“Arlo?” I prompted, and he took us over to one of the empty tables before pulling my chair out for me and then taking the seat beside me. “Why did we leave like that?” His jaw was clenched, his eyes scanning the room. He was always so observant and on edge when it wasn’t just the two of us, as if he thought there was danger or a fight right around the corner.

He was silent for so long I was about to ask him again, when he looked at me, that cold mask right back in place. “These men are dangerous, Galina. Bad.” He ran a hand over his jaw, his gaze still locked on mine. “And I don’t want you near them.” He exhaled and shifted on the seat, and even under his expensive dark suit, I could tell every muscle in his body was locked tight, clenched and ready for action. “If one of them touched you… hurt you—”

I reached out and took his hand in mine, giving it a squeeze as I shifted closer to him. “No one is going to do any such thing. We’re at a gala, surrounded by people. Everyone clearly just wants to enjoy the night.” He stared into my eyes, and I hated that his childhood had been torn from him so brutally that it shaped the man sitting before me now.

I loved Arlo with everything that I was, but his demons and the darkness he carried made him see the bad in everything and everyone.

And although I couldn’t deny there were definitely those things that surrounded us daily, had both experienced heinous shit in our lives—and what had ultimately brought us together—I hoped one day there would be a time when it didn’t feel like the world was crashing down on us with threats.

“The world is made up of plenty of bad men, Arlo. We both lived through it enough to last us ten lifetimes.” I didn’t point out that he himself was part of that group of bad men he talked about, that he admitted as much, had proved it in order to stay alive… to keep me alive when my piece-of-shit father sold off my virginity to save his own life.

We’d both taken lives to survive. So if he was a bad man, then I was just as evil as he was. And I had no regrets about it.

“And there are plenty of bad women out there too.” I stared into his eyes and let him see the fact that I wasn’t a saint, that I’d had to do things in my life that were questionable, that were “sins.”

I wondered more if all of this had to do with his need to stay detached, not just from emotions, but also from people, because all he saw were threats in the form of dripping jewels and faux smiles.