Victor snapped the box closed. And the sound brought me out of my eternally held breath. I greedily gulped down oxygen as if he’d been strangling me while making his crazy demands.

He set the ring box down in the seat beside him. Like it had somehow become a living participant in our conversation. Then he signed, “So you are choosing the destruction of your family over my ownership?”

The destruction of my family? Was he serious?

It was almost too much air now. His threats, combined with all that oxygen, made me dizzy like I was about to pass out. “This is insane. Why don’t you just kill me and get it over with? Why threaten my family? Try to make me marry you? I mean, ten years…what is that number even? How did you come up with that calculation?”

“Ten years is the sentence my father was given after his plea deal,” Victor explained, his expression impassive.

My mouth dropped open. “He only got ten years for killing that guy?”

“He was sentenced to ten years for cutting off the nose of a fellow gang member,” Victor answered. He almost appeared bored with the conversation. “It was part of a plea deal that included my release, or he wouldn’t have even gotten that. However, he died of cancer before he could serve that unnecessary prison sentence.”

“He died? Your father’s dead?” My heart stopped at this new information. Then filled with sorrow for Victor.

He’d lost his father. He was an orphan now. No wonder he looked so ravaged.

“Victor I’m so sorry for your loss. I know you loved him…”

I gave him my condolences, then felt terrible because I had to add, “But that’s not on me. I shouldn’t have to serve his time.”

“I read the case reports,” Victor answered. His expression was a cold blank. “The footage you provided was the cornerstone of the case against him. If not for you, he might have gone to a doctor sooner. He might still be alive.”

“I don’t know what was in those reports, but I was just as surprised as you were on the day of that raid. I didn’t know—”

“I read the case reports,” he repeated, his signs even more precise, even colder than I remembered them. “All of them. You set me up from the beginning. You even planted that story about your brother to lure me back to Tokyo from Hong Kong. You were so relieved when you were finally able to contact your father with something he could use against Red Diamond—that’s what you said in your recorded statement.”

A sick sensation filled my belly. “What? No, that’s not how it went at all, and I only said those things because—”

His expression went from cold to enraged in a blink of an eye.