Broken (The Captive #5.5)(12)

"They are also easy to take money from," she whispered.

Atticus stared at her as he tried to understand who and what she was. He couldn't imagine having to steal for money, wealth and privilege had always been a part of his life, but then that wealth had been pillaged from others centuries before he'd ever been born. Watching her now, he realized just how much of the world he'd never paid any attention to, never even thought about before.

"Do you do this often?"

"Whenever it's necessary," she said as she folded her hands into the sleeves of her mantle.

"Does no one take care of you?"

Her head shot up, her eyes narrowed upon him and she thrust her chin definitely out. There was fire in her raven eyes as she glared at him. "I don't need anyone to take care of me."

He took hold of her arm and stopped walking. "How long have you been doing this for?"

"Since I was old enough to have to."

He brushed back a strand of her black hair as it blew across her face and tucked it behind her ear. "Your mother…"

"Don't," she whispered. "I've had it better than a lot of our kind living in the villages. My mother's not loving, she's not caring, but then most of us aren't, are we?"

"No, most of us aren't," he agreed as he trailed a finger down her velvety cheek. Most vampires were not caring creatures but as his fingers brushed over her bottom lip he realized that this was the most tender he'd ever been with someone else.

"But we have the capacity to be, if we so choose." Her lip began to tremble beneath his finger as her eyes searched his gaze.

"Do we?" he couldn't help but ask. He pulled his hand away and took hold of hers.

"I care for and love my sister." A wistful smile played across her lips before she took a step away from him.

"True," he agreed.

"Come." She tugged on his hand, pulling him further into the center of the circle of stalls. He followed her through the crowd toward a stall with bolts of cloth set out on top of it.

"Genny," the dowdy looking woman with gray hair standing behind the cart greeted. "So good to see you."

"You also Matilda," she replied as she pulled out one of the purses she had just stolen from inside her pocket and placed it on top of the cart. Matilda's chubby fingers were surprisingly nimble as she grabbed the purse and slipped it into her pocket. She glanced at Atticus questioningly before turning her attention back to Genny. "I will see you soon."

"Thank you," Matilda said. "Tell Camille I said hello and I hope to see her soon also."

"I will, maybe she'll come with me next time."

"That would be lovely," Matilda said and turned her attention to another woman that had approached the cart and was admiring the colorful array of cloth.

Genny turned away from Matilda and began to make her way through the crowd again. "What was that about?" he inquired.

"When I was eight, and in the Easton village, I used to go to the nearby human town to find money. Matilda caught me stealing from there." He dimly recalled that the Easton village had been a vampire village about forty miles from here. Vampires often rotated out of the villages scattered throughout the country, or even into other countries after five to eight years in order to avoid drawing unwelcome human attention to themselves. "I was much younger and slower then. Instead of turning me in, Matilda taught me how to be speedier and more subtle about it before I lost a hand for my crimes. How embarrassing would that have been?" She gave a little laugh. "It was humiliating enough that Matilda, a human, had caught me to begin with."

The fact that she had been eight and forced to do such a thing was something that he didn't know how to comprehend. Even if she'd lost her hand because she'd been caught by the humans, she would have healed with remarkable quickness. She most likely would have been put down by the vampire race afterward for putting their way of life at risk by possibly exposing them.

"That wouldn't have been good," he agreed.

"She often watched Camille for me too, while I was working the crowd, so to speak," she said with a mischievous smile. "We left the Easton village before I turned nine. I ran across Matilda again when we relocated to this area six months ago. She had moved here five years ago to sell her cloth and I think she may have also encountered some trouble with the law."

"Why are you giving her money now?"

"She may be a human but she's a good woman; she helped to keep Camille and I alive back then. She's getting older now and I like to give her whatever help I can."

He stopped walking and tugged on her hand when she took a few steps forward without realizing that he wasn't beside her anymore. Her eyebrows raised questioningly as he stood and stared at her. He knew men that had enough money to buy a palace or even a small country and never would they have willingly given that money away in order to help someone that wasn't their family. Most of them wouldn't even help their own family.

"What is wrong?" she inquired.

He shook his head but he couldn't tear his gaze away from her. "Nothing is wrong."

"Why are you looking at me like that then?"

"What am I looking at you like?"

"Like you have no idea who I am," she smiled at him but he sensed the uncertainty behind it.