“It’s interesting that someone would try to frame you for killing another Bear, though,” Ash says. “Your Family tends to stick together—through love, hate, infighting. They don’t usually kill one of their own unless it was ordered and agreed upon.” He looks at me in a strange way and it dawns on me what he’s asking.

“Oh god, no. Definitely no. I was not sent to kill Stefano.” Asking someone to assassinate someone else in your Family is a thing? I want to laugh, it’s so ridiculous, except that apparently, I’m part of a Family that has been known to commit contract killings and I feel sickened by it.

“We know you weren’t,” Layla says, and rolls her eyes at Ash, “otherwise we wouldn’t be helping you.”

“My point is,” Ash says, “that whoever did this might have reason to think they could make Matteo believe that you would kill Stefano.”

I push my hair back from my forehead, not because I need to, but just to clear my thoughts. I went from living in a town where I know way too much about everyone to being in a castle where I don’t even know who I am. It’s like trying to figure out the rules of football when you’re already on the field with the ball in your hand and have twenty players running at you. “Okay, I see what you’re saying. Someone thinks my family and Matteo’s have some kind of long-standing grudge or grievance—potentially explaining why he punched me, and also making it believable that I might retaliate by killing his friend. Except, if there’s a problem between our immediate families, I don’t know anything about it.”

Layla looks at me oddly, like she’s not sure what to think. “Well, it’s likely that whoever set you up is aware of some sort of issue. It’s just hard to believe something so serious would have been kept from you.”

I’m starting to think that everything serious has been kept from me my entire life. “So then we start by looking at people who might know something about me? Honestly, I’m not sure who that would be besides…”

“Matteo?” Ash says, finishing my thought.

I hesitate. If I tell them Matteo thinks I look like someone, and that the only person I’ve ever looked like is my mother, I’ll be revealing practically all I know. On the other hand, keeping his observation to myself probably isn’t going to help me survive this. “He said I look like one of my family members, a dead one.”

“Huh,” Layla says.

“What?” I say, watching her reason through something.