Francesca rolled her eyes. “I didn’t mention it to embarrass you. You don’t think that was a message?”
“It was only a matter of time before someone tried to kill me,” he replied, “and it figures it’d be Malachi. He’s a real eye for an eye type. Though anyone could’ve just ordered the guy to make it hurt. Sabotaging the final fight is pretty common. I’m the favorite to win, so?—”
“Someone stands to get a lot of money if they bet against you,” she finished, shaking her head.
Swapping out her swab for a new one, she confessed, “I know it sounds stupid, but when Easton first told me about the Games, I imagined one of those reality shows where people do ridiculous challenges to win. Who can stand on a pole the longest. Trivia. A card game. That sort of thing. I had no idea people would… die. I never would’ve agreed to this if I’d known, Luis. Never.”
“I know,” he gently assured her. “It won’t make you feel better, but you should understand that none of this is really about you — for everyone else. Formethat’s all it is.”
Her careful touches paused as she looked up at him. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that no matter how much anyone out there says they want a taste of a golden anchor, what they value the most is prestige. Beingviewedas the big man on the block who has all the best stuff, the best anchor, the toughest fighter. It’s a quiet sort of warfare we all participate in, and often there are casualties.”
“You talk about people dying like it’s no big deal. You joke around like there isn’t a dead man on the other side of that door right now.” Golden shards of light reflected in her dark eyes as they searched his expression for something he couldn’t give her. “Yesterday I thought you were just some normal rich vampire. Now I don’t know what you are.”
An ugly, aching feeling oozed through him and settled with considerable weight in his gut. In a tight voice he admitted, “I liked that you didn’t know who I was.”
She turned back to the first aid kit. “You need more than just a bandage on this if you’re planning to fight in the last round.” After poking around for a moment, she found a tube of liquid stitches and held it up. “Can you pinch the sides together while I glue?”
He nodded with a grimace. Dropping his hands to his side, he let out a low grunt as he pushed the sides of his wound together. He’d never taken her for squeamish, exactly, but he was amazed by how remarkably unfazed she was by everything, including having to spread a glob of glorified super glue over a stab wound.
No matter how hard he tried not to, he seemed to always underestimate her.
Pulling out one of the expensive rubbery bandages, she began to carefully unstuck it from its sanitized backing. Almost like she could read his mind, she said, “I’m not completely naive, you know. I was born here. Spent the first five years of my life in a children’s home in Alexandria. I do actually know a little bit about syndicate life.”
His eyes widened. “What?”
“I was abandoned at the hospital right after I was born. My mother just walked out. Didn’t bother signing any of the paperwork or anything.” She said it so casually that one might’ve mistaken her tone for indifference, but he knew her better than that. There was pain beneath that calm surface.
He laid his hand over hers, stopping her as she compulsively continued to smooth the edges of the bandage down. “What children’s home were you sent to?”
There’d been many of them all over the United Territories, most erected in the decade after the end of the Great War. There were so many orphans, particularly in what would be declaredthe Neutral Zone but what was at the time the no man’s land between the Shifter Alliance and the Draakonriik.
Dragons had leveled United Washingtontwice.By the time the war was over, it’d been nothing but scorched rubble in a rapidly rewilding swampland. Hastily built children’s homes were the only solution to a continent-wide problem, imperfect though they were.
Francesca was too young to have been a war orphan, but many children’s homes operated well into the 2000s. That was when the United Congress officially ordered the last of them closed.
Luis was intimately familiar with the horrors that lurked in those places, full of neglect and corruption and violence as they so often were.
“Doesn’t matter now. It’s closed.” Francesca shook her head. He hated how tired she looked then, how beaten down she seemed compared to the vibrant, funny, intelligent creature he’d come to know. “I know that I messed up, but I didn’t want you to think I was some idiot who just wanted to get rich fast. I was misguided, yes, and Max warned me not to, but I…”
“You were desperate,” he finished.
Her shoulders rounded. In a quiet voice, she replied, “Yes.”
Luis ignored the sharp bite of his wound to lean forward, her hand clasped between his in a protective hold. Speaking lowly, he explained, “I have a half-brother. His name is Milo. You probably saw him tonight. He’s the grumpy-looking bastard with way less style than his older brother. We share a father, and our parents are a triad.”
Francesca smiled ruefully. “Wow, you gonna rub yourthreeparents in an orphan’s face?”
“Hush, you,” he growled, fighting a smile. “I’m trying to tell you that I know a little bit about what any time spent in a children’s home can do to you. How it can mess with your headand make you think you have to do things on your own because that’s how you came into the world.”
That defensive, teasing smile fell away from her lips. Swallowing, she asked, “How would you know that?”
“Milo’s mother — who we call Mama — was raised in one.”
To this day, Luis was fairly certain something about that time changed not only Mary, but Milo as well. The boy had come out of the womb as serious as the grave, ready to defend the weak with those adorable dimpled fists.
He was wildly protective of everyone he deemed worthy, which was how he’d ended up as Felix’s right hand man and head of their soldiers. Nothing mattered more to Milo than making sure the rules were followed, people came home to their families, and his mama never had to worry about anything.