The Raven (The Florentine #1)(100)

“This happened because you were protecting your sister?”

Raven flinched. “I didn’t protect her. He got to her while I was asleep. And I don’t think that was the first time.”

She stopped abruptly and William smelled the tang of salt. She was crying.

He buried his face in her hair, not knowing what to do.

“I failed her,” she cried. “She was only five. She was just a baby. And it’s my fault.”

He grimaced. “How old were you?”

“Twelve.”

William withdrew so he could look at her. “What twelve-year-old girl would have the courage to physically confront a man? Precious few.”

Raven swiped at her eyes.

“I don’t see how it is your fault that a pedophile went after your sister. You’re the hero in this tale, Cassita.”

“It’s why I changed my name. I couldn’t hear the word Jane without hearing his voice.”

“So you chose Raven?”

“I wanted to prove to myself that I could be someone else. That I could be brave.”

William brought his lips to her ear. “You are brave, Raven. You are very brave. A slip of a girl, fighting to protect her sister. That’s heroic.”

“Hardly.”

“Joan of Arc had that kind of courage.”

Raven shifted to look up at him. “Did you know her?”

“No. I came to Florence in the late thirteenth century. I’ve been here since then.”

“You never leave?”

“Rarely. Vampyres in my position are expected to ask for permission before they travel across another prince’s territory. I find the process tiresome.”

He brushed a kiss against her hair. “What about your leg? Couldn’t they repair it?”

Raven turned on her side once again. “They tried but it didn’t heal properly. We were wards of the state at that point. I suppose if we’d had enough money for expensive surgeons and multiple surgeries they could have fixed it. But my stepfather was under a restraining order and he was the one with all the money. My mother was told she had to stay away from him.”

“And did she?”

“Long enough to get us back. When I was released from the hospital, Cara and I were placed with a foster family for several months. My stepfather was brought up on charges but he plea-bargained and received a suspended sentence.”

Raven exhaled loudly. “My mother lost the baby—probably because of the stress. I don’t know. Eventually she was settled in an apartment and started working. We went to live with her.

“We were there only a week when my stepfather showed up. They said that we were moving to California. She said we were going to be a family again.”

William growled, low, near her ear.

“That night, when we went to bed I grabbed my sister and we left. I stole my stepfather’s wallet and used the money to try to get back to our old foster home. But I wasn’t sure how to get there. We hopped a bus and ended up in a bad section of Orlando.

“We were at a bus stop trying to figure out how to get where we needed to go. My sister was crying and I was on crutches because my leg was still healing.

“A guy came up and started talking to us. He was creepy but we had nowhere else to go, we had to wait for the bus. He tried to persuade us to go with him, that he could help us. When I said no, he grabbed me. I fought him, hitting him with one of my crutches. He took my crutch and threw it away. I thought he was going to knock me out and kidnap us.

“Out of nowhere, a man and a woman appeared. They’d heard me yelling and came to see what was going on. The man who’d grabbed me ran off.

“The guy who came to our rescue was a priest. He asked me what had happened and I told him everything—about my stepfather, about my leg, about Cara . . .”

Raven cleared her throat. “He was the director of Covenant House, which is a shelter for teenagers. The woman was one of the shelter workers. They were making the rounds handing out food and trying to convince homeless kids to come to the shelter.

“They took us in and gave us a safe place to sleep. And they didn’t call my mother.”

William was puzzled. “Why would they?”

“Normally, you’d report missing children to their parents. But Father Kavanaugh kept us at Covenant House until he could figure out how to help us. In the morning, he called a friend of his who was a police officer and he came over.

“They called our social worker and we went back into foster care. It was over a year before we were returned to my mother. She gave up on my stepfather permanently and moved to St. Petersburg. Um, that’s a different city in Florida.”

“What happened to him?” William’s hand curled into a fist.

“I don’t know. He was in trouble with the police because he’d violated the terms of his sentence and the restraining order. He may have been sent to jail, I’m not sure. We didn’t talk about him after that.”

“And your mother?”

“I lived with her until I was old enough to go to college. I kept in touch with Father Kavanaugh. He paid for me to take art lessons when I was in high school. He helped me get a scholarship to Barry University. I left home and never went back.”

“What about your sister?”