Gently steering her back onto the main path, he began to walk with her. “Tell me why you chose roses.”
Another command.
She wrinkled her nose, but not because she was offended. There was something… charming about his apparent inability to askquestions.Instead, he seemed to default to a demand. Did he think asking would get him a refusal, or was it because he was simply used to getting things he wanted?
“Oh, well, that’s because of my grandmother,” she answered, stopping to point out another bush. “That’s a shot silk rose. When it blooms, it almost looks like a peony. It has the most gorgeous, ruffled petals you’ll ever see. It doesn’t grow from seed very well, so the previous owner of the estate must have gotten a cutting, though I haven’t been able to determine from where yet.”
Mr. Bounds tilted his head, listening intently as she rattled off her theories about where that cutting might have come from, before he pressed, “What about your grandmother made you want to specialize in roses?”
“My grandmother was from Turkey — specifically from a little town a few hours outside of Istanbul. When I was a kid, we used to visit twice a year. She was a greenwitch, too, and had the most incredible rose garden.” Zia sighed, thinking wistfully of her golden summer days spent running barefoot with her older brothers in heranneanne’slush yard.
Smiling hard enough to make her cheeks ache, she continued, “Oh, you should haveseenthe roses she grew, Mr. Bounds! These gorgeous climbing roses covered half her house, and then in the back she had these massive white roses. I swear, they never stopped blooming no matter what time of year it was. Every time we visited, she would cut some and put them next to my bed so my room would smell like roses when we arrived.”
She caught his eye and her grin fell. Realizing she was rambling, Zia sucked in a deep breath of cold air and forced herself to stop. “Sorry,” she said, looking down at her sturdy work boots. “That was more information than you probably wanted. The shorter answer is that my grandmother liked roses and she passed that onto me.”
“I didn’t know my grandmother.”
Zia’s eyes flew back up. He didn’t look particularly bothered by his admission, but rather pensive. “Oh, I’m sorry. That must have been hard for your family.”
Mr. Bounds shrugged. “I don’t have any family. My mother left me on the street when I was a newborn.”
Zia’s fingers spasmed on his forearm. Horror tightened her chest. “That’sawful.I am so, so sorry, Mr. Bounds.”
He cocked his head to one side and furrowed his brow. Confusion flickered across the harsh planes of his face. “For what? You didn’t do anything to me.”
“No,” she replied, even more horrified by his confusion over basic empathy than his past. “I just feel for you. That must have been awful. Were you picked up by government services or Patrol or something?”
Mr. Bounds guided her over to another bush. His expression had closed off again, and for a moment, she worried that her question had crossed a line. Before she could apologize, he said, “No. I was born at the start of the war. At that time there wasn’t even a puppet government in the New Zone.”
He kept them moving from one bush to the next, as if he struggled to stand still while he spoke of his past. Zia let him guide her without protest. Softly, she asked, “If there was no agency to step in, who took care of you?”
“The Amauri family did.”
Zia felt like he’d knocked the wind out of her. She knew the name from newsfeeds, from salacious tell-alls and dramatized entertainment feeds. The Amauri family was a juggernaut of the vampiric Syndicate — a crime family so well known they were practically their ownstate.
Voice suddenly squeaky, she found herself saying, “I… didn’t realize they took care of babies.”
“They don’t. They raise soldiers.”
So Mr. Bounds wasn’t just a businessman. He was a — or at least had been — a part of the Amauri crime family. Zia felt the knowledge settle in her mind.That explains the menace, then.
“Oh.” She let out a shaky breath. “Why are you telling me this, Mr. Bounds?”
He used his other hand to cover hers. The skin of his palm was warm, insulating her from the bite of the pre-dawn air. “You told me your story. Mine isn’t as happy, but it’s the only one I have to give you.”
Zia’s chest squeezed. A sudden bubbling of affection for this strange, intimidating man made her look up at him with unconcealed warmth. Softly, she whispered, “Thank you.”
Mr. Bounds cut a look toward her, frankly assessing her reaction to his blunt admission. “Are you afraid of me now, Miss North?”
She took a moment to think about it before she shook her head. The UTA was a dangerous place. Morality changed to fit the mold it was forced into. Who was she to judge a man whose past she barely understood? Maybe her answer would change when she learned more, but until then…
“No, I don’t think so.”
He arched a dark brow. “Shouldn’t you be nervous around a man who just admitted he’s a criminal? I could hurt you, or worse.”
“Will you?”
“No.” A single, emphatic negative, so dark and deep, it was like he tore it out of his soul.
