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I sighed and rubbed my face. “I’m not playing host.”
“I hoped you would. Show me around. I want to know what it was like for little Melanie growing up around here.”
“Pass.”
“Come on, it’ll be fun.”
“For who?” I shook my head and gestured. “Well, come on. Let’s get this over with.”
He followed, looking delighted, and I led him through the house for the real tour. I showed him where he’d be staying first, and then all the spaces I spent my childhood exploring: the library, the movie theater, the music room.
We ended out back on the long, wide porch overlooking the mountains. Trees lined the peaks and the stone stretched into the sky, nearly blotting the sun. I curled up in a chair, mentally praying for Redmond to arrive as soon as possible. Nervosa sat down beside me.
“Where’d you go to school?” he asked, staring into the distance at the wild expanse.
“Nowhere,” I said. “I had tutors.”
“Friends?”
“Staff, mostly. Children of staff. Those that were allowed inside, anyway. My mother was selective.”
“I’m not surprised.” He stroked his chin. “I grew up with two addict parents. They pulled me from school when I was eight and told the state they were homeschooling me, but mostly we wandered around the streets begging for change and pickpocketing when the day’s take looked light. At least until I started playing chess.”
“What did your adopted parents offer your real parents?” I asked, trying to imagine what could convince them to give their son up.
“Money, I suspect. Cash and drugs, and the promise that they’d give me a life my parents never could. And he was right. Father gave me more opportunity than I ever dreamed.”
“Where are they now? Your biological parents?”
He was quiet and shook his head. “I don’t know. Dead, likely. Somewhere far away, strung out and broken, possibly. They haven’t come forward and I haven’t gone looking. We’re at an impasse, one that I don’t think I’ll ever break.”
I tried to imagine what it must feel like, knowing your birth parents were out there somewhere. He grew up with them—his mother and father were a part of his formative years. That time sounded like a nightmare, but it must’ve been hard for him to separate what happened to him from the love he felt.
“I don’t know how you do it. Run this whole empire, knowing it isn’t yours.”
“It’s mine,” he said, and his tone was cold and sharp. “I worked for it. Father made sure of that. He trained me from the day I first walked into the Nervosa home. He was never easy on me, but that made me love him more. Each step of the way, he explained why he was doing what he was doing, and it made me stronger. It forged me into something new.” He closed his eyes and let out a breath. “Sometimes I wonder if I should find them. My birth parents. But I don’t think I need them anymore.”
“It must be hard. I’m sorry.”
“You don’t need to be.” He turned and looked over. His eyes were bright and shone with the long rays of the distant sun, yellow and strong. “You didn’t have it much better, did you?”
I went quiet. I looked down at my lap. I hadn’t said out loud what happened to me as a kid in a long time, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to start now. But Nervosa understood better than anyone the hell of a bad parent.
“My father. He wasn’t always a bastard. But something happened, and he became…” I trailed off, trying to find the words. There was no way to describe it.
“It’s okay.” Nervosa touched my hand with the tips of his fingers. Gentle, like he was brushing away an eyelash. “You don’t have to say, if you don’t want to.”
“I want to.” I leaned closer to him and caught his fingers in mine. They were strong and rough. Callused from hard work. So unlike a normal Oligarch.
“My father was abusive,” I said, squeezing his palm against mine. “He hit me sometimes, but mostly my older brother. They’d argue late into the night, screaming at each other, threatening to kill each other. Sometimes I thought they’d do it, and those were the worst. My mother wasn’t much better. She drank a lot, and when the fighting was the worst, she’d get involved and drive up the tension to boiling. It was like she enjoyed making Redmond and my dad suffer and rage at each other.”
“Sounds awful,” Nervosa said.
“I was stuck in the middle. Or maybe on the fringes. I was an afterthought, but never a good one. My father treated me like it was his duty to say hello once a day and beat me senseless when things went wrong. I was a ghost, drifting around. Redmond was the only person that ever cared, and he did his best to keep me safe, but he couldn’t be around at all times.”
