I stared at her a moment longer. Rune, Jasper, and Cage all watched me expectantly, although I wasn’t sure what they were waiting for. “I don’t have to,” I replied at last, realizing as I said it that it was true. Mia was violent and unpredictable and volatile. But she never meant to hurt anyone. I knew that now.

To my surprise, her mask wavered, something like vulnerability surfacing before she slammed it down. “I might disappoint you,” she said, so quietly I barely heard her.

My heart skipped a beat. Beside me, Rune stopped short. “So, you did it? You killed Alexei’s family?”

“They took my sister.” The words spilled out of Mia in a rush, her gaze fixed on the floor, her hand lost in Alexei’s grip. Imani tensed at the words. “Or he did. There was a man, someone who . . . who used me occasionally. Once he learned of my powers, he’d have me set things up for him, steal things, spy. That kind of crap. I went along with it because he paid me well, and I needed to take care of Shannon.” She swallowed hard. I got the sense she hadn’t said that name in years, that she hadn’t meant to say it now. But as always, she recovered quickly. “And maybe because I was afraid.” She met each of our stares in turn, bright, challenging, as if she expected we’d pounce on her admission of weakness.

But no one did. We all knew fear. Jasper moved toward her, but Cage gestured him back. “What happened, Mia?” he asked softly.

She sighed. “They wanted me to get my hands dirty, starting with Alexei’s family. There was a bomb. I was supposed to plant it on the top floor of their hotel and let it go off. I refused, obviously. But when I got home . . .” She took an unconscious step closer to Alexei, and he slid behind her, still holding her close. “Shannon was gone. No one knew where she was. My mom was never in any condition to notice anything. Even her youngest daughter being kidnapped, apparently. And then he called me. Caleb.” She put so much fury and hatred into the name, I didn’t have to ask who he was.

“Caleb wanted Mia to assassinate my father.” Alexei picked up the thread of her tale. “And also, me, my mother, and my brother. He threatened to kill Shannon if she resisted. So Mia went to the hotel, all the way to the penthouse. But when she saw my little brother . . .”

“I couldn’t do it,” Mia snapped. “All right? I didn’t want to kill anyone, even a notorious criminal like Lex’s dad. I certainly wasn’t going to murder a child. But in that moment of hesitation, I lost my invisibility, and Alexei saw me.” She glanced at him, and he slid a hand over her face. Turning her cheek into his palm briefly, she continued, “He followed me outside. He’d never seen another anomaly before. He was fascinated. He . . .” She looked at him with an expression I couldn’t read, something I’d never seen on her face before. “He knew what I’d been sent to do, and he didn’t blame me.”