she can be funny. That she cared what the other people in town thought of her. That she liked pumpkin coffee and couldn’t figure out how to use a kitchen appliance without burning herself or her house down.

I found out that she could be tender. Gentle. That she expected so much less than I thought she would and gave so much more. That she wanted things I thought she would have scoffed at. That she was willing to work for what she wanted. That she was eager for choices of her own.

I found out more than that, too. That she wanted me, genuinely—even thinking I was nothing but small-town law enforcement. That she was ready to settle down with me in a nowhere town, because it meant she got to choose her own future. That she could match my desires in bed. That she had the same lusts.

From the way her hand is splayed protectively over her stomach, I think she wants the baby that we made together, too. I don’t know why she hadn’t told me until now, but I don’t think it was because she suspected something. I think it was because she was saving it for the right moment. A romantic one, maybe, for a honeymoon that she believed I had planned.

Shetrustedme. I hadn’t expected to care. I hadn’t expected forthat to hurt. For fuck’s sake—Imadeher trust me. I engineered all of this. But all I feel, looking at Sabrina’s swollen eyes and tear-stained face, the way I’ve so thoroughly broken her exactly as I planned, all I feel is guilt.

I feel like I’ve become nothing more than the same monsters I shot dead, when they were brought back to me along with Ailin. Not all the men responsible, not the one who hurt her directly, not the man I wish I could kill over and over again. Not the one whose face I imagine every time I beat a man bloody in the fighting ring. But two of the men guarding her. The ones my men were able to get ahold of. And I took them apart bit by bit, making them pay in blood and flesh for everything their employer did to my sister. It still wasn’t enough.

Shouldn’t it have been enough?

My world feels more unbalanced than it did the day after I married Sabrina. I’d been so sure of everything, and now I feel as if my foundation is crumbling, as if I’m questioning everything I was so certain was right.

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