Page 69 of Shielded Secrets

When he tipped my chin up, I lifted my face completely and wiped my tears away.

“But I need to know if there is something else that would prevent me from keeping you completely safe.”

“We need to know if there is anything that can threaten any of us,” Lev said.

I nodded, gathering my courage even more when Eva took my hand and held it with a comforting squeeze. Behind her, Irina nodded. “What have you got to lose if you tell us?”

After a deep sigh, I replied, “Your love and friendship? Any respect you might hold for me?”

“I doubt that,” Oleg said gruffly.

Looking Rurik in the eye, I took the biggest, bravest step I ever could have imagined taking. I licked my lips, drew in a deep breath to steady myself, and began. “You once asked me if there was anything Jerome could hate me, specifically, for. Or if there was anything he could hold over me.”

He nodded, not letting me out of his loose hug.

“It wasn’t ever something I’d done to him. I wasn’t strong enough to take him on, and I never wanted to try that.”

“He’s dead now, anyway,” Vik commented.

“And I am so very grateful for that.” I looked at Rurik again, wanting him to see how open I intended to be with him. “Which is why I thought my secret would die with him.”

“What secret?” he asked.

“When I was a child, only eight years old, Jerome and I were in the same foster home. We both split up after our time there and ended up in another house together, but it was that first home where something happened.” I paused to steady my breath, feeling like I was ripping off a Band-Aid on my soul to speak about this. For years, the weight of this burden tormented me. Now that I had support, I wanted to shed the boulder in my mind and just be free of this pressure to keep this such a secret.

“The foster parents were assholes, neglecting us and abusing the younger ones.”

“It sounds likeyouwere a younger one if you were only eight at the time,” Irina said.

I shrugged. “I had already grown and matured too much by then. The foster parents were terrible, even though they put on such an act and tried to impress the social workers. They were the biggest frauds. The mom would gamble and sleep around for money, and the father would do all kinds of drugs. They both had good jobs and were supposedly decent and upstanding members of that small town upstate, but they were evil. The father had this one friend who liked to visit.”

“Oh, fuck,” Vik growled and shook his head. “I can see where this is going.”

I nodded.

“He raped you?” Rurik guessed, his tone icy cold and his eyes so dark with anger.

“No. He wanted to. He tried to. Over and over, the mom and dad at that home would set me up to be ‘babysat’ by him at his house, which happened to be just diagonal from their house. And every time, I would sneak away. I was too small, too quick, and I would slip away and avoid him. He never touched me, never got close enough.”

Rurik released a deep breath of relief, but I knew that would be short-lived.

“They owed this friend a favor, though, because he’d helped them out of a jam before. Or several times before. Each time I ran off and hid from these babysitting nights, they’d whip me and tell me I had to go back to him. That I couldn’t escape it. Every time I escaped, it made him think that it was a game, that he had to catch me sooner or later and it would be sweet when he did. So, one night, he handcuffed me to a chair.” I trembled, fighting through the flashback. “But he was sort of drunk and high, and he didn’t seem to realize the metal rings meant for an adult wouldn’t hold my tiny wrists. And when he came toward me, um, naked and aroused, I slipped out of the cuffs and got ready to run again. For some reason, though, he laughed. And laughed. And laughed. He was cracking up, telling me that I would never win, that I would never be worthy or good for anything but fun for him, and he would catch me if it was the last thing he’d ever do.”

Rurik ran his free hand over his face, disturbed and struggling to hold his fury in.

“And I knew that he was right. I’d never be worthy of anything if I let him touch me. I already knew what sex was and what rapemeant. I had to watch another foster parent rape a girl younger than me, and I remembered being so scared that it had to hurt. I knew this man, this ‘friend’ of theirs would never give up. So when he lunged for me and tried to catch me, threatening to kill me once he was done with me so it could be his little secret, I dodged him and grabbed?—”

Rurik hugged me.

I can do this. I can tell them.

“I grabbed the gun from his belt on the floor, turned around, and shot him until there were no more bullets left.”

Silence filled the room. I’d just admitted my darkest secret, which couldn’t be that terrible compared to all they’d done. But it had been a damnable sin I struggled with as a child, as a teen, and as an adult. It didn’t matter if they were killers and did it all the time.Iwasn’t a killer, and it had hit me hard.

“I killed him. I didn’t know how many bullets hit him, but I saw a lot of blood. He fell, too, and didn’t get up. So I wiped off the gun because I’d seen it in movies the older foster kids watched, dropped it, and ran. I escaped, knowing he would never bother me again. I’d made sure of it. When I ran out the back of his house, though, I bumped into Jerome. He’d come and spied on me there, and he saw it all.”

“Jerome knew that you killed someone?” Eva asked.

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