"What? How?" Alina's voice was a brittle shard of glass, the strength draining from her legs like sand. Seeing her father, Harry Gray, reduced to this trembling, broken shell was a visceral, sickening blow.
The terrible, crushing realization that both she and Kelvin had believed the lie that he was simply drinking away his time now filled her with a profound, searing self-recrimination.
He didn't look drunk; he looked utterly flayed. "What did you do to my father?" Alina demanded, shoving past the stunned guards with a reckless disregard that bordered on suicidal. Her fingers trembled violently as they gently sought the rough, unkempt stubble of his face. Why hadn't he come home all this time?
"Your father hadn't come home so Mr. Vaughn wouldn't be able to track the both of you," Damian clarified, his voice a low, gravelly growl that signaled the deadly gravity of the conspiracy.
