Page 293 of Ruins
But the shadows of guilt and horror still dance behind my eyes.
“I—”
He shakes his head, firm. “The blood is onmyhands, not yours, say it.”
My throat tightens. My voice cracks.
“The blood is on your hands, not mine.”
He nods, pressing a kiss to my hands.
“If I were there, I would have killed them.” His voice is rough with conviction. “I failed you. The blood is onmyhands Say it again.”
“The blood is on your hands, not mine.”
“Good,” he whispers. His lips brush my hands again, reverent, sealing his promise.
And that’s when I break. I crumble into him, letting the sobs tear through me, no longer able to hold them back. Santo doesn’t say anything. He just holds me—silent, steady, unshakable.
My anchor.
My gravity.
The only thing keeping me from drowning.
And when my tears finally fade, when silence settles between us once more, Santo pulls away just enough to look into my eyes.
“I want to know what happened.Whydid this happen?” My voice is steady, but inside, I feel like I’m splintering.
“I don’t want to be in the dark anymore,” I tell him.
Santo hesitates. I can see the war in his eyes, the battle between protecting me and telling me the truth.
Finally, he nods.
“All right,” he concedes, his voice low. His dark eyes lock onto mine, the intensity leaving me breathless. “I’ll tell you everything.”
We move to the couch, and Santo pulls me close, wrapping me in the warmth of his body before he begins.
His voice is calm but deadly as he tells me how he knows Angelo is hiding something with Maksim. His suspicions. His unspoken rage.
And then he tells me about my father’s role in my planned abduction.
The words shatter me.
A sob rips from my throat, raw and broken, my body folding in on itself. Santo tightens his arms around me, but it doesn’t stop the way my chest contracts under the weight of betrayal.
“No more,” he whispers against my hair, his grip firm, as if he’s trying to hold me together. “I won’t tell you more.”
But I can’t stop now. Ineedto know.
I force myself to breathe, to steady the ache inside me. My voice is small, pleading. “Please, Santo. Tell me everything.”
He hesitates. And then, reluctantly, he does.
He tells me my mother was complicit—but ignorant to the deeper details. That her life is spared, but she’s being sent to Russia to live with her sister. That she’ll never set foot in our world again.
He tells me about the QUEEN file and how Varten Sarkisian indeed had sent the order to have me taken as a child. A cold, creeping dread seeps into my bones.
