“Tell me,” he said, his tone banal to anyone but me. “Say it exactly as it is, Nina. You work for the House, and I’m a fool.”
I saw, for that brief moment, all the way through him. Irreparable wounds. Punctures and shattered bones, tendons unmoored and swinging, spirals of slackened gut and a gasping heart.
And I was desperate to tell him everything. Every wretched thing I’d done, every wretched thing done to me. But the list of confessions was overwhelming. How could I tell him that I was every bit as terrible as he feared and still have him love me in the end?
“The House has my mother,” I said, the words barely breaching my lips. “And Tanner promised to kill her unless I… unless I helped him.”
Patrick’s eyes rolled back and closed once more. For a moment, I thought him asleep. “So, y
