I glower at him. “I’m not—”
“Yes, you are,” he hisses. “And you need to stop being so hard on yourself. I know you feel responsible—”
“That’s because I am responsible, Nikolai. Pol and Lev, they’re my responsibilities. It was my job to keep them safe. I’m the one who exposed them to Alyssa. I’m the one who turned a blind eye when they started forming attachments with her.”
“Neither Polly nor Lev are babies anymore, Uri. You can’t control everyone all the time.”
There it is again, that word: control. Alyssa flung it at me enough times, with enough disdain, that it came to feel like a dirty word. An accusation. A curse.
“I’m not trying to control anyone; I’m trying to protect them! It’s all I’ve been trying to do for the past eight f*****g years!”
Nikolai takes a deep breath. “You can’
