Her mother reached out, touching Ava’s cheek like she was checking if she was real. “The debt,” she said. “Peterson Holdings sent a letter. Everything forgiven. The building is ours.” Her voice dropped. “What did you do?”
Ava had rehearsed this. Had prepared a careful story about legal technicalities, about loopholes Victor had found, about corporate negotiations. Safe lies that would explain everything without explaining anything.
She looked at her mother’s worried face. Her father’s steady gaze.
“Can we sit down?”
They sat at the family table in the back. Her mother gripped her father’s hand.
“The law firm I work for isn’t normal,” Ava said. “The partners are demons. Real ones.”
Silence.
“Victor is one of them.”
Her father’s expression didn’t change. Her mother’s grip on his hand tightened.
“The debt wasn’t just predatory lending. It was soul debt. Contracts that would have claimed your souls when you died. Nine generations of our family.”
“That’s not possible,” her mother whispered.
“It is. I’ve seen the contracts. I’ve seen Hell.” Ava met her mother’s eyes. “I went there. To argue your case before a Duke. I had to trade myself first, bind my soul as substitute for yours. Then I had to convince him to let me go.”
“You traded your soul.” Her father’s voice was flat. “For us.”
“Yes.”
“And the eyes?”
“The binding left marks. Even after it broke.”
Her mother stood abruptly, walked to the window, stood with her back to them. Her shoulders were shaking.
Her father stayed seated. Studying Ava. Studying Victor.
“You’re really a demon,” he said to Victor.
“For six thousand years.”
“And you helped her do this. Go to Hell. Risk herself.”
“I tried to stop her.” Victor’s voice was quiet. “She did it anyway. Behind my back. By the time I knew, it was too late to do anything but help her fight.”
Her father processed this. “She went alone?”
“She performed the ritual alone. I followed her down. Traded twenty-five years of my existence for the chance to get her an audience with the Duke.”
“Twenty-five years?”
“We both did,” Ava said. “Victor and me. Fifty years split between us, owed to a demon named Andromalius. After I die. That was the price for the chance to argue.”
Her mother turned from the window. Tears streamed down her face.
“You sold fifty years to save us. You went to Hell. You changed your eyes, your—” She gestured helplessly. “And we didn’t know. We were here making dumplings while our daughter was…”
“You couldn’t have known. I didn’t want you to know.”
“Why are you telling us now?”
