She gasped, unable to hold her surprise in. She hadn’t a single hint that Volkan might’ve been married. Everything in him seemed so focused on her, she couldn’t imagine him being with another woman. Then again, how well did she really know him? She knew he was a psychotic kidnapper, with some kind of obsessive-compulsive disorder that drove him to do immoral things. What if he’d focused that obsession on another woman before her? What had become of the other woman?

Dread filled her belly as she remembered the look on his mother’s face.

“What happened?” she asked, swallowing past the sudden dryness in her throat.

He shrugged. “The marriage was arranged by our families and, after a few years, she decided it no longer suited her and she left.”

“You let her go?” Yasmin asked incredulously, doubting his story.

He smiled at her expression. “By the time my wife left, I was no longer in love with her.”

He was lying. She didn’t know how, but she knew he was lying. Maybe it was the way he stopped touching her hair, his hands gripping the back of the couch like he was going to tear the leather apart. Or maybe it was the icy look in his eyes that dared her to contradict him.

She suddenly felt very alone in his apartment, high above the rest of the house. She hadn’t heard so much as a bang or a voice to suggest the residents of the massive home could hear each other when they were in their own suites. Which meant he could do whatever he wanted to her and no one would know.

Is that what happened to Caria? Did she say or do the wrong thing and then have to face his wrath?

“Do you know where she is now?” she asked.

“No,” he said shortly, and she thought he was lying again. But why? What did it matter if he told her the truth about his ex-wife? Unless he was hiding something.

More than ever, Yasmin felt trapped. She thought maybe meeting Volkan’s family would give her the opportunity to explain her dilemma to someone less insane than Volkan. Instead, he lived in a suite that was cut off from his family and, from what he told her, he was almost entirely responsible for his family’s finances. Would they help her if she tried to tell them their son and brother kidnapped her? There was only one way to find out.

“We’ll be eating with your family?” she asked innocently.