Page 105 of Obsession

“No.”

Again, his arm tightens around me. No one says “no” to Cain, so when I do, it always seems to throw him for a loop.

“Violet.” Another warning tone, but the gentle caress of his thumbs across my thighs softens the rebuke. “I want to know.”

And just like that, I’m ten years old again, locked in the dark closet where they punished me. I didn’t have to do anything wrong to make them put me there. It was who I was they were trying to cleanse from me. It was the wife who beat me, when her husband wasn’t home. I wasn’t the only one—she beat all her children, quoting scripture as she did. None dared to cross her, and even the littlest one would flinch when her mother turned her way. But I bore the worst of it.

“Look at my back and tell me what you want to know,” I say. “That bitch told me she’d scourge the devil out of me and God, did she try.” I flinch at the memory.

I feel Cain’s fingers along my back. I don’t see them, but I never forget they’re there.

“Their names.”

“Cain,no.”

I know him. I know what he’ll do. He’ll make it his mission in life to punish them for the harm they did me, over a decade before he ever met me. His justice is swift and merciless. I’ve stared into his eyes after he’s killed, and I know when he feels it’s justified, there’s no remorse. My grim reaper in the flesh.

“I’ll find them, Violet. You know I will. I just wanted your buy-in before I do.”

I blow out a breath. Now that he knows, I can’t stop him.

He strokes my back until I relax, until I’m slumped against him.

“Now, baby. Tell me the rest, and we’ll get started.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Violet

It’slate into the night when we’ve compiled everything we know between the two of us.

It’s admittedly not much to go on.

I’ve known since childhood that my father was an assassin because I overheard the minister’s wife talking to her husband. They knew, somehow, and used the knowledge as justification for the way they treated me.

We scoured everything we could together; he’d made some progress before we even talked.

We have the names of the people who fostered me, all of them, including the ones who had me for the longest time.

As an orphan in the system, someone could’ve adopted me, and it was a question I struggled with for most of my childhood.

Why not? Why not me? Why were other kids in foster care adopted into homes, but never me?

I didn’t want to be part of the families that took care of me, not until I was a much older teen and found myself in the care of a family that treated me like a human being. But by then I was independent and headstrong and wanted nothing to do with ties to anyone.

I’m still on Cain’s lap, snuggled in like I belong here. He lazily strokes his hand across my shoulder. Behind me lies the tray with the dinner we ate a while ago, the remains of chicken and potatoes that filled our bellies.

“It’s time to come up with a summary. You’ve filled in more blanks than I have. Took me four fucking weeks just to compile the list of foster parents.”

“Why?” I shake my head. “That doesn’t make any sense. And for God’s sake, if you’d only asked me…”

“You’d remember the name of the family that took you in when you were six?”

“Well, no, but I could remembersomethings.”

“You did, baby, but not the details from when you were a child. Hell, Violet, I think you blocked half of them from your fucking memory.”

Maybe I did.

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