The Thief (Black Dagger Brotherhood #16)(122)

Who knew, and Sola most certainly hadn’t asked. She already had too much banging around in her brain.

“Is there anything else you require?” Assail said without lifting his head.

Yeah, actually, can we go back to when you were just a recovering cocaine addict who had given up a life of crime and the two of us were going to off-into-the-horizon together to live happily ever after with my grandmother?

“I can’t decide whether I wish you had told me sooner or not at all,” she heard herself say.

“I can answer that.” He moved his head back and forth as if his neck were sore. “Not at all would have been better.”

“So you like being a liar.”

“When it comes to you”—his moonlight-colored eyes looked up at her—“I do not. Which was how you and I have come unto this estrangement. No, I say that rather because you looking at me as if I am a dangerous stranger is a far, far worse reality than even my deepest stretch of paranoia.”

“Don’t guilt-trip me.”

“?’Tis a statement of fact. And besides, there is no guilting you about anything. I know you far too well for that—”

“You don’t know me at all.”

“Indeed? That is an incorrect statement. I believe the correct one is that you wish I didn’t know you.”

His eyes shifted away and yet did not seem to light on any concrete object.

“I want to throw things at you,” she blurted. “I want to curse you and punch you, and if I had a gun, I would shoot you.”

“I can get you a weapon, and there is a gun range down here.”

“Do not mock me.”

“I am not. Trust me, death is preferable to this state I am currently in.”

As he rubbed his palms together, she couldn’t tell whether he was trying to warm that which was cold or was regarding with glee the prospect of a grave.

“Do you have any idea how hard this is?” she said abruptly, tears forming in her eyes. “To be here, once again.”

Assail looked up in alarm, and she spoke before he could ask anything. “My father…” She brushed her cheeks impatiently. “My father was everything to me when I was young. He was my hero, he was my protector, he was…my world. He worked outside of the home my grandmother and I lived in, and I didn’t see him very often—but when he came to stay with us from time to time and brought us money for food and blankets and clothes, I idolized him.”

Well, shit, she thought as her eyes refused to get with the program and dry the fuck up.

“I was twelve years old when I found out what he was doing—what his work was, what he was. He was a thief. He stole things from people and for people—and worse that than, he was a druggie. The shit he gave us? He didn’t buy any of it. I found out later it was always handouts he got from shelters or churches. He never took care of us—he just wanted it to seem like that was the case.”

Her tears were coming so hard now, she stopped bothering to try to mop them up. “When he got arrested and was put in jail the first time, he sent word to my grandmother in the village we stayed in. He had a stash of money he kept in the walls of our shitty house, and she got it out and gave it to me. She told me to take it to the jail and bribe the officials to let him out.”

Sola sniffled hard and then marched off to a napkin dispenser, snapping a bunch free and cleaning herself up.

When she felt like she could continue, she turned back around. “I was twelve years old, walking twenty-five miles on my own with more money than I had ever seen in my life. My grandmother regularly went hungry to make sure I had food—and yet there was all that cash in the fucking walls of that fucking house! And it was for him!” She blew her nose again. “I made the trip. I gave the money over. My father got out—and as we were leaving the jail, I remember him stopping and staring at me.”

Sola closed her eyes. “I can still see us, clear as day, standing there together, in the hot sun. I was thinking he was going to break down in front of me and apologize for being what he was. And stupid me, I was ready to forgive him. I was ready to tell him, Papa, I love you. I don’t care what you are. You are my papa.”

The scene played out in her mind. And all she could do was shake her head. “You know what he said?”

“Tell me,” came Assail’s rough reply.

“He said he could use me if I wanted to earn some money. You know, to take care of my grandmother.” Sola popped open her lids, got another napkin or two, and pressed them into her eyes so hard, her sockets hurt. “Like that wasn’t his job. Like that woman who had stood by him all her life was my problem if I wanted her to be. And if I didn’t man up, and she starved or got ill as she aged? Then that was an oh-well.”

“I am so sorry,” Assail said softly. “I am…so sorry.”

Eventually, she let her arms fall to her sides and pivoted to face him. “I decided to become the very best thief I could be. ’Cuz that’s what twelve-year-olds who are scared and alone and need someone, anyone, to help them in the world do. I learned how to steal and break and enter. How to lie and cajole. How to evade the authorities and get jobs done. It was a hell of an education—and I guess I should be grateful that he never tried to sell me as a prostitute—”

The growl that percolated up out of Assail’s chest was such a sound of warning, it pulled her out of her emotions for a moment.