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It sent a shock down his spine to have those large, dark eyes staring right into him.
“Is that so?” she whispered. “Tell me one of those things.”
He shook off the feeling that had overtaken him, that had left him frozen.
“Your father wished to sell you to pay off his debts,” he said, the words more caustic than he intended. “Mine never knew me.”
“Never?”
He did not know why he was compelled to answer that challenge, to share himself. Why should he? She was merely a shiny rock. A new trinket.
And yet a rock does not have eyes, no matter how shiny. She is one who will see you.
Soon, all the world would see him, so what did it matter?
Yet he found it did.
And he found himself replying to her.
“No,” he answered. “I was with my mother, off and on until I was fourteen. We lived in Edinburgh. Times were very hard. Sometimes, my mother was bright and happy and looking forward to a clean future. In other times, she was mired in her addictions. I loved her very much. She died of a drug overdose when I was sixteen, but I had not been living in her house for two years at that point. I met another teenager named Apollo. Two years younger than myself, he had been out on his own since he was ten. After my mother died we managed to get ourselves to London, we made money however we could. Eventually, we were able to take our ill-gotten funds and transform them into something legitimate. The foundation will always be made of those hardscrabble years. And I do not regret them.”
“Oh. I don’t know why, but I always imagined you in this castle.”
“No. I bought the castle ten years ago. As a refuge.”
He waited for her to ask why he needed a refuge. But at this point, she seemed well versed in what he refused to answer.
“How did you make money?”
“Do you really wish to know the answer?”
“Yes.”
“Petty theft at first. We were very good pickpockets, and Apollo has always been a great distraction. He was small for his age for a time.” It was hilarious now to think of his friend who was well over six feet as the small, scrawny boy he’d been with wide dark eyes, but he had been the sort of creature to ignite the pity in every passing woman on the street, and while he had sold a hard-luck story... Cameron had been ripping them off.
“Of course, that only got us a pittance. And we quickly realize there were other ways to make money. Elaborate scams take a long time to set up. The easiest thing to sell is sex.”
He watched her closely, to see if she was disgusted at the revelation.
“You... You sold yourself?”
She said it gravely, and yet he heard no judgment there.
“Yes. Easily. At that point we were hardened. It was of no cost to us. We were able to make quite a bit of money that way. Especially if you added a bit of blackmail on top of it. There are very few people who want to expose that they are paying for sex with teenage boys. Trust me on that.”
“That’s awful.”
She did pity him. But not his looks. His past.
What a strange creature. Where had she learned feelings such as this in the life she had lived?
Perhaps it was a testament to what he already suspected to be true. Life had to steal the softness from you. As it had done to him.
He had disconnected himself from his feelings to the point he could not find them if he tried.
When he’d found that guilt over Irina...
He added that to his collection. Like a dragon might hoard gold.
