Page 29 of Beautiful Ruins
None of it was the whole truth.
The truth was uglier.
I’d seen fear in her eyes, yes—but also defiance.Curiosity.A refusal to fold just because the room demanded it.She talked back when she shouldn’t have.Held my gaze when smarter people would’ve looked away.She didn’t beg.Didn’t posture.She adapted.
That kind of resilience was brutal.
I walked into my office and closed the door behind me, leaning back against it for a moment longer than necessary.The room smelled faintly of smoke and polished wood.Familiar.Mine.
I’d spent years mastering this environment.Bending it to my will.Making sure nothing unexpected got close enough to hurt me.
And yet here I was, violating my own rules.
Tone was staying because she was blood.Because loving her was unavoidable.
Izzy was staying because… what?
Because I didn’t want to send her away?
The realization didn’t sit well.
I pushed off the door and crossed to the desk, resting my hands against the edge.My reflection stared back at me from the darkened glass of the window—older than I felt, harder than I wanted to be.A man shaped by loss and convinced it would repeat itself if he ever stopped paying attention.
I’d told myself Izzy didn’t matter.That she was temporary.That once I got what I needed, she’d be gone and my life would settle back into its familiar, bloodless rhythm.
But that was a lie.
Because if danger existed—and it did—then keeping her here made me a hypocrite.
And I hated hypocrisy almost as much as weakness.
Tone’s words echoed, unwanted and persistent.
She’s a human being.
Not leverage.Not collateral.Not a problem to be managed.
A person.
I closed my eyes briefly, jaw tightening.
This was how it started.Not with love.With rationalization.With telling yourself that you were different, that you could control the fallout, that you’d learned enough from the last time to survive the next.
I hadn’t.
I already knew that.
The truth settled in my chest, uninvited and unwelcome: if something happened to Izzy because of me—because I’d kept her here, because I’d decided to play Russian Roulette with her life—I wasn’t sure what part of me would be left intact.
And that scared me more than confirming she mattered at all.
I straightened, squaring my shoulders, forcing the feeling down where it belonged.
Authority was still mine.Decisions were still mine.
But the line Tone had drawn wasn’t going away.
Neither was Izzy.
