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“She had a garden she cared for, and nothing else. Not even a name, no identity whatsoever.”
“Until Mero,” Raven guesses, reaching out for Maddoc’s hand.
Perkins nods. “She’d never even seen beyond the walls she lived in until Mero Malcari showed up and bartered for her. She went from being invisible to being adored. From having her own garden to her own greenhouse. Mero was everything to her, so she followed him blindly. It wasn’t until she came here, she began to question everything she ever knew.
“After years of coaching her, he was finally ready to come home, back to Brayshaw. He asked his precious tool to come first.” I glare, and he moves his eyes to the ground a moment. “Her job was to find one secret, something nobody else knew. She started with who she saw as the weakest link.”
Weakest link?
He must see it, because he shakes his head. “Not you, Captain.”
“Mallory,” Maddoc guesses.
Perkins nods. “He set her up in a hotel for a week, but it only took her twelve hours. She knew everything there was to know about this town, the Brayshaws and her bloodline, the Gravens, or at least Mero’s version of the truths, so she knew what he would do with what she’d found out.
“For the first time Victoria was faced with a moral decision, and she chose right. She waited out her time here and went back to the man who gave her a purpose in life, the man she idolized until that moment, and lied straight to his face. She let him down for the first time in her life, to save a baby she had no ties to.”
“He knew she lied.”
Perkins nods again. “And he punished her for it, severely, but she was his future, as he saw it, so he made sure it was nowhere anyone could see.”
Her scars.
He cut her up, blended his marks with the marks left by the thorns from the ivy tower she was once locked inside of. A reminder she was not free, though she might have felt so.
“As I said, Mero saw her as his future, so from the moment he had her, he began making sure she was ready for what that meant.”
“He taught her how to defend herself,” Raven whispers.
“Yes,” Perkins says. “She fought back and won.”
She killed him.
“Victoria was on my doorstep, bloodied and frail, not twenty-four hours later. I was ready to send her off, thought she was some crazy looking for a payout, when she threatened exposing me as your biological father,” he tells me, a small smile finding his mouth. “Still not sure how she figured that one out.”
“She’s smart.” My body aches.
He nods. “I didn’t know what to do with her, so I leased a small place on the edge of town and put her inside it. Mallory disappeared a week later.”
She didn’t convince Mallory to leave me like Mallory twisted the situation to make me believe.
She convinced her to keep Zoey, and the only way to get Mallory to agree, was to hide her away. She’d have the baby and walk away like nothing happened, and nobody would ever know.
“She moved her in.”
“I didn’t learn that until later, but yes,” he confirms. “During the pregnancy, she made her way to you guys. She convinced me to get her in contact with your dad and went to see him. I was surprised when he so easily gave her a safe place in the girl’s Bray house, and had Maybell help enroll her into school. From that day, she spent every other giving back to your family the only way she knew how.”
“Finding and giving us secrets.” Maddoc frowns.
“You said Mero bartered for Victoria.”
Perkins’ chin lowers the tiniest bit as if he was waiting for me to ask.
“Why would he do that? Her being Graven blood meant nothing, they didn’t claim her. Why did he want her?”
I look across my brothers, swiveling around when my dad’s voice interrupts.
He steps through the doorway, farther out onto the porch.
“Go on, Perkins.” He gives the man permission to tell what he must have hidden. “He asked you a question. Answer.”
Slowly, we look back to Perkins.
“Mero could have taken any girl and turned her into his little revenge machine, but he wanted to add insult to injury.” Perkins glances over our heads once more and then back to us. “He wanted the daughter of the Graven maid, the innocent infant girl your dad tried to save as a noble man would, when he refused the innocent son of a maid of his own, a son of Brayshaw.”
“What...” Royce draws out.
Panic and anger knot in my chest.
Refused a son...
Perkins locks his eyes on mine.
“Victoria came here, found out what she needed to know, and went back, lied to Mero,” I repeat what he told us. “How did he know she was lying?”
