By the time the afternoon sun began to fade, Raya and her father had barely moved from the sitting room.
They had talked for hours.
There had been tears, laughter, long silences, and questions neither of them had known how to ask at first. Raya wanted to know everything about the months she had spent believing her father was beyond her reach, while Patrick seemed determined to make up for every moment he had missed.
He told her about the house where Adrian had kept him, the meals he had been given, and the strange routine he had eventually settled into.
"It wasn't what you imagined, sweetheart," Patrick said, sitting beside her on the sofa. "I wasn't chained to a wall or locked in a dark room. I had a bedroom, a sitting room, and a garden I could walk around."
Raya turned toward him. "You could walk around freely?"
"Inside the property, yes. I could move from one room to another, read, eat, and sleep whenever I wanted. The only thing I couldn't do was leave."
