Mum became law. She did not care for police, so neither did we. I think she only liked Marcelo at first because he was a lawyer for small-time crooks like my dad: his approach to the law was not one of respect, but one of loopholes and trickery. Corporate law is just the next evolution of skulduggery: the criminals are the same, they just drive better cars. Even now, Dad’s shadow loomed large, and if it had been a city cop and not Officer Last Resort who had to deal with the ash-faced man, I knew we’d all already be in cuffs. Prime suspects.

Now you know how my father died. Hopped up on something (they’d found a syringe by his corpse), trying to knock over a servo for a few hundred dollars. I know, I’m a jerk for burying it in Chapter 10. But I’m putting it here because it’s about to be important. And I figure you should know how we learned what it meant to be a Cunningham: to close ourselves off and protect each other. That was the door that Sofia had felt closing on her at the breakfast table. And even me, the very definition of an outcast, had only half-heartedly stuck up for her, still trying to keep one foot inside the circle. That was how we did things. Until I saw a sliver of my father in Michael’s eyes that night in a spider-web clearing, and tried to run as far away from it as I could.

Non fueris locutus . . . I forget the rest.

CHAPTER 11