“She’s payment,” Lucien says, thrusting me toward the tattooed man as I study him. This stranger who knew my mother so intimately. The man with whom she looked happy.

“Is she?” he asks, dragging his gaze to my face once more, searching it again before returning his full attention to Lucien. “What are you playing at, boy?” he asks, closing his calloused, scarred hand over Lucien’s wrist and removing it from my arm.

I rub the spot he held me and step away from them both. Just one step. I just need a little space.

“Not playing, Dmitri. She’s payment for the lost soldiers. Thought you’d want that, considering.”

Dmitri. I have no idea who he is. Never heard my mother utter his name. Dmitri’s eyes search my face again as if searching for something. Or more likely, someone, I guess. How could she have been with someone like this? He seems dangerous and cold. Rough. My father was elegant. Subtle. Although was he any less dangerous? Any less rough? What drove my mother into the arms of a stranger?

But one thing at a time. Dmitri will have to wait. I turn back to Lucien, remembering it all, the basement, those men. It’s that nightmare that comes like clockwork in the weeks leading up to my birthday except it’s the real version. The part that happened. It’s the memory Tilbury tried to fucking electrocute out of my brain. But things didn’t go exactly right, I guess. He erased a full year, and now it’s come rushing back.

My dad came for me. I remember that, too. He was too late, though. They’d already broken me. And I’d killed them for it.

I look down at my bruised, scratched hands. My bloody hands.

I can see Dad’s face in my mind’s eye as clear as day. His eyes when he saw me with the gun still in my hand. All that blood on me. All that blood staining every surface. I think seeing that broke him a little too. He carried me out of there. And then came the incident with the bleach and then Dr. Tilbury.

“Considering,” Dmitri says, calling me back into the present. He takes a half step away, one corner of his mouth curved upward but not in any way close to a smile. He’s thinking. Calculating. “It was you, wasn’t it? You were the one who blackmailed her with those photos.”

My mouth falls open. What? Lucien blackmailed my mother?

“What did you do?”I start, making a move toward Lucien. Dmitri effortlessly catches me and keeps me tight to his side, one arm wrapped around me to trap me against him. He barely looks at me. Just studies Lucien closely like he’s putting a puzzle together as I struggle to remove the steel bar that is his arm.