I can’t help glancing at Monroe. She’s got her expression locked down, but the fury in her green eyes makes them almost glow. Rage. Not pity. That’s something, at least. There is more than one reason I don’t like talking about my past, and it’s not simply to avoid being pigeonholed by the location I happened to be born into. I don’t want anyone’s pity. I survived. I’ve done more than survive.
Monroe finally says, “No one helped you.”
That gives me the strength to answer. “No. No one helped me.” Not even the Amazon queen who at least had some hint of what I was experiencing. I was hardly the picture of childhood health the one time she laid eyes on me. “I got myself out when I turned eighteen.”
“How old are you, Shiloh?”
My throat feels too tight. “Thirty.”
“How long have you been with the Paines?”
I can see where she’s going with this, but there’s no point in trying to detour. “Seven years, give or take.”
Monroe narrows her eyes. “Four years between leaving your parents and finding the Paines.”
The sensation of choking gets stronger. I swallow hard. Finding the Paine brothers was sheer luck on my part, and them taking me in was even more luck. That situation could have gone so much worse for me.
They had more than their fair share of trauma, too. Even without asking too many questions, I felt a kinship with Broderick and his brothers and the people they’d gathered around them. I…fit. In a way that I had never experienced before in my life.
I didn’t want to come back to this city, but these people are the family I chose. I figured it wouldn’t be the same, that I could navigate my way through whatever challenges that arose from the ghosts of my past.
I never bargained on Broderick being paired with the Amazon heir. Or on my being assigned as her permanent guard. Or for her to take such a pointed interest in me.
In short, I never bargained on Monroe.
“It was closer to five before I found them.” She opens her mouth to continue questioning me, but I cut in before she gets the words out. “I survived. End of story.” I wouldn’t talk about what I had to do to survive. I had little life experience when I landed in Chicago. I didn’t know how to deal with people, didn’t know how to control the rage that bubbled up in me after too many years kept locked down. After I smashed a glass over the head of a customer who grabbed my ass at the restaurant I where I worked, I realized customer service wasn’t going to get me anything but arrested.
“Yes. You did.”
“Violence is easy.” My voice is barely above a whisper. I want to stop talking, to cut this off before I bare my still-beating heart for this woman, but the only other person I’ve talked to about this is Broderick. And even then, I filtered so much, even more than I’m doing now. If he pitied me, I might just die. I exhale slowly. “It came naturally to me—it still does.” I guess I really am an Amazon down to my core. The thought might make me laugh if I could work up the energy for it. “I ended up as an enforcer for one of the local groups. They taught me everything I needed to know.”
“And the Paines?”
At that, I smile a little. “I tried to rob Broderick. He kicked my ass a little and then hauled me back to their sad excuse for a base. Within a couple days, I was taking orders from Abel. I haven’t looked back since.”
“Quick turnaround.”
I look at her. “You’ve been the heir to the Amazon throne your whole life. You don’t know what it’s like out there. The Paine brothers actually care about their people. They ask a lot of us, yes, but they value our lives and our safety. That kind of thing isn’t common.”
“I suppose not.” She combs her fingers through her hair, expression still contemplative. “Where did you say you were from, again?”
That surprises a laugh out of me. Does she really think she can trick me into telling her? Absolutely not. “You didn’t seriously mean it when you said you wanted to kill my parents.”
“When did they start burning you?”
Frustration bubbles up inside me, bringing the truth with it. “I was six. I had been playing with one of the neighborhood boys. Those silly kid games. He kissed me.”
She narrows her eyes. “Normal childhood stuff.”
“My parents didn’t think so.” I refuse to revisit that memory; their hateful words, my screams and sobbing.
Monroe nods slowly. “Twelve years is a long time, love. Someone has to balance the scales.”
“Stop calling me love.”
“Do you really want me to stop?” she fires back.
I’m speechless for a moment. Of course, I want her to stop. It’s… Damn it. “No.”
“Again, stop trying to change the subject. I would like the town name.”
I stare. “You’re serious.”
“I already told you I don’t bluff.”
She had. I just… “But I’m not one of your people.” Not anymore. Not ever as far as she knows. “You don’t have to play avenging Valkyrie for me.”
“You’re mixing up your mythologies.” She examines her nails. She’s painted them a matte beige color that looks professional and sleek. Monroe seems to change her nails a lot. That surprised me the first week, but now I suspect that doing so calms her and gives her some control when she’s feeling out of sorts.
She’s been feeling out of sorts a lot lately.
Or maybe I’m just projecting and the reason she changes her nails a lot is because she is a fickle woman who likes pretty things.
“Shiloh.”
“But why?”
She focuses entirely on me. After a pause where I find myself holding my breath, she crawls across the bed to kneel at my side and take my hand. “Because all children deserve to be protected. I can’t go back and save the child you were, but I can
