Everything in me still screams attack. But I no longer have the element of surprise. I know I can’t beat him head-on. It’s why I’ve been trying for a strike from the shadows.

I’ve truly failed.

“I’d like to leave now,” I say, my voice dripping with anger and frustration.

“No.”

I hate the way he says the word. So calm and matter-of-fact. As if he isn’t holding me against my will.

I look around me. It’s not a big mystery why he brought me into this room instead of the others. There’s nothing in here that can be used as a weapon.

“It was about ten years ago,” Lander begins. “That’s when I first met your mother.”

I look down at my nails and think about how lovely it would be to dig them into his skin once more. How lovely it would be to gouge out his eyes.

“My father asked me to come to see him at his town house,” he continues. “He told me ahead of time that if he wasn’t there I should let myself in and wait for him, which I did. A few minutes after I arrived, Nick Foley’s wife, Jenna, showed up. I don’t know why. I hadn’t been expecting her to join us. But she told me that my father had invited her, which was odd because I didn’t realize that she and my father were close.”

I bite down on my lip until I taste the blood. This man needs to pay.

Lander leans his back against the door, reminding me that I’m trapped in here. “I was too distracted by my own problems to give it much thought,” he says. “My father had left my mother a month before, and three weeks after that I learned she had cancer. I had to tell him. I assumed he would help her through it.”

I don’t answer. I don’t really care. I just want to kill him and leave.

“So there I was, making awkward small talk with Jenna while we waited for my father, and then, much to our surprise, in comes my father’s new housekeeper. And as it turns out, she and Jenna knew each other. And that wasn’t a good thing.”

For the first time I look up from my nails.

“I didn’t know their history at the time, but it quickly became clear that Jenna had recently discovered your mother’s affair with Nick . . . Adoncia, I’m sorry, but your mother didn’t handle herself well.”

“Do not call me Adoncia,” I say tersely, hating the way the name sounds on his lips.