Anger pierced her over his condemnation when he didn’t know anything about her. “Excuse me?”

“My God, woman, how can you talk to me about your hurt after what you put Darling through? Really?” He paused before he added another, “Really?”

A bad feeling washed over her. He wouldn’t be this angry without a good reason. Would he?

What did he know that she didn’t?

“They were wrong to interrogate him so harshly, but—”

“Lady,” he said, interrupting her, “they didn’t interrogate him at all. They had a muzzle buried so deep in his throat that it caused permanent damage to his esophagus and voice box. Darling said it was the first thing they did to him when they took him into custody and before he’d regained his ability to move, never mind speak. There was no way for him to answer anyone’s questions once that was in place. And I know he’s not lying. It took the surgeon four hours to dig it out of the tissue it’d cut and grown into because he’d had it in his mouth for so long.”

Her stomach hit the floor at what he described.

No… she refused to believe it. Her men wouldn’t have done something so awful. Not to mention, she didn’t remember seeing a muzzle on Darling.

Could she really have missed it?

She tried her best to think back to her few minutes with Darling before they’d rescued him. But all she could remember was the feral hatred in his eyes and her own absolute lack of judgment. “Was he really muzzled?”

The moment those words left her lips, and even before Maris spoke, she flashed on the men who’d freed Darling.

The angry conversation between themselves. Darling had been muzzled. She remembered them talking about it now. So much had happened so fast, that it hadn’t made an impression on her at the time, and since then, her thoughts had been on other things.

I am the biggest dolt who was ever born.

“You truly don’t know what was done to him, do you?” Maris pushed her back into her cell and sat her on the floor while he pulled out his mobile device.

Oblivious to the fact that he was wrinkling what had to be an extremely expensive outfit, he sat down beside her and handed her the file he’d just pulled up.

“What’s this?”

His dark eyes blistered her. “Just read.”

Irritated, Zarya let out a breath of frustration. But as she began reviewing Darling’s medical report, her stomach shrank into a painful knot. No wonder Maris had sat her down first. Had she been standing, she might have fallen. “Is this for real?”

“Yes. It’s why I pulled it. I knew if I told you, you wouldn’t believe me.” He reached over her to scroll to photos of Darling that were also in the file. There, she saw for herself the damage done to his mouth by the muzzle. It had worn permanent holes under his tongue and had pierced it through.