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“I’ve already taken a bite.”
She gives me a knowing glare. “How long were you in foster care?”
“It doesn’t matter. Long enough.”
“It matters to me. It’s my job.”
“Then you know it’s not all rainbows and butterflies,” I reply. “I have no interest in anyone’s pity. Especially not yours.”
Her eyes narrow to slits. Or as close as she can get, anyway. She says she’s fine, but I can tell she doesn’t have full control of herself. Her movements are slow and sloppy. Her lack of control is unnerving.
I lean closer, ready to make up for her weakness. If she falls, I want to be the one to catch her.
“Then you should know I’d never pity you for something like that.” The venom in her voice drains away. “Especially because I didn’t exactly have an idyllic childhood myself.”
“Shitty parents. I remember.”
She pokes at the food on her plate. “Yeah. It’s the club no one wants to be in. And the club no one wants to talk about, apparently.”
“I’m not part of your fucking club.”
“Of course not.” She rolls her eyes. “How dare I mistake you for a joiner? You’re the handsome man in the dark corner with your arms crossed and a scowl on.”
I arch a brow. “So you think I’m handsome?”
She jolts. “That wasn’t what I—” Piper stares at me for a few seconds and then blows out a breath. “One thing about you: your time in the system didn’t affect your self-esteem. Count yourself lucky.”
“Sergey made me earn my keep. I wouldn’t still be here if I wasn’t worthy.”
It’s a simple truth, but I know immediately Piper is homing in on it. She’s been doing this for years. In my experience, if social workers know how to do anything, it’s making something out of nothing.
“So you’ve always worked for Sergey?” she asks. “Doing…whatever it is you all do here?”
“Since he adopted me, yeah.”
It’s another truth. A harmless one. But if I play it right, these little truths will pay big dividends. I have Rooney looking into her background, but if I can put Piper at ease and get something out of her now, all the better.
“Sergey needed an heir, and he didn’t want a wife,” I continue. “Having a bastard was an option, but an inconvenient one. Taking in an orphan solved his problem. There was no one else to claim me.”
“An orphan…” she says softly, her voice trailing off. “I guess that means…”
“Dead parents.” I hold up two fingers. “Count ‘em.”
Her face creases into a wince. “Both of them? I’m so sorry. Life isn’t easy without your parents.”
It’s been years. Decades. Still, the question prickles at something sensitive in my chest. The guard I lowered earlier snaps back into place.
“Sergey is my parent,” I say flatly.
“Right. Of course he is.” Piper sighs and plants an elbow on the table. I can’t help but notice she’s leaning on it heavily. Her burnt arm is folded tenderly in her lap.
“I don’t want to claim my birth parents, so believe me, I get it. They didn’t want to claim me most of the time, either.” She chuckles darkly, but there is a pain in her green eyes. I’ve caught a few glimpses of it since we first met. “I guess you could say it was a mutual decision to part ways.”
“You mean a CPS agent didn’t have to bust into your house and rip you out of your crying mother’s arms?”
The words come out with more bite than I expect them to. Part of it is because I can see my own mother, too exhausted to get off the couch, tears soaking her cheeks.
I blink the image away. Piper’s face is there instead.
