It’s the only way I can believe that she’s gone. Why doesn’t he understand?

My voice is just a whisper. “I can’t be like you, cutting out the past because it hurts.”

“Is that what you think I’m doing?” That mocking voice again.

I know it is. “Then why didn’t you ever go back to your grandmother’s house?”

“That was a different life,” he says, sounding more tired than anything. “Made for a little boy. Not a shell of a man. I’ll never go back there. I can’t.”

I stare at him, realizing he means it.

He picks up the letter and reads it again, his expression severe.

From here I can see something scribbled on the back, something I didn’t see before. I take the sheet from his hands gently and tilt it, reading aloud.

And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. John 8:32.

Ivan’s eyebrows rise. “Even I’ve heard of that one.”

“Why is it on the back like this? It’s in her handwriting.”

Ivan just strokes my hair, content to let me fall apart in his arms. I push myself up so I’m sitting on my own. “I’m serious,” I tell him. “I need to go there and see for myself. That’s what she’s telling me. The truth will set me free.”

He looks dubious, and okay, I admit the logic is fuzzy. But the pieces are there. I can’t ignore them. Her writing that Bible verse, scribbled on the back—like an afterthought. But why did she have it? And how did she die? The letter from the lawyer didn’t say. She wouldn’t be the first person to go missing from Harmony Hills under mysterious circumstances. Of course I won’t find out the truth just from looking at an empty room, but I can’t ignore her. I can’t ignore her final plea.

I clasp Ivan’s hands in mine. “Please, take me with you. I need to go.”

He frowns. “Why do I get the impression that if I say no, you’ll find some other way to go.”

My head lowers, eyes closed. This is the closest I can come to prayer anymore. “I left her in that place, in that hell, for years. I thought she wanted to be there. I thought she chose to stay.”

I always thought she picked Leader Allen over me. After all, she could have gone with me. Or she could have made plans to meet up with me later. She hadn’t.

Leave, Candace. Leave and don’t ever look back.

Ivan’s voice is softer than before, his voice almost gentle. “She’s gone, Candace.”

“I know that,” I say, broken but determined. “But I have to go there, to see for myself. I have to…pay my respects.”

She told me never to look back, but this letter is a window to a past I never saw clearly. I could only see her actions as a scared, hurt sixteen-year-old girl. Now I have to wonder what else was happening…

I lean down over Ivan’s hands and kiss his knuckles. It’s a sign of devotion, a sign of his dominance. His hands tighten around mine briefly before he releases me.

“We leave early in the morning,” he says.

Relief fills me. It’s clear he isn’t happy with me, but he’s letting me come.

Ivan closes his eyes and swears under his breath. “One condition. You will not interfere while we’re there. It will be dangerous, even with protection. You will not speak. Understand?”

“Thank you,” I whisper.

He moves to stand. “I have a lot to prepare before then. You should rest. Not here.”

Then he’s lifting me, carrying me over the carnage of the broken door and down the stairs. He lays me in the middle of my old bed. My eyes are half-closed as I sink into the pillow. He pulls the sheet up and tucks it around me. I’m already drifting as he flicks off the light and closes the door behind him.

Exhaustion has its claws in me, making it hard to keep my eyes open—and ironically, making it hard to sleep. My thoughts are stuck on a wheel, spinning endlessly.

My mother sacrificed everything so that I could live a normal life. And what do I do with it?

Ivan. The Grand. A life of sin.

I didn’t have much choice as a naive sixteen-year-old with twenty dollars to my name. It was inevitable that I would have had to sell myself in some form or another to survive. Ivan spared me from the worst of it, feeding and clothing me first, and then giving me safe haven at the Grand.

Now I’m grown and under his roof once again. He puts me on my knees and spanks me. Even when I lived alone, he watched me constantly.

I discovered too late that it’s not the bars that make a jail, but the jailor.

My mother sacrificed everything so I could be free.

The only way to do that is to leave Ivan for good.

Chapter Twenty-Four

We take Ivan’s private jet, which is good since I still don’t have any identification. Ivan and I don’t speak much, but then we’re surrounded by his entourage. And by entourage, I mean small army. A set of three black cars are waiting for us. Ivan opens the door to the middle car and waits for me to get in. Surrounded at the front and the back. Protected.

We’re as safe as we ever can be, but I can’t shake the feeling of dread as we leave the small airport and head toward Harmony Hills. I’m going to see Leader Allen again.

He should be nothing to me, but I’m afraid of him nonetheless.

I always knew my mother sent me away to protect me, but I never really knew why she stayed behind. Because she thought it would buy me time? She must have known how unprepared I was, how little I had with me. She must have known what I would have to do to survive.

Or maybe she did love Leader Allen, even knowing what he was. It’s a strange feeling, to love your jailor. One I couldn’t have understood if I’d never met Ivan.

His expression gives nothing away, focused and completely remote. The man who held me as I cried for the loss of my mother is nowhere to be seen. This is the Ivan who commands respect in all of Tanglewood, the one who made a group of men back off with just a look all those years ago.

“How are you going to get in?” There are gates and locks and guards. We won’t be able to waltz in.

Ivan doesn’t look at me. “I have an engraved invitation.”

Then again, maybe we will. Nervous energy pushes me to keep going. “He won’t like you coming here. Even protected, he might fuck with you just because.”

“A lot of people have messed with me just because, Candy.”

“And what? You kill them? Well, you can’t.”

“Give me one good reason I shouldn’t kill him.”

“Because you’re coming here in a…in a goddamn parade! They’ll know it was you.”

The expression on his face tells me he isn’t impressed with my reason. “He’s a prick.”

Prick is an understatement. He’s a genuinely horrible human being. I can’t really argue with the fact that he deserves to be dead. After the way he treated my mother, and me, and countless other people at Harmony Hills… he’s like a dictator. And not the benevolent kind.

Except the thought of seeing him hurt sends ice through my veins. Before I would have said it’s because my mother cares about him, but now that can’t be my reason. So I have to concede that…I care about him. Not really. Not where it counts. My brain knows I don’t care about him, that he’s nothing. Less than nothing. But there’s a muscle memory in my heart, an old lesson drilled into me, never to be forgotten.

And I hate that. I hate the way he managed to condition me. I hate the way Ivan conditions me. “You just can’t, okay? You can’t kill someone because they’re a prick. What kind of logic is that?”

He gives me a warning look.

Which naturally I ignore. “And you can’t just…you can’t just keep people because you want to. We aren’t animals.”

“Do you really want to do this now?” he asks, even though he clearly thinks he knows the answer. Of course he thinks that.

And fuck, he’s right. I don’t want to do this now, but I want to think about where we’re going even less. I want to think about my mother and what she sacrificed, what she lost, even less. “You don’t control me,” I tell him.