I feel my whole body go rigid. Force myself to stay still. To listen.
"I asked who he was. He laughed and said 'the Phantom of the Opera.' I remember..." She pauses, and I hear the self-recrimination in her voice when she continues. "I remember I wasn't afraid. I should have been afraid. A strange man in a mask, calling me by name. But I wasn't."
"You were a child," I say, the words scraping out of my throat. "You couldn't have known."
"He was drinking whiskey," she says, as if I haven't spoken. "He asked if I wanted one. Said I was already a young woman." Another bitter laugh. "I felt so flattered. So grown up. I said yes."
My hand finds hers where it rests on my chest. I lace our fingers together and hold on.
"He went to the cart. Poured me a glass." Her voice is barely audible now. "I don't remember anything after that."
I feel wetness on my chest. Her tears on my skin.
"The next thing I remember is waking up in my bed the next morning. My shirt was pushed up. My pants were pulled down. And there was..." She stops. Takes a shuddering breath. "There was residue white and dried on my belly. I knew what it was. Even at twelve, I knew."
Rage erupts inside my chest, hot, violent, demanding blood and vengeance. I want to find the man who did this and tear him apart with my bare hands. Set the world on fire until there's nothing left but ash and justice.
But this moment isn't about me. There will be time for vengeance later. Right now, Victoria needs me to be her anchor. Her safe harbor. Her protection against anything that might hurt her ever again.
I hold her tighter. Let her cry against my chest. Don't say anything because there are no words adequate for this horror.
"I thought I'd been raped," she whispers. "For years, I thought... But tonight, with you, I realized I was wrong. I was drugged. Used. But not..." She swallows. "Not all the way. I know that doesn't make it better. But somehow, knowing... It helps. A little."
"Do you know who it was?" The question comes out calm. Measured. Completely at odds with the murderous rage burning in my veins. "The man in the mask?"
"No." The word is small. Defeated. "I told my father. The next morning, I told him what happened. What I found when I woke up."
"What did he say?"
"He said I must have dreamed it." Her voice is flat now. Empty. "And then he shipped me off to boarding school."
Arthur Ainsley.
The name rises in my mind like a curse. The father who sold her to me. The piece of shit who dismissed his twelve-year-old daughter's assault as a dream and sent her away rather than face the truth.
Maybe I'll let Ramiz Krasniqi do whatever he wants to the man. Or maybe I'll do it myself. With my brothers beside me, making it slow and painful and lasting.
"Rest now," I tell her, voice thick with emotions I can barely contain. "You're exhausted. We can talk more tomorrow."
I feel her body growing heavier against mine. Her breathing slowing as exhaustion finally claims her.
She's almost asleep when she speaks again. The words barely audible against my skin.
"All I remember about him," she whispers, "was a tattoo on his hand. A wolf with a dagger between its teeth."
I go completely still.
Her hand rests over my heart.
Over the scar where my own matching tattoo once lived before I burned it from my flesh.
And in the dark, with her heartbeat against my chest, I understand the truth I never saw coming.
The man who destroyed my life is the same man who destroyed hers.
21
VICTORIA
