And it, like everything else today, only served as a reminder of what she’d gone through.

“Did Narek tell you where I was?” she asked as we drove away.

“That’s not important,” I responded.

She gave a chuckle, the sound low and humorless.

I looked at her. “What?” I asked.

“Hearing that, one might think you were trying to protect him,” she said.

“And what do you think?” I asked.

“What I think doesn’t matter,” she responded.

There was a finality, a weariness in her voice that I hated.

“You could say thank you,” I said, the tension of the moment, my own reaction to how she was reacting, driving me to do something—anything—to get rid of that feeling.

“I suppose I could,” she said.

“Kayla…” I said, my voice low, the warning in it clear.

Not that it affected her.

She just shifted, and though my eyes were on the road, I could feel her looking at me. “Thank you, Elias, for saving me from being tortured by your father.”

“You’re being a condescending bitch, Kayla,” I said.

If nothing else, the insult should have gotten to her.

It didn’t.

“Well, I apologize if you feel I’m being condescending, Elias. I wouldn’t want you to think I hold you and your family in anything but the highest regard,” she said.

I tightened my hands on the wheel, reminding myself who I was and that it was I who held the power in this arrangement.

But saying something now would show her that she was getting to me, another complication I didn’t want to deal with.

This…whatever the fuck it was, was complicated enough. And after today, it had become infinitely more so.

But something that couldn’t—wouldn’t—change, was that Kayla had no power over me.

And she needed to remember that.

I lost the patience I’d been trying to hold onto and spoke.

“You want me to take you back there?” I snapped.

“Elias, as we talked about, what I want doesn’t matter.”

I said nothing, knowing that the next words that came out of my mouth would be ugly, might do more damage than she had already experienced today.

Or maybe they wouldn’t.

Maybe Kayla had decided to shut me out completely.

That was probably it.

She thought she could keep herself detached and use that distance to control me.

I wouldn’t let her.

I stayed silent, knowing that words would only make her dig in deeper. After a couple of minutes, she said, “I’ll tell Narek thank you when I see him. He’s always been kind to me.”

There was a softness in her voice that I had never heard when she talked about me.

There was gratitude in it.

And I didn’t like it.

“Narek gets orders and follows them, just like everyone else in my family,” I said.