"No. That's impossible." Her voice sounded so small, little more than air pushing out of her lungs. She felt the thread of denial begin to fray in her grasp. "You're wrong about this, Hunter. You're making a terrible mistake. Daddy, please ... tell him he's wrong."
Victor Bishop seemed to deflate even more in that instant. He was sweating, quivering, reduced to a state of weak surrender under Hunter's unrelenting power. The handsome face that used to instill such comfort in Corinne as a child now sagged, ruddy and glistening with beads of perspiration. His eyes met hers then, and he sputtered something that sounded like a weak apology.
Corinne went numb, feeling all the blood drain from her head and limbs. The weight settled in her feet, nearly dragging her down to her knees. The air around Mason and the other guard went palpably tense, both males waiting for the situation to either explode or dissolve. Beside her, Corinne felt her mother's body tremble, as off balance as she was.
"Victor, you couldn't have known any such things," Regina insisted. Her pale hand hovered near her mouth, as delicate as a bird until it fell away, drifting back down at her side.
"You mourned this girl when she disappeared. You were shattered, like the rest of us. You could not have pretended those feelings. I'm blood-bonded to you as your mate - I would have known whether you'd been sincere."
"Yes," he managed to croak. Corinne watched the tendons in Hunter's large hand ease up, but only enough to permit the smallest freedom. Victor Bishop was still trapped, still wholly at the warrior's mercy. "Yes, Regina, I mourned. I was shattered that she was gone. I would have protected my family by any means. That's what I did, in fact. I was only trying to protect what was left of my family, and so I had no choice but to remain silent."
Corinne closed her eyes as the words sank in, unexpected and bitter. She couldn't speak, could only lift her lids and hold the steady golden gaze of the warrior whose face revealed neither surprise nor pity. Only a grave understanding.
"I had no choice," Victor Bishop repeated. "I had no idea he would retaliate against me the way he did. You must believe me - "
"Victor," her mother gasped. "What are you saying?"
His eyes slid away from Corinne, toward the Breedmate who'd been part of his life for the last hundredplus years. "He said he would have my support one way or another, Regina. I thought I was smarter than him. I knew I was more connected. But you see? That's what he wanted from me - my connections. He needed my endorsement to help him rise more quickly within the Agency."
Still poised to kill at his whim, Hunter issued a low growl as Corinne's father let his ugly confession spill out.
No, she corrected internally. Victor Bishop was not her father. Not anymore. He was a stranger to her, had become so more in these last minutes than he had in the many decades she'd been gone from his home.
"There were threats when I refused to join his cause," Bishop said, despair roughening the words. "I didn't realize what he was capable of at the time. My God, how could I have known what he would be willing to do?"
"Who was it that threatened you, Victor?" his Breedmate asked, the waver fading from both her voice and her demeanor. "Who stole our daughter from us?"
"Gerard Starkn."
"Director Starkn?" Regina murmured. "He's been to this house more than a dozen times over the years. He's been here before and after Corinne went missing. Good lord, Victor, it has to be fifty years ago now, but I remember you spoke at his reception when he was elected to the Enforcement Agency's high council. Are you saying that he had something to do with this?"
Corinne frowned, confused now. The unfamiliar name bred a wild, desperate hope.
Maybe there was some kind of mistake here, after all. If he didn't know that it was Dragos who'd taken her, maybe Victor Bishop's hands weren't as bloodied as she feared. But Hunter's grim glance stripped her of even that fragile hope. He gave a vague shake of his head, as if he knew the direction of her thoughts. "Dragos has used many aliases. Including this one. Gerard Starkn and Dragos are one and the same."
Corinne looked to Victor Bishop, searching for some shred of honesty in the face she no longer knew. "Did you know that? Were you aware that the man you called Gerard Starkn was actually a monster by the name of Dragos?"
His scowl deepened, eyes blank of recognition. "I've told you everything I know."
"No," she murmured. "You haven't told me everything. You knew what had happened to me, but you didn't come after me. I waited. I prayed, every day. I told myself that you wouldn't rest until I was found. Until I was saved, and back home again. But no one ever came for me."
"I couldn't," he said. "Starkn told me that if I went against him, there would be more pain. He said that if I wavered in my support of him politically, or if I tried to expose him for what he'd done to reach his position within the Agency, the price for my defiance would be far greater than what I'd already paid. You have to understand - all of you have to understand - that I did what I did in order to protect my family, what was left of it."
Regina drew in a sharp, shaky breath. "And so you simply let him keep our daughter?
Corinne was family - she is family, damn you. How could you have been so heartless?"
"He left me no other way," Bishop answered, those stranger's eyes sliding back to Corinne. "Starkn promised that if I attempted to find you, or if I allowed anyone to suspect that he had you, I would be mourning Sebastian next. So I kept my silence. I made sure his demands were obeyed." His voice caught for a moment. "I am sorry, Corinne. You have to believe that - "