“I know I’ve hurt you. I know I’ve let you down,” he says. “But can you believe that I had a good reason to? Can you try to give me the benefit of the doubt, June? I was only trying to protect you.”

“I’ve heard this song before,” I say, clenching back against the tears. “I don’t want excuses, Adrian. I want explanations. I want honesty.”

“And you deserve both.”

“You really think so… Bogdan?” I peek out of one eye to watch his reaction.

He cringes at the sound of his birth name, but then he sighs and swallows. “That was the name I was born with,” he says, his hand twitching towards mine, though he restrains himself from trying to touch me again. “But the name I wear now is the one I chose, June. And that makes it so much more important. Bogdan Uvarov could never have been with you. But Adrian Cooper could.”

“Adrian Cooper broke my heart,” I answer flatly. “Adrian Cooper lied to me, betrayed me, and abandoned me.”

“I’m a flawed human being, June,” he says, hanging his head. “I’ve made mistakes—so many mistakes. The biggest of which was not being honest with you about my past, my family. At the time, I thought I was protecting you. But now, I see how badly I fucked up in keeping all that a secret. But it stops now. I swear to you, it stops now.”

He’s so damn convincing that I feel my heart quiver. We’ve done this song and dance before. Every time I was on the verge of finally saying Enough, every time I had a foot out the door—this is the voice he used then. These are the words he chose.

And it worked. It worked every goddamn time.

He reaches out and takes my hand, then clasps it between both of his and pulls it to his chest. “I will tell you everything, okay? Just let me get you somewhere safe.”

“No.”

His eyes pull up and interlock with mine. “No?”

I rip my hand out of his. “I want your explanation now.”

He looks around uneasily. “We’re in the middle of nowhere. We’re exposed.”

“I don’t care. I’m not going anywhere with you until you tell me why you faked your own death.”

The ring on his finger catches my eye again. It hits me now why it’s bothering me so damn much. Not the obnoxious amount of gold on display, or the violent symbol etched into it. Not even the memory of how it broke my skin when he hit me, the last thing he ever did before he “died.”

No, it’s the fact that it was used to hoodwink me. It was used as a prop to convince me of what I was seeing.

“They called me in to identify the body,” I whisper, mostly just to keep the sobs at bay. I point at his ring. “And I saw that. Which means you knew they’d do it. You orchestrated the viewing.”