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He was quiet for a while, but I knew he would ask about her. Maybe that’s why I brought it up. Sometimes, I thought of her. Sometimes I missed her, and other times I hated her. Mostly, I didn’t even know if she was ever real because it had been so long since I’d seen her face.
“When did your mom leave?” he asked.
My foot edged toward the door, an old habit that eased some of the anxiety during difficult conversations. “I’m not sure. I was six, I think.”
“Where did she go?”
“Ricky always said she went back to her clan. She was a gypsy, but she’d been shunned, and that’s how she ended up with him in the first place. So, I don’t think she really went back.”
“What do you think really happened?” Cristian asked.
“I think Ricky killed her, probably.”
Cristian’s posture changed, and I could practically feel the tension taking up space between his bones. I’d never admitted it out loud to anyone before, not even Birdie. I told her that Mom had to go back to her clan, and we weren’t allowed because we were only half gypsy. She hadn’t ever questioned it.
“And Ricky was not your real father?” Cristian’s voice was delicate as though he thought his questions might break me.
“No, he was her pimp. We don’t know who our fathers were. I don’t even know if my mom knew.”
Another silence. It hurt to admit my truth, and I didn’t know why. It shouldn’t hurt so much anymore. I was an adult now. I’d made it through the worst of my life. It was stupid that I came here and confessed these things. They weren’t important, but Cristian seemed to disagree.
“Sometimes it helps just to say things out loud,” he acknowledged gently.
“Yeah, I guess.” I nodded. “But that’s why. My schooling wasn’t a priority when I had to take care of my sister. I never resented it, but now I don’t know what else to be. I don’t know how to be anything else.”
“It’s never too late to change,” he said. “You are still young. You have your life ahead of you. Perhaps you should set your fears aside and just take it one day at a time instead of looking at the big picture.”
It was good advice, but I still didn’t know how I was going to handle it. The whole idea was terrifying. “Do you ever wish you could change something, Cristian?”
He cleared his throat, and when he answered, his voice was filled with torment.
“Yes, I do.”
SINCE I ENROLLED IN SCHOOL, Lucian had relaxed the leash a little. He was at work for the rest of the day, and I finally had the house to myself. A golden opportunity to snoop through everything.
And snoop I did.
But as it turned out, Lucian didn’t have anything of significance in this house. If he did, it was probably in the safe I found in the bedroom closet, but unfortunately for me, I didn’t know how to access whatever was in there.
Apart from that, I searched the house high and low but came up empty in the end. Even the desk key I thought might be my golden ticket turned up nothing but a bunch of office supplies. The only certainty I’d gleaned was that Lucian was a minimalist to the extreme. There wasn’t a single family photo in his home. Not a birth certificate. A birthday card. Literally zero evidence that he even had a life outside his office.
It only created more questions about him, and in the end, my Google search wasn’t any better. Page after page turned up endless articles about the controversial cases he’d worked, and there were simply too many to sift through them all. The ones I did manage to read reflected the same scathing opinions of his character. He didn’t do himself any favors by forgoing the opportunity to defend himself in interviews either. The persisting evidence suggested he declined any questions not relating to his clients. His standoffishness and permanent scowl only furthered the agenda of the media firing squad.
Admittedly, I had the same sour sentiments when he blew into my life with all the delicacy of a hurricane. But now, reading such awful accounts of him was somewhat sickening. It wasn’t that I had bonded to him, but I’d come to know a few things about Lucian in our time together, and I didn’t really believe he was quite the monster he was painted to be.
I decided it was probably best if I stopped reading those articles altogether and pushed my feelings aside, because at that moment, it was difficult to make sense of them.
Lucian had given me a set of rules for my time, and I knew at any given moment he could be tracking me. But he’d returned my phone and my car keys and even purchased a laptop for my studies.
