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voice was thoughtful and her expression was resigned.
    I’d been afraid she might not believe me. I’d feared she’d contradict me or deny the facts, unwilling to face the truth. But Ellie was the strongest person I knew. She didn’t shy away from difficult conversations.
    “Yes,” I confirmed. “I thought you might know why.”
    She shot me a sharp look. “Is that why you brought me here? For information?”
    What had Jean-Luc told her? Had he not revealed that I needed to keep her safe? I ran my hands through my hair in frustration. Her expression was unreadable and I was about to spill my heart out to her with no idea of what would follow. Love made us bold and love made us fools and at this moment, I couldn’t tell which one I was.
    I’d been able to survive without her, but it had felt like a shadow of an existence. I’d been going through the motions and living on autopilot.
    Now she was here and I wanted her. Not for three months; not as my submissive in a contracted arrangement similar to the one we had a year and a half ago. I wanted Ellie Samuelson in my life. Strong and vulnerable, brave and fierce and passionate. She was the brightest part of my life and when I let her go the last time, my world had dimmed and diminished.
    Stay with me, bright star. It killed me once to watch you leave.
    “If you were threatened,” I said laying it all out in the open, “I would be helpless. That’s all he would need to do, Ellie. He would just need to suggest that you were at risk and I would walk willingly into whatever fate awaited me.” She was staring at me, her eyes wide. “I don’t know what your relationship with Lucien is, but bright star ,” I swallowed as I revealed my heart, “it doesn’t matter where your loyalties lie. Mine are clear. I will never allow you to be harmed on my account.”
    She was silent for a long time. Finally, she spoke, her voice soft. “He was my mentor,” she revealed. “Dylan had sold me to three men who owned a brothel in Lagos. Lucien attacked them, thinking that Dylan was with them. He saved me that day, trained me to be an assassin in the years after.” Her eyes met mine. “Had it not been for him, I would have been dead by now.”
    “Why me then? Why are you here?”
    “Because he’s changed,” she replied. Her voice steadied as the words emerged. “Something happened after Hanoi. He was always reclusive, but he isolated himself even more.” She swallowed. “Dylan’s death was eating away at him.” She sighed sadly. “For the sake of six years of friendship, I wanted to pretend otherwise.” She bit her lip. “You must think I’m very foolish.”
    “I think you are human,” I replied, moving to sit closer to her. Of course I could understand her ambivalence. Dylan had been my father. Against my hatred of what he had done to those fifteen women, there was the compulsion of blood. The memories of a young child making do with the only father figure he had had, imperfect as he had been. “Our humanity defines us, Ellie. Not our guns or our knives.”
    She wrapped a coil of hair around her fingers, that red hair of hers that I ached to touch. “Why would Lucien want to kill you though?” she spoke. “You aren’t Dylan.”
    “Why did he want to kill Dylan at all?” I asked. Of course, there was no shortage of people who had wanted my father dead, but I thought I had a fairly good idea of who those people were.
    She bit her lip. “Lucien’s sister was one of Dylan’s sex slaves,” she replied. “When Dylan sold her to a brothel in the Middle East, she killed herself. Lucien has wanted revenge for a very long time.”
    “Claire Bectell? She was his sister?”
    She raised an eyebrow in surprise and I clarified. “We’ve known the names of the women Dylan took for a very long time. I’ve tried to find them and aid them, where I can.” My voice was bleak as I remembered the names of the women I’d been unable to help because it had been too