Ace kept his face neutral. “Everything in the safe was yours?”
Sienna paused. Something moved behind her eyes. “Yes,” she said. Then she stopped. “Well.” A beat. “Not everything. I don’t want her to sell my stuff.” She looked toward the stage, then changed the subject. “I really hope they play my favorite song in the next set?”
Ace let her redirect. He waited two songs.
“Do you have any idea where your mother might have gone?” Ace asked Sienna, keeping his tone easy and curious rather than pointed. “Has she ever mentioned a place she liked? Somewhere she went to think?”
Sienna gave a short laugh that had nothing warm in it. “I have absolutely no idea where she is,” she replied. “And I genuinelydon’t care. I only want to know how to get my safe back.” She looked at him with a settled, type of satisfied expression. “That woman is gone. Alfred, who was just as hateful as she was, is gone.” She gave a satisfied sigh. “The house is quiet for the first time in my entire life.” Something flickered in her eyes that was almost contentment. “You know, Victoria was never a mother to me. She was a performance. Everything Victoria Morrison did was for an audience.”
Ace looked at her. “That’s a hard thing to grow up with.” His voice was filled with compassion.
“It is,” Sienna agreed, without self-pity. “Which is why my grandfather was everything to me.” Her voice shifted, the hard edge softening into something genuine. “He understood me. He never performed. He was exactly who he was, and he never pretended otherwise.” She glanced at Ace. “He used to say that the best people in the world were the ones who knew precisely who they were and refused to apologize for it.” Her eyes looked haunted for a few seconds. “I can’t believe two of the three people I cared most for in this world are gone,” she gave a tight smile. “Well, I never knew my great-grandfather, but I know I would’ve loved him. My grandfather, I visited as often as I was allowed to, and then there was…” She looked at her hands and then at the concert, the moment passing in a flash. “You know what, this is morbid, and I want to enjoy the concert.”
Ace dropped the questioning as her friends came back.
“The line for the bar is out of this world,” Lauren groaned. “We’re going to sit for a moment because we went to dance instead. We’ll try the bar again in a few moments.”
After they’d settled, Ace waited for another song to finish.
“How is Clive taking all of this?” Ace asked. “It must be hitting him hard.”
Sienna’s expression shifted into something Ace could only explain as contempt.
“Clive is a mommy’s boy,” she said flatly. “He always has been. She always favored her little boy more.” Her eyes flashed hatefully. “It wouldn’t surprise me at all if he’s got her tucked away somewhere in Miami.” She glanced back at Ace. “He’s just moved into his own apartment there, you know.” She rolled her eyes. “He’s about to start an engineering degree.” She produced a dismissive sound. “He’s far too old to be starting a degree.”
“I think it’s admirable,” Ace replied. “And it’s never too old to learn something new. I’ve seen Clive in action. Look how he helped fix the problem with the one bridge in Gainesville just last year.” He held her eyes. “I think he’s making the right move.”
Sienna gave a non-commital shrug, pulling an ugly face. “That’s such a you thing to say,” she told him. “You’re such a good person, Ace. Just like my earnest, dumb brother.” She shook her head, but something else was there now underneath the dismissal, something that wasn’t performing. “That’s why my grandfather always preferred me. He used to say Clive was too soft.” A nostalgic quality settled over her face that Ace hadn’t seen there before. Something real underneath everything else. “He adored me. More than he adored my mother. More than anyone, honestly.” She smiled, and for one unguarded moment it reached her eyes. “He always said I was just like him. Just like him and his father before him.”
“In what way?” Ace kept his voice entirely easy.
“In every way,” Sienna replied, with a satisfaction that was completely unguarded. “I even got the female equivalent of the gymnastics trophy both my grandfather and great-grandfather once held for the State of Florida.” She looked at Ace with a pleased expression, as if sharing a private pride. “It’s a family tradition to get that trophy. We’re very competitive people.”
“Didn’t your mother do gymnastics as well?” Ace asked.
“She did,” Sienna confirmed. “But she had an accident on the parallel bars in high school and stopped midway through.” She waved a hand. “She was never as naturally gifted as I am anyway.” She glanced toward the stage. “Anyway. Enough of this. It’s a concert, and I’m tired of speaking about my dysfunctional family.”
She reached out and took his hand.
As she did, the sleeve of her long-sleeved shirt fell away from the back of her hand and rode up toward her wrist, and in the shifting light of the venue, Ace’s eyes moved there before he’d decided to look.
The marks were faint and not fresh, but not old either. A series of thin, linear scars across the back of her hand and along the inside of her wrist, the kind of marks that didn’t come from an accident or a fall. The kind that came from sustained contact with something sharp in a confined space.
Ace looked at them for precisely the time it took to register them fully. Then he looked back at the stage.
Sienna hadn’t noticed he’d seen her hands and what she’d been covering up beneath her long-sleeved cuffs.
She was already moving to the music, her hand still loosely in his, the conversation about her family finished as far as she was concerned, and the evening back on the track she’d planned for it.
Ace sat beside her, watching the band and keeping his face exactly where it needed to be.
He kept hold of Sienna’s hand and looked at the stage as his mind ticked over the conversation they’d just had, knowing it was pretty revealing. Ace gave her hand a squeeze, and she winced, glancing down as he did.
“Ow,” Sienna hissed.
“Oh, sorry,” Ace said. “I was getting so involved in the music…” His brows rose as he pretended to see the marks on her hand for the first time. “Oh, gosh, Sienna, what happened to your hand?”
“Roses,” Sienna said without hesitation. “I love roses. I’m the one that tends to all the bushes in the garden out back and I’m always ripping my hands up. I’m so embarrassed about them.”
