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“It’s not about insecurity. You don’t understand.”
“Then explain it.”
Nothing.
“If we’re running in the same circles with these people, I should be prepared, don’t you think?”
“You won’t be seeing them again.”
“I doubt that. They seemed pretty determined to corner me.”
He checks his watch, jaw tight. “The Averys… They’re a poison, Madelena. They destroy anything they touch. I won’t let them touch you.”
“They said they knew you. Really well, actually. Were you with Camilla or something?” I find myself sounding defensive when I ask the question, not really sure why I’d ask that.
“Camilla?” There’s a burst of unhinged laughter. “She’s a fucking psychopath. Exactly like her father.”
“Her father, the Commander?”
His eyes narrow, but he nods once. That’s something. “I lived with them for a time. Not by choice. And they don’t like how I left. Satisfied?”
“How long?”
“Does it matter?”
“It does to me. Tell me. And don’t lie about it.”
“I have never lied to you.”
“Withholding is lying,” I say.
“It’s a mercy.”
“I don’t want your mercy. Why do they hate you?”
“Madelena—”
“Just tell me.”
He studies me, and a moment later, he must make some decision or maybe see some way out because his posture relaxes a little. “Their father disappeared around the time I left,” he says grimly.
“Disappeared?” A chill makes the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.
Santos nods. “Don’t feel sorry for him. He was an evil man. Inhuman.”
“Was?”
This, he doesn’t answer with words but with a long, heavy silence. He then releases me and steps backward, taking a moment to look out of the window onto the quiet, dark street below. “Thiago’s scar? The Commander gave it to him—a lesson in obedience.”
I feel nauseated. How fathers can hurt their own flesh and blood is something I’ll never be able to wrap my brain around. Mothers too.
“His wife, Bea, is no better. All they left were scars,” Santos adds, sounding distracted and, strangely, sad. Hopeless.
“Did he leave the marks on you?” I ask, my mouth going dry. “Those lines?”
It’s so long before he speaks that I’m not sure he’s going to answer me. Finally, he turns to me, studies me, and his answer when he does respond is more unsettling than I imagined it could be. “No, sweetheart,” he says, his tone defeated. “The scars he left me with run much deeper.”
I’m confused, trying to process, to figure out how to respond. His gaze moves over my face and hovers at my mouth.
