Page 26 of Claimed By the Silver Fox

She closes her eyes for a moment, shaking her head. “Look,” she says, flicking her gaze up to meet mine once more. “I know I shouldn’t have tried to sneak out the other day, alright? I’m sorry. But you don’t need to⁠—”

“It’s not about that.”

“So what is it about?”

I cock an eyebrow, keen to see her reaction to just the sound of his name. “Andreo.”

Her face pales slightly, and I notice the flex of her throat as she takes in what I’m saying to her.

“What about him?” she asks. Even though she’s doing her best to sound dismissive, I can hear an edge to her voice—almost a fear, like he might appear out of nowhere all of a sudden and insist on picking up where they left off.

“You said that he…controlled you,” I reply, following her into the room as she turns her back on me and plants herself down on the edge of the bed.

“Yeah, and?” Her tone is defensive, like she thinks I’m going to come in here and argue with her.

I need to phrase this right. I don’t want her to feel like she can’t tell me the truth about him, not if what she said before is true.

“And I want to know what you mean by that.”

She narrows her eyes at me, staring at me hard, as if trying to see inside my head and to my intentions. “Why?”

“Because he’s my son,” I reply, voice dropping to a gravelly tone. “And if he’s hurt you…I want to know how.”

She chews her lip for a moment, and I’m struck, all of a sudden, by just how vulnerable she looks. As though reaching back into her memory like this is drawing things to the surface that she would rather have left behind.

“He…he didn’t hurt me, exactly,” she replies, turning her head, eyes slightly glossy. “He never laid hands on me, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

That’s somewhat of a relief, but it’s not enough. Not enough to convince me that he didn’t do something else. I stay silent, not interrupting her, just letting her continue.

“But he…he had certain rules,” she explains. “About what I could do. I moved in to the apartment really quickly. I was living in this crappy place that was basically falling apart beforehand, so it wasn’t much of a stretch for me to just go and live with him…”

“Were you staying with your parents?”

She lets out a slight laugh, then shakes her head. “No. God, no,” she replies. “I had moved out of that place about a year before I met him. And trust me, whatever Andreo did, it’s nothing compared to how my parents treated me.”

I grit my teeth. I can’t stand hearing stories like this, stories where parents turn their anger on their kids. Having children is a choice, and it’s one that shouldn’t be made unless the people in question are willing to do whatever it takes to look after them. When I found out about Andreo, I knew that my life was going to shift from underneath me, and that everything was going to change, but I was prepared for it, prepared for the weight of it, willing to do anything to make sure he had everything he needed.

“They…?”

“Were shitty,” she fills in for me, finally meeting my gaze again. “They both drank a lot. And they beat the crap out of each other, and me, when they got the chance. I wouldn’t have stayed there another second, I was glad to get out, but it turned out life wasn’t exactly easy when you were seventeen and trying to make it on your own, you know?”

My heart aches hearing her talk about herself like that. Just seventeen, out in the world, trying to navigate everything that her parents should have prepared her for.

“And that’s when you met Andreo?”

She nods. “He seemed like such a good guy at first,” she admits. “And when he asked me to move in, I said yes, of course I did. It was better than worrying about rent every month when I hardly made any money to begin with, living in that shitty place with no water pressure to speak of…” She manages a slight laugh again, but it sounds more nervous than anything else.

Andreo, he’s not stupid, and no doubt he knew all of this when he moved her in. Was that the reason he chose her? Because he knew that she had so little to fall back on? I would never have thought my son was capable of that kind of calculated cruelty, but then, it turns out, there’s so much I don’t know about him and what he’s willing to do.

“And then he started bringing in all these rules,” Julia goes on. “Like I told you—about what I could do, when I could go out, who I could see. And if I ever decided I didn’t like the sound of one, or tried to go out anyway, he would flip his shit.”

“How so?”

She takes a deep breath, as though delving into memories that she would rather have left locked away. “Like…like he would smash things up around the apartment,” she explains. “He would scream at me. And he would threaten to kick me out unless I did what he told me. I was so scared of being on the streets, since I didn’t have any savings of my own, I figured it made more sense to just go along with it.”

“You didn’t have a job?”

She shakes her head. “He didn’t want me working,” she explains. “I was when I met him. But he said that he would take care of everything for me, that I didn’t need to worry about bringing money in. And I hated the job, so I left it, but I guess I thought—I don’t know, I guess I thought that he would change his mind eventually. When I found something I wanted to do…”