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“She does, Anton,” Conor rumbled softly. “She only went down this path and ended up where she did because she needed to understand what happened to her mom.”
Anton appeared to ponder that before, eventually, conceding, “The reason I don’t need to avenge her is because she’s already avenged.”
“Dagda’s living and breathing in New York City.”
“And you yourself told me that Troy should not be erased for killing Aleks.”
“Who was behind her death?”
“He’s currently sitting in a shipping container in the Catskills listening to his colleagues being eaten by the local fauna.”
“Sheridan Reinier was behind my mom’s death?” I cried, digging my nails into the leather armrests to hold me back. Conor’s hand slipped over mine, and I knotted my fingers with his, clenching down so hard that it undoubtedly hurt us both.
Anton rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Your mother was a beautiful woman. She was memorable. Too memorable. Reinier met her when he and Davidson came to Moscow. When she was a part of my guard,” he clarified.
I swallowed. “He recognized her.”
“Yes. And used it as a hold on her.” His mouth tightened. “I suspected for many years that she was… that she’d turned. Had become a Sparrow. It was one of the reasons why I kept my distance. Not just from the investigation into her passing but from you too. I only waded in once I knew what they’d done to you, and like always, I was too late.”
“I wondered what prompted your involvement,” Conor mused. “Now, and not back then, I mean. What changed?”
Anton shot me a pointed look. “My granddaughter waded into the fray and began killing my colleagues then targeted me.”
“Don’t expect an apology out of me.”
“I expect nothing from you apart from a bad attitude,” he sniped.
I grunted.
“Was she a Sparrow?” Conor asked.
“Temperance Black has spoken with Reinier while under our custody. I’ve been assured that Galena wasn’t a Sparrow, nor a double agent.”
“So why kill her?”
“Because Reinier spoke with her personally. She had to die because she could implicate him as a Sparrow.” He rubbed his chin. “As long as there are Sparrows, there will be Brothers. I like to think we are better, but in this, I’m as bad as one of them—my satisfaction in knowing of their suffering knows no bounds. Those men killed my children. I’m glad their pain will be excruciating before they are robbed of their lives, just as they did with my Aleks and Galena.” His gaze was measured as he leveled me with a verbal blow: “Your mother does not deserve to be hated.”
“You acted as if she—”
“Do you know the pain of losing two children, Star?”
There was such agony in his voice that even I, in all my selfish, childish rage at a mother who’d abandoned me too soon, quieted.
“It is the nature of life for a child to lose a parent but to suffer the reverse? Twice?” He shook his head. “Their sacrifice wasn’t in vain, but that makes it no less of a sacrifice.”
“I-I thought you resented her,” I rasped.
“I did. For dying. I lead a double life, child. There are few who know all of me and your mother was one such person. Aleks was younger than her and there were… There were things he didn’t know about me.”
“Things Mom did?”
He dipped his chin. “Weaknesses of mine, strengths. She was a good girl. The best daughter. Yes, Reinier deserves his suffering. It is not in me to be needlessly cruel, but I see nothing needless about his end.”
“Why was she with my dad? Was it love?” I braced myself. “Or was it a mission?”
“It started as a mission, an easy means of traveling the globe, hitting the major cities without suspicion—travel back then wasn’t as laissez-faire as it is now. Then, over time, it became love. She wouldn’t have stayed with him, wouldn’t have given birth to you if that weren’t the case.”
“How do you know? Why did I never meet you?”
