"Your father is a murderer." The words are flat, emotionless. Stating a fact. "He killed my mother. Slit her throat with her ownknife—thisknife." She holds up the blade, letting the light catch it. "Did he ever tell you that story? How he butchered a woman in cold blood and left her daughter to find the body?"
My stomach turns.
Not from the words—I knew my father had killed Freya.
I knew it was violent, but hearing it from her daughter, seeing the knife that did it...
"Your mother was a monster," I say, because it's true. "She trafficked women. Girls. Children. My brother. She destroyed lives."
"She was my mother." Solveig's voice cracks, just for a moment. A flash of something human beneath the ice. "She was all I had, and he took her from me."
"I'm sorry."
"No you're not." She laughs, sharp and bitter. "But you will be."
She stands, beginning to pace around my chair in slow circles.
I track her movement as best I can, but she keeps disappearing into my blind spots, and each time she does, my heart rate spikes.
The knife glints in and out of my peripheral vision.
"Do you know what happened to me after she died?" Solveig asks. "I was six years old. I came home from school and found her on the floor, lying in a pool of her own blood. So much blood—I didn't know a person had that much in them. I thought she was sleeping at first. I tried to wake her up. I shook her and shook her and she wouldn't open her eyes."
She pauses behind me.
I feel her fingers touch my hair, gentle and wrong.
An intimate gesture from a stranger who wants me dead.
"I remember the smell," she continues, her voice soft now. Almost dreamlike. "Blood has a smell. Metallic. Warm. It gotinto everything—my clothes, my hair. I sat with her body for hours before someone found us. A neighbor who heard me screaming."
"Solveig—"
"The police came. Child services. They put me in foster care—a group home at first, then a family. A good Christian family, they said. The Nichols. They were going to give me a fresh start. A new life. A chance to heal from the trauma of finding my mother murdered." Her voice goes flat. Dead. "Mr. Nichols started coming to my room at night when I was eight. His wife knew. She pretended she didn't, but she knew. She'd turn up the TV so she couldn't hear me crying."
My stomach lurches. "Solveig?—"
"Don't." Her fingers tighten in my hair, yanking my head back. I gasp at the sudden pain, tears springing to my eyes. "Don't say my name like we're friends. Don't pretend you care about what happened to me. You're the daughter of the man who destroyed my life. You don't get to feel sorry for me."
She releases my hair and continues pacing.
"I ran away when I was fourteen. Lived on the streets. Did things I'm not proud of to survive—things that would make you sick if I described them. But I never forgot." She comes around to face me again, crouching down so we're eye level.
The knife dangles from her fingers, casual and terrifying. "I never forgot who killed my mother. I never forgot the name Runes. I never forgot that somewhere out there, the man who destroyed everything was living his life, raising his children, pretending to be a good person while I was being passed around like a piece of meat."
"My father didn't know what would happen to you," I say. "He didn't know about the foster care, about Nichols?—"
"Like he would care." Her voice is ice. "He killed my mother and walked away. He didn't think about the little girl she leftbehind. Didn't think about the consequences. Didn't think about anything except his precious club and his precious revenge."
"Your mother was trafficking children. Children including my brother. She was destroying lives?—"
"She was my mother!" The words explode out of her, raw and ragged.
For a moment, the mask slips, and I see the broken child underneath—the six-year-old girl who sat in her mother's blood, waiting for someone to come. "She was all I had. She was the only person in the world who loved me. And he took her away."
The moment passes. The ice returns.
"So yes," she says, her voice steady again. "I rebuilt her network. I became exactly what she was. Because that was the only way to become powerful enough to hurt the people who hurt me. Eye for an eye, Dalla. It's the oldest law in the world."
