Page 131 of Surrender to Me
My throat tightens. “People died because of him.”
His breath touches my cheek. “And you think their blood is on your hands?”
“It is.” A sharp exhale escapes. “I didn’t stop him.”
“You were a kid.”
“I helped him.” The confession rips out of me. “Not because I wanted to, but because he told me I was good at it. He made me feel…useful. Important.”
I wish I could convey how charismatic my father was. The way his smile lit the whole room. “After Mom died, and it was just the two of us, he told me I needed to take her place, hold the family together. It was my job. If I took care of him, he could take care of us.”
Viciously he swears. “How old were you?”
“When I took over the cleaning, the cooking, taking care of him, getting myself to school, packing our bags when we needed to run? The first time I was with him when we hid from the cops?”
He winces again.
“Six.”
“Six?” He plows a hand into his hair. “Jesus Christ, Lyra.”
“You don’t understand. I loved him. Wanted him to be proud of me. Wanted—” My voice fractures. “Wanted to matter.”
Stryker goes motionless, the kind of still that means he’s hearing every word, weighing it, absorbing it.
“I never hurt anyone,” I whisper. “But I was taught to shoot, to pick locks, and I did some of that. I lied for him. Ran interference. Drove my first getaway car when I was fourteen.”
“Too young to even have a license.”
“Yeah. He was happy with me. Told me it was a badge of honor. I was Bonnie to his Clyde.” And ironic that he’d go on to die in a hail of gunfire sprayed at his vehicle, just like Clyde.
Stryker moves his hand to my hip, grounding me.
“And that time, when Hawkeye was closing in”—my voice breaks—“I helped him disappear. I organized his things. Burned what he said would get him caught. I thought I was saving my father.”
His arms tighten around me, not trapping me but holding me steady.
“You were a child surviving the best you could with a man who dragged you into his world.” His tone is as firm as it is forceful. “That’s not guilt. That’s captivity.”
“It doesn’t change the outcome,” I choke out. “I made everything worse.”
“Lyra, no.” His words are quiet and solid. “He did. And you survived him.”
He tilts my chin gently until I meet his eyes.
“Listen to me.” His voice is low, steady, the same tone he used when he had me bent over his lap and the world was nothing but heat and his hand and his will.
I nod.
“The Hollingsworth Collection. Do you know where it ended up?”
I swallow. The name has haunted me for years. It was one of the jobs Dad talked about most proudly. “Yeah. I do.”
“Fuck.” Yet he doesn’t blink. Just waits.
I drag in a breath that tastes like snow and gunpowder and regret for all the things that have happened. “When I cleaned out Dad’s last safe-deposit box, there was a diary of information. The entire Hollingsworth Collection—emeralds, the diamond rivière, all of it—was sold to a man named Viktor Kress.”
Stryker’s brows pull together, but it’s recognition, not confusion. “Kress. Runs the Kress Wing at the Kunsthaus in Zurich.”
