“For a few months. Then her father took me in. We . . . didn’t get along.”

“He threw her out when she was pregnant,” Michael said. “I hate him and I don’t even know him.”

That made Diesel smile a little, but he couldn’t hold on to it and his shoulders drooped. “My mother hated him, too. So much so that she converted to another religion because her father had used his as an excuse to shame her. She wanted no part of the Catholic church. Anyway, she got her associate’s degree in office management when I was six years old, and went to work as a receptionist in a doctor’s office. She was making pretty decent money and we moved to a nicer apartment. I got a bicycle and a few toys. I went to a better school than the one I would have gone to before we moved. My mother was so grateful to the doctor for giving her a job.”

Michael had grown still, his dread a palpable thing. “It was the doctor.”

Diesel nodded. “It was the doctor,” he echoed, still signing and voicing so that Dani could hear. “He let my mom bring me to work when I didn’t have school. There was a playroom in the back of the office. It had toys, a worktable. And a door that locked.”

Michael’s throat worked as he tried to swallow. “You were Joshua’s age.”

“A year older, yeah. The first time.”

“It hurt,” Michael signed, his hand movements so small that Diesel would have missed them had Michael not chosen to also speak the words.

Diesel wasn’t going to lie to the boy. “I was six. I was small. So yeah. It hurt a lot and I cried and begged him to stop. So he spanked me. Hard. Then he told me not to tell my mother. That it would be our secret. That she wouldn’t like knowing that I’d been bad and he’d had to spank me.”

Diesel could hear Dani’s gasp and her shuddered exhale. It sounded wet. Like she was crying. He’d expected as much. Which was why this was an easier way to tell her. He didn’t think he could stand to see the sorrow in her eyes.

Michael’s sorrow was different. It was more . . . a sorrow of understanding. Not pity or even sympathy.

“He was wrong,” Michael said aloud, his voice breaking.

“Yes, he was. But I didn’t know that then. I was six.” Diesel drew in a breath. “And then seven and then eight. I started to act out in school when I was nine. Got a reputation as a bad kid. Figured I’d earn the rep and I beat up a lot of the other students. I was skinny, but I wasn’t gonna be weak. Even if that meant beating up on kids smaller than me.”