My thumb moved over a knuckle on my right hand, the knuckle that always ached in the cold because I’d dislocated it so many times. “It won’t change anything, chérie.” I knew she believed I was capable of change, but she was dead wrong about that.

“Then you should tell me, so I’ll understand.”

I massaged my knuckle again as I kept my eyes on her. My future wife. The future countess. The future mother of my children. My future widow. With every day and every week, I let her in, let her deeper inside, shared my life with her without barriers. The night she left me never happened. Those months apart had been erased. For the first time, I didn’t live in the past. I cherished the present. “My family was murdered.”

She inhaled a deep breath, her eyes instantly watering.

“Mother. Sister. Brother. All of them.” So much time had passed that their images had faded from my mind. Their pictures were in my safe, and sometimes I would look at them and remember my childhood with my siblings, the cookies my mother would make every Sunday, the house at Christmastime.

“Magnus and I are the last of our line.” I spoke without emotion because I was numb to the loss. It was factual at this point. Grief was complicated, and sometimes it would arrive at my shores like a hurricane, and other times, it was silent for years. Right now, it was silent. Probably because of her.

“I…I’m so sorry.”

I gave a curt nod.

“Your father?”

“He was the one who killed them.”

A quiet gasp left her lips as her hand cupped her mouth. The watery film over the surface of her eyes increased, reflecting the sunshine coming through the windows behind me. “Why…?” Her voice broke, and she gave a loud sniff. “Why would someone do that?”

“Because he’d rather kill us all than suffer the public shame of his financial ruin.” I hadn’t talked about this in years. My voice was sterile. Emotionless. It was just a story to me now, not something I’d lived through. “He gambled our wealth on bets he could never pay. Then he gambled more to recoup those losses. Just went deeper into the hole.” It was the reason I never gambled. I went to the horse races for sport, not for money.

She was silent in her disbelief.

I let her soak it in before I continued. “I came home later than I was supposed to. He must have assumed I was already in bed or thought he could just shoot me when I walked in the door later. He’d drugged everyone during dinner, and in their sleep, he shot each one in the head.”

She inhaled another strained breath, on the verge of sobs.