The silence in my room after the security team left was the kind that made your ears ring. Everything I owned had been touched, moved, or tossed. Marcus didn't just want my secrets; he wanted me to know that in this house, I didn't even own the air I breathed.
The door pushed open. My mother, Lydia, was standing there with a glass of wine, her face tight and pale. She didn't look at the mattress hanging off the frame or my clothes piled on the floor. She looked at me with a pained, fragile sort of pity.
"I told him you wouldn't have anything," she said, her voice thin. "I told Marcus you were too smart to keep things that didn't belong to you anymore."
"You told him?" I walked toward her, stepping over a heap of my own sweaters. "Or you helped him? Did you tell him about the vent, Mom?
