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“You worked for the Avery family?” Shock is obvious in my tone.
She nods, and I think back to the few times my mother has been in the same room as them. If she was barely seventeen herself, Liam and Camilla wouldn’t have been born yet. Thiago would, although he’d have been too young to have any memory of her.
But Bea would remember her.
“It’s why I couldn’t show my face when he came to take you. I was afraid he’d recognize me.”
“I’m not following.”
“I worked as part of their household staff. I’d only been there a few months when he… noticed me.” She shifts her gaze down and I see something else I have never seen in my mother. Shame.
“Mom?”
“He had a taste for certain young women. Women who are under his control. Who can’t refuse. That can’t come as a surprise to you.”
It’s not. But fuck. My mother?
She swallows hard and looks up, and I see the effort it takes her to meet my eyes. “He doesn’t take no for an answer. You know that better than anyone.” She’s trying to hold back her tears, but a sob breaks from her throat. She wipes furiously at her eyes.
“Jesus.” I’m up on my feet again. Pacing. Jesus. Fuck. No. Not this.
“I needed the work. My parents depended on me. I couldn’t leave. And he knew it.” She takes a minute to pour herself another full glass of wine and drinks that, too. “It went on for six weeks. When I learned I was pregnant, I left. I ran away before he could find out. Because I was damned if I was going to let him get his hooks into my baby.”
“Did Bea know?”
“As far as she was concerned, I was willingly going to his bed. But it wasn’t ever a choice.”
“How did you manage to get away from him?”
She puts one hand over her mouth, slides it up to her forehead. She holds her hair back so I can see the scar fully. The skin is paler than the rest of her face, and bumpy.
“Shehelpedme.”
Bile rises in my throat.
My mother snorts, an ugly laugh accompanied by tears. “Although I suppose ‘helped’ isn’t quite the word,” she continues. “She found the pregnancy test and came to me with a solution. She wanted me gone as much as I wanted to be gone, but it’s not like you can walk away from that man. That family. So, she made me an offer.”
She picks up the bottle of wine, but I take it from her and set it aside. I hold onto her trembling hands.
“Tell me.”
It takes her a long time to continue. “She offered me a way out. Money. A means of disappearing.” She says all this with her eyes lowered, and when she turns them up to me, I see how dark her usual sky-blue is. How clouded in shadow. “But there was a price. I had to be punished first.”
“She did that to you.” It’s not a question.
She nods. “It could have been worse. She could have taken an eye. She was always a jealous bitch, jealous of any woman her pig husband looked at twice. As if any of us wanted his attention.” Her voice is bitter at the end but stronger for it, more like the woman I know.
“Acid?”
“Her specialty. And I know I’m lucky, Santos. I’ve seen what she’s done to the unlucky ones.”
“Dad never knew?”
“No. Never.”
“The Commander coming for me, after Alexia… How did he findme?”
She studies me for a minute, then shakes her head. “I’m sure he heard what you did and who your father was, what your father was. Back then, Brutus was a low-level thug, and the Commander must have thought you’d be just like him. Why not have a young, strong man who is indebted to him be his enforcer? If he could do it to Thiago, his own son, why not you?”
