Carmine is still unconscious.
His head is slumped forward, his chest rising and falling in slow, heavy breaths. Even though the gash on his temple has stopped bleeding, the sight of him motionless, bound to a chair, sends a fresh wave of anguish curling through me.
But he’s alive. For now.
Vera finishes binding him tight before stepping back. “Don’t waste your energy struggling, Lyra,” she mutters. “You’re not getting out of this.”
I ignore her, my eyes flicking back to Carmine, his breath slow but steady. My voice is shaking. “Let him go.”
Vera barely looks at me. She adjusts the gun in her grip, her lips pressing together in thin, tight contempt.
“This isn’t about him.” I see a crack in her expression and press my advantage. “This is between you and me, isn’t it.”
She snaps, letting out a cold, hollow laugh. It’s thin, strained—dangerously close to unraveling. She starts pacing, the gun still clutched in her hand.
I inhale sharply. “What is this really about?”
Vera scoffs, shaking her head, her lips curling.
“You have no idea what it’s like to be trapped.”
I flinch at the pure, unadulterated venom in her voice.
She inhales raggedly, her shoulders rising with the effort.
“I spent years under his thumb,” she mutters. “Letting that man dictate everything in my life. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think—every move I made was about keeping him happy and satisfied, so I didn’t get thrown in the fucking basement with the others.”
“So to save yourself, you helped him,” I say icily. “You helped him take those girls down here and rape them, and torture them, and kill them—”
“After I had that monster cremated,” she spits, her voice dropping lower, turning to steel coated in acid, “I dumped his fucking ashes down a sewer.”
Vera shakes her head, scoffing.
“You think I didn’t do what I could? Didn’t try to help you?”
I let out a sharp, bitter, incredulous laugh.
“Were you ever down here, Lyra?” she whispers.
My stomach turns.
“Were you ever in one of the cages playing fucking dress up with him?’ she asks coldly. ‘Bleeding and crying as he raped you raw with chains around your neck?”
My eyes squeeze shut, and I turn away as bile rises within me.
“No,” Vera hisses. “You weren’t.’ Her nostrils flare, her grip tightening on the gun. “I did what I had to do. What I had to do to survive.”
“It was your job to protect me!!” I scream at her. “You’re my MOTHER!’
“She’s not.”
I gasp, whipping my head around.
Carmine’s voice is low and shaky, but his words cut through me like a blade.
Suddenly, I can’t move. Can’t even think.
His head is still tilted forward, blood trailing down his temple, but his eyes are locked steadily on mine.
“Vera isn’t your mother,” he rasps, not taking his eyes off me. “Arkadi wasn’t your father. And Alison…” He swallows. “She wasn’t your aunt.”
The room tilts.
My pulse skips a beat.
“Alison was your mother, Lyra.”
The words hit like a wrecking ball, crushing my ribs, punching through my lungs, cracking my spine.
Carmine keeps going as my stomach drops into freefall.
“Her name was Alison Vos.” His voice is relentless, cutting the last fragile threads of my sanity. “She went missing twenty-three years ago, not far from here—just a few towns away, actually.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, my fingers curling into the ropes at my wrists.
No.
“It was initially assumed that she fell into the Hudson while rock climbing,” Carmine murmurs. “But…” He grits his teeth, raising his eyes to let his gaze sweep eloquently over the room.
I feel like I’m drowning.
“No,” I whisper. “That’s not—”
But I already know it’s true.
The necklace. The photo. Everything.
It all clicks into place, in the worst possible way.
Vera sinks into a chair suddenly, like her knees just gave out. She looks… haggard. Worn. Haunted.
“Alison was one of his first,” she says quietly. “And she was pregnant.” Vera’s voice is tired and monotone. She lifts her eyes, her lips tight. “You were born here, Lyra,” she says quietly. “In this very room.”
This time, there’s no stopping it. I turn my head and throw up violently, all over the floor.
“You have no idea what it was like,” Vera whispers as I dry heave, spitting bile onto the cement. Her voice is full of an emotion I can’t quite place—guilt, grief, or maybe something heavier than both.
“I was his, Lyra. He owned me. I never once had a choice.” She swallows, dragging a trembling hand through her hair. “You think I wanted to watch? To know?” Her eyes flick to mine, and for the first time, I see a glimmer of humanity in them, however haunted and broken. “I knew what he was doing. I always knew.”
My throat closes.
“Then why—” My voice splinters.
“He had a way of making you believe he was the only thing keeping you safe.” Vera exhales sharply, her shoulders curling inward, shrinking in on herself. “Even when he was the one destroying you.” She shakes her head. “You don’t understand what it was like to be trapped in his world. To be in too deep to claw your way out. I should’ve fought harder. But—”
Her voice cuts off, her jaw tightening. Then she takes a deep, shaky breath and lifts her chin. “She had you right there, in that corner,” Vera murmurs, nodding toward the shadows in the back of the room. “She lasted two weeks. Long enough to hold you. Long enough for a photo. And then… She died.”
I can’t breathe.
“She never got to leave this place,” Vera whispers, her voice distant, lost somewhere I can’t reach. “But I raised you like you were mine. I did my best.”
“Yes, you raised her like a daughter. But you never tried to get her out,” Carmine snarls. “You never tried to change her situation.”
Vera’s face twists, fury flashing in her eyes.
“I DID TRY!” she screams, her voice fracturing, breaking apart. “You don’t know what I went through! What I had to do to survive him!”
The last word rip out of her like a dying breath.
“I tried!” she chokes. “I—”
The lights flicker. Then suddenly, the whole room is plunged into total darkness.
“Fucking breakers,” Vera mutters bitterly. Her phone flashlight illuminates the floor and her own feet as she stands. She stomps across the room, the phone light swinging up to a circuit breaker box set into the concrete wall. She opens it, flips a heavy switch, and the lights flicker back on with a buzzing sound.
‘She did try to help you, Lyra.’
The voice is like a knife driving slowly into my throat. Like cold steel slicing over my skin, flaying me open as I drown in my own screams and blood.
That voice shouldn’t exist outside of my nightmares. The man it belongs to is dead. Cremated. His ashes thrown down a sewer.
The whole world goes numb and cold as slowly, like in a dream or underwater, I start to swivel my head around.
‘She left the door open for you that day.”
Suddenly, I’m looking the Devil himself in the eye.
His lips curl into a dark, predatory smile.
“Good to see you again, moya dorogaya doch’,” my father growls quietly.
