Stunned, Sumi widened her eyes. That was the last thing she’d expected to hear. Wade had been a serial killer and madman so twisted that even decades after his death, mothers still used his name to frighten their misbehaving children.

Damn, Dancer ran with some extremely dangerous people. No wonder Thia had called them all scary. “What?”

Thia nodded. “But back then, Syn was in hiding under a false identity and was wanted for treason on Ritadaria – which is a whole other long story in and of itself. Anyway, he couldn’t afford for anyone to find out who he really was.”

Which an arrest for a bar fight and the resulting DNA scan at the Enforcers’ headquarters would have certainly exposed.

“Droug pulled a knife and tried to stab Uncle Hauk. Uncle Hauk threw the first punch then realized half the bar’s occupants were on Droug’s payroll. When Uncle Syn started to help, Hauk shoved him toward the door, and told him to take the girl and run before the Enforcers came and arrested him.”

Sumi gasped. “Surely he didn’t leave him there.”

“Uncle Syn had no choice,” Thia said simply. “It would have been a death sentence for him to be caught. But he did shoot and stab a few on his way out. He said his last sight of Uncle Hauk was him standing in the middle of a dozen muscled goons… my word substitution. Anyway, Uncle Hauk was barely grown and was surrounded. Right? So what does he do? He holds his hands up,” Thia illustrated her words, “and as calm as you please, takes the shot glass from the table where they’d been sitting and pours himself a drink. He knocks it back, and puts the glass down like it ain’t no big thing and there aren’t a dozen guys waiting to gut him. He sweeps his gaze over the men and smiles. Then faster than lightning, he grabs the bottle and goes on the attack. By the time he was finished, there were twenty-two bodies on the floor and he had Droug by the throat, threatening to rip it open with his fangs if anyone else came near him. And all that completely bare-handed. He walked away with a bruised jaw and ear. A couple of cracked ribs and a broken nose. But he was intact and no one dared to arrest him for it. No one.”

Darice frowned. “What happened to Syn?”