Guarding the Virgin

Chapter 20

I left Donovan's office with the folder clutched against my chest, my legs carrying me across campus on autopilot.

My mind was a hurricane. My father was a mafia boss. My mother was murdered. And the man I was carrying a child for had been selling my secrets to my family's enemies.

I couldn't go back to my dorm. Couldn't pretend everything was normal. I needed to see his face when I confronted him. I needed to know if any of it was real.

I found Ashton at the rink, alone in the equipment room doing inventory. He looked up when I entered, and his expression shifted immediately from surprise to concern.

"Lyra? What's wrong?"

I threw the folder at him.

Photos and documents scattered across the floor between us like an explosion of evidence. His face. Other men's faces. My name highlighted in yellow.

"Tell me this isn't real." My voice shook with rage and grief and something that might have been hope. "Tell me you haven't been selling my secrets to the people who murdered my mother."

He stared at the photos on the floor. Crouched down slowly. Picked one up and studied it, and I watched something harden in his eyes.

"These are fake." His voice was flat, controlled. "Manipulated. I've never met these men in my life."

"Donovan showed me everything." My voice cracked. "He told me who my father really is. What he does. He told me my mother didn't die in an accident—she was killed." I choked on the words. "And you've been working with the people who did it."

Ashton's head snapped up. "Your father is in a dangerous business. That part is true. And yes, your mother was murdered—that's also true. But I am not the leech, Lyra." He rose to his feet, the photo still clutched in his hand. "I've given fifteen years of my life to protecting your family. Why would I betray that now?"

"I don't know!" I was shouting now, tears streaming down my face. "I don't know what's real anymore. My whole life has been a lie. My father, my mother, you—"

He stepped toward me and I flinched backward, pressing against the cold concrete wall.

The hurt that flashed across his face almost broke my resolve.

"Don't," I whispered. "Don't touch me."

"Lyra, please." His voice was desperate, raw—nothing like the controlled man I'd come to know. "Listen to me. Whoever gave you this is the real enemy. Donovan is playing you. He's using your pain to turn you against me because I'm the only thing standing between you and whatever he's planning."

"Donovan has been nothing but kind to me." Even as I said it, I heard how naive it sounded. "He's been trying to help me since I got here."

"Has he?" Ashton's eyes burned. "Or has he been positioning himself? Gaining your trust? Waiting for the right moment to use you?"

I shook my head, refusing to hear it. "You could have told me the truth. From the beginning, you could have told me who my father was, what happened to my mother, why you were really here."

My voice rose with each accusation. "Instead you lied. You manipulated me. You let me believe I was living a normal life when everything around me was built on blood and secrets."

My hand went to my stomach involuntarily.

"I'm carrying your child. And this whole time you've been—"

"I haven't." He was pleading now. This powerful man who I'd seen beat another man half to death, reduced to begging. "I swear on my life, on our child's life, I am not the traitor. Someone is setting me up. And if you push me away now, you'll be completely unprotected when they make their move."

I wanted to believe him. God, I wanted to believe him.

But I thought of the photographs. The documents. The way Donovan's story filled in every gap I'd been questioning for weeks. The sealed records. The years unaccounted for. The way Ashton had appeared out of nowhere and inserted himself into my life with a convenient cover story.

I thought of my mother, dead because of men like those in the photos. Men Ashton had supposedly been meeting with for months while pretending to protect me.

I thought of the anonymous envelope slipped under my door. The note asking who he really reports to. At the time, I'd dismissed it. But what if it had been a warning?

Everything pointed to him.

"I already signed the complaint," I said quietly. "You're being fired today. Escorted off campus."

The color drained from his face. "Lyra. Don't do this. Don't let them win."

"Maybe what I want is to stop being a pawn in everyone's game." I moved toward the door on legs that barely held me upright. "Including yours."

"I love you."

The words stopped me cold. My hand froze on the doorframe.

"I love you," he repeated, his voice breaking. "And I can't lose you. I can't lose our baby. I will spend the rest of my life proving that I'm telling the truth if you give me the chance." He took a step toward me, then stopped himself, respecting the distance I'd demanded. "But if you walk out that door—if you let them separate us—you're doing exactly what the enemy wants."

I stood frozen, my heart tearing in two directions.

Part of me wanted to run to him. To let him hold me and tell me everything would be okay. To believe that the man who'd caught me when I fell, who'd chosen to give me a voice instead of making decisions for me, who'd stopped hitting Nate because I asked him to—that man couldn't be a traitor.

But then I thought of my mother. Of the lies that had built my entire existence. Of all the ways I'd been manipulated by people who claimed to love me.

My father had lied to me for nineteen years.

Why should Ashton be any different?

"I can't trust you," I whispered, the words cutting my own throat on the way out. "I can't trust anyone."

I walked out.

Left him standing in the equipment room surrounded by scattered photos—the wreckage of everything we'd built together. I didn't look back. If I looked back, I might crumble. Might run to him despite everything. Might choose love over logic and end up dead because of it.

I made it to the parking lot before my legs gave out. I collapsed against a brick wall, sliding down until I was sitting on cold concrete, and let the sobs take me. Ugly, heaving cries that echoed across the empty space.

I'd just destroyed the only person who might have actually been protecting me.

Or I'd just escaped the man who'd been selling me to my mother's killers.

I had no way to know which was true. No way to know if I'd just saved myself or signed my own death warrant.

All I knew was that I was completely alone now. Pregnant with his child, hunted by shadows, surrounded by lies, and absolutely alone.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. A text from an unknown number.

Smart girl. Stay away from him. I'll be in touch.

I stared at the screen, my blood running cold.

Donovan? The mysterious enemy? Someone else entirely watching this all unfold?

The message could mean anything. It could be a friend congratulating me for escaping a traitor. Or it could be an enemy celebrating that I'd just removed my only protection.

I deleted the message with trembling fingers and pressed my back harder against the wall, wrapping my arms around my stomach. Around the tiny life that had no idea what chaos it was being born into.

Whatever game was being played, I was still a pawn in it.

And now I had no one left to protect me.