She'd pretend to enjoy the most boring court footage imaginable—hours of procedural testimony, legal arguments, dry case analysis—because my father loved it. Would sit beside him on the couch, nodding at appropriate moments, askingquestions she didn't care about, smiling so wide one could see all her teeth.
Performing interest like it was a second job.
My mother loved romance novels. The trashier, the better. Dukes, rakes, and women who talked back.
But she only read my father’s favorite sci-fi books. The hard, technical ones with more equations than emotions.
Because my father didn't respect romance. Said it made women weak. Made them stupid. Made them believe in fantasies that would ruin them.
So she read what he read.
Watched what he watched.
Became a mirror of his interests until I couldn't remember what she actually liked anymore.
And even now—even with him in prison, even with her free to be whoever the hell she wanted—she still wouldn't touch a romance novel.
Every Christmas, I buy her the latest romance hardcover anyway. Wrap it in pretty paper. Write the same message inside the front cover:Mommy, be you. Live your life. Read this. Learn something cool in here. Look at the possibilities of love.
She'd smile.
Thank me.
Set it on a shelf.
I doubted she ever read them.
Because even after the man who'd controlled her was gone, the performance had become her. She didn't know how to stop pretending. Didn't know who she was without the mirror.
Yeah. I’m raising Mami to the top of the list now. Although I’m looking at all three.
Hiro grabbed my attention. "We should check the bedrooms."
I nodded, but couldn't stop looking at that final painting—Sol entangled with both twins, worshipped, claimed, andseen.
One woman.
Two dragon-kings who would burn the world for her.
And here, three women burned themselves trying to be chosen by one man who couldn't even see them clearly enough to notice they were performing.
I looked at him. "Do you like the book?"
Something shifted in Hiro's expression—not quite a smile, but close. "I like the parts with the twin dragons and their. . .entanglements with Sol."
Heat crept up my neck at the way he said that word.
He moved closer to the final painting—the one with Sol between both twins, their bodies curved around hers in obvious intimacy. "When we were children, Kenji snuck this book out of our father's library. It obviously wasn't meant for children. In fact, the edition Kenji stole should have been locked away."
"Why?"
"It had illustrations." Hiro's mouth curved. "Very explicit ones. As a kid reading that story and seeing the images, it felt deliciously naughty to me. Forbidden. Those images were. . ."
Lust crossed his face. "They were the first time I'd ever seen such things. The first time I understood what. . .sex could look like."
My pulse kicked up.
"Kenji and I would read it together, hidden in his room. Poring over those illustrations. And we decided—right there, as boys—that we'd be like the twin dragons. That we'd share everything. Including women."
