It was cold in the house, too cold, and he remembered what it was like, back then, when the police were trampling through, dismantling his life—and before that, with his father still here, the sapphire-and-diamond Gwynns class ring leaving an imprint on Theo’s cheek, before his mother said, “Not his face, Alex—please.” His closet and all of those books full of fairy tales and the constant, unending fear permeating the air like a foul perfume.

Maybe he’d never left there. Maybe he carried that putrid decay in him. Maybe it came from him, rot arising from his very flesh.

“Fuck, fucking Gardner.” He picked up something else—a sterling silver candlestick—and threw it, relishing the clang. “Why did I—how could he—fuck!”

He took a drag from his cigarette, whirled drunkenly, glared with swollen eyes at his father’s curtained portrait. “You were right after all, Father. So fucking weak.”

The air seemed to vibrate with his anger, and that was a familiar feeling, so like the first time that Jack left, when every second was full of this, the disappointment and the hatred of everything he had ever been. He stared up at the painting, eyes wide.

He was raving.

“How did you know? How could you tell that your precious, pathetic, only child would be,” he gestured wildly at himself, “Like this? Useless, idiotic—never good enough—a fucking catamite to Jack fucking Gardner—”

“Theo!” A strident, terrified voice from behind him. He turned, saw Genni’s face, and all of that energy in the air pulsed and then burst like rotten fruit as he fell to the ground.

“Gen...”

He was suddenly, blissfully numb.

He folded in on himself, knees propped up, head dropped, the bottle dangling from his hand. “What are you doing here?”

She tiptoed her way into the room on scandalously high heels and stared down at him, stern but not cruel. “Oddly enough, I’m here for poker night, which we planned a week ago. I heard ranting and your mother—looking supremely shaken, by the way—sent me in.”

He laughed. “Of course. Didn’t want to deal with me herself.”

“Hmm. Yes, I am sure you were very receptive to any offer of help.” She sat down on the ground next to him, arranging her tight skirt, taking off her tailored blazer. He didn’t know what to say to her. He never wanted her to see him like this. “You going to share, or what?”

He handed over the bottle of whiskey.

“Ugh.” She swallowed, disgusted. “I don’t know how you drink this stuff.”

“I like it.”

“Yes, well,” she leaned her shoulder against his, “You always did have terrible taste.”

He snorted. “God knows that’s true.”

She studied the chaos in the room, all the fractured heirlooms now worthless. “I’m assuming this is a Gardner-shaped breakdown.”

“Fuck, Genni...”

“I would be more than delighted to kill him for you.” She did not sound like she was joking. “And I represent some great properties, you know—places to hide the body.”