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I wouldn’t deny that the Malik family was a rare breed, but it was one that I recognized. I’d met plenty of psychopaths who justified beating up on the most fragile members of society. Hell, I’d been raised by two of them.
Had my life gone a little differently, I could have become one of them.
Julius continued the drive without a comment, but I knew he was silently processing the information, marking it to his memory as he drove. Blaze was occupied with tracking down the other entries on the coded lists. I was the only one who could see how off-balance Dess looked. It didn’t fit the woman I knew at all.
How could I get her back on track?
“It’s awful, but we’ll put an end to it,” I told her in the most reassuring tone I could offer. “We’ll end them, and not one more kid will die at their hands.”
Dess completely buried her face in her hands and gave a shaky sigh. “It’s not just that. If it was just that, I wouldn’t feel like this.”
I hesitated and then forced myself to ask, “How are you feeling?”
Her shoulders drooped, but the muscles in her arms flexed at the same time. “It’s just—” She took a deep breath. “I hate them with everything in me. I hate that the Malik family has apparently been killing innocent children for a century, and I hate that they’ve gotten away with it. I hate that they’re sick and demented, and I want to kill them for taking Garrison from us.”
She stopped again, almost as if she was done speaking. I could tell she wasn’t really finished, though.
“But?” I prompted.
She cleared her throat and lowered her voice. I didn’t know if it was because she didn’t want to be heard or if it was because she felt guilty saying whatever was about to leave her lips. I leaned forward, intent on hearing every word of it.
“I just found them,” she whispered. “I thought I’d get a chance at having an actual family, the way I was supposed to if the household hadn’t kidnapped me, and it almost happened. They welcomed me, they were so happy to have me back… and the whole time they were monsters. It’d give anyone whiplash, wouldn’t it?”
“Of course it would,” Julius said in an even voice.
I studied Dess’s face, sensing that she hadn’t quite finished spilling her guts. She looked too agonized still.
She dropped her hands into her lap and looked down at them. “They’re not that different from me. I go out and kill criminals, and say it’s fine because those people were hurting innocents. They’re killing in order to hurt criminals.”
“It isn’t the same,” I said with a rare surge of anger. “We attack the people who are the actual problem. Those kids couldn’t have done anything wrong. They torture and murder the innocents we would be protecting. It’s the opposite.”
“I know. It’s just… a lot to take in. And I have to deal with them as soon as possible, I have to look at them after everything…” She growled to herself.
If it’d been anyone else responsible for those deaths, I was sure she’d have been ready to mow them down without any hesitation. But she’d been drawn in by the dream of having a loving family, and it had to be hard not to want to try to put the pieces back together even after that dream was shattered. She’d finally found her relatives after more than twenty years, and now she had to kill them to stop something even more horrible from continuing.
For her not to feel conflicted about that, she’d have to be made of steel and stone. Like me.
I’d been out of my depth for this entire conversation, but suddenly it occurred to me that I might be the best person to tackle her current dilemma. It meant dredging up memories I preferred not to dwell on, let alone talk about, but for her, I could ignore the minor discomfort.
It was just the past. Julius already knew the basics. I didn’t mind if Blaze did too. They were my family now—the truest family I could ever want.
“I’m going to tell you a story,” I said.
Dess peered at me, knitting her brow, and waited.
I leaned back in my seat, holding her gaze. “My parents died when I was a toddler—not much older than you were when the household took you. I was sent to live with my maternal grandfather and his new wife. They were… not happy about being saddled with me. Or maybe they weren’t happy about much of anything.”
“They didn’t treat you well,” Dess filled in, and stiffened. “Your scars.”
A humorless chuckle fell from my lips. “Yes. I don’t think a day went by without them yelling at me and beating on me in some way—smacks and kicks from my grandfather, pinches and cigarette burns from his wife. Occasionally they went off in a wild enough rage that I ended up bleeding or with a broken bone. I’m probably lucky they didn’t kill me.”
Dess winced. “I’m so sorry.”
I shrugged. “It was a long time ago. But it’s shaped a lot of who I am today. They were most often set off by any sign of emotion—if I laughed at a funny TV show. If I cried over a bee sting. Shit like that would definitely mean a beat-down. So I learned not to show what I was feeling.” And after a while I’d stopped feeling much of anything in the first place.
But that wasn’t what I was telling Dess this story for. I pushed onward. “No matter what I did, they used me as a punching bag. The most I could control was just how bad it got. It took me a long time to realize that kind of treatment wasn’t normal. I couldn’t remember being ‘parented’ any other way. But even before I realized just how awful they were, I knew I hated it. As I got older, I threw myself into training—muscle-building, fighting techniques, weapons—anything I could find through videos on the internet or other means that gave me back a sense of power.”
“That makes sense,” Dess said quietly. The compassion shining in her eyes woke up a strange ache inside me that I didn’t know what to make of.
