Just know that I love you. More than anything,

Mama

And that’s when the dam broke. The tears came. She sobbed. Huge, heaving sobs that made her feel ill. By the time she stopped crying, she felt utterly drained. As though there was no moisture left in her.

She was empty inside.

But there was something she had to ask Adam and Elisabeth. Stumbling to her feet, she moved to the small bathroom across the hall and splashed water on her face.

She stared at herself.

She didn’t recognize the girl staring back at her. Leaving the cult had been hard. Leaving her friends behind . . . she thought it would be the worst thing she’d have to endure.

Turns out she was wrong.

Spinning around, she forced herself to go downstairs. Adam and Elisabeth were sitting in the living room, sipping on hot drinks.

Elisabeth jumped to her feet as Ágata entered. “Sweetheart, can I get you a hot chocolate? What do you need?”

Ágata shook her head and tried to smile. It failed.

“Oh, sweetheart.”

She let Elisabeth hug her. But it was more for the other woman’s sake than for hers.

Because she was numb. Nothing was getting through to her right now.

Adam shot her a knowing look. He got it. He knew how she was feeling.

Maybe.

Because even she wasn’t entirely sure. She was angry, then sad, then confused, and now there was . . . nothing.

“I need to ask you something,” she said as Elisabeth moved back.

“You’re welcome to stay as long as you like, Ágata,” Elisabeth said. “You know we think of you as family. Like our niece.”

That was really sweet. But it wasn’t what she needed to ask. However, she made herself nod. It had been challenging to unlearn everything she’d been taught while living at the Camp.

In the Camp, it had been all about keeping things from the Deity and his Sentinels. Sneaking around and keeping them happy while doing what she wanted.

Things were different out here, yet kind of the same. There was always an authority figure that you needed to hide things from.

She licked her lips. “Do you know who Mama is hiding from?”

They shared a look, and her heart raced. Did they know? If they did . . . then she could find them. Destroy them.

And Mama could come home.

Then Elisabeth shook her head. “I’m sorry, sweetie. We don’t.”

Were they telling the truth? She turned to Adam. He wasn’t a man who lied.

He grimaced. “We really don’t. I’ve tried to get Penelope to tell me so many times. When your father died, she was beside herself. She was hysterical. We brought her back here. We tried to get her to stay with us. She did for a while. You were nearly five, I think.”

She didn’t remember. Shouldn’t she remember?

“You loved my chocolate chip cookies,” Elisabeth said. “Your mama would have nightmares. She’d yell out things. Names. But when I’d ask her about them the next morning, she wouldn’t say anything.”

“Then, one day, we woke up and both of you were gone. We had no idea whether you were alive or dead until you turned up unannounced on our doorstep a year ago,” Adam told her.

“We went to live with the Children of the Divine when I was ten. Or nearly ten. I think I wanted a birthday party when we first moved there and I got upset when someone told me that children didn’t have birthday parties. Mama made me a small cake in secret. We had our own private party. She probably would have been in trouble if we’d been caught.”

“Sounds like Penelope.” Elisabeth smiled sadly. “She’d do anything for you.”

“She left me!” Ágata scrunched the notes up in her hands.

“There has to be a good reason for that,” Elisabeth said.

She looked over at Adam. Was he keeping something from her? People did that. They needed to learn not to underestimate her.

He sighed. “Don’t look at me like that, kid. If I knew something, I’d tell you. Hell, I’ve begged Penelope to tell me what she’s so scared of. But all she’d say is that it was safer for everyone if she didn’t tell us what was going on.” He let out a frustrated breath.

Ágata understood. Mama was stubborn. And protective of her.

She just never thought she would leave her.

Pushing back her tears, she took a deep breath. “She told you nothing?”

“No.” He shook his head. “All I know is that she’s been running and hiding for a long time. I don’t even know how she found the money to move around like she did.”

Ágata hadn’t thought about that. Mama had never worked. Where had she gotten the money?

“Maybe my dad had some money saved up.” She barely knew anything about him. His name was Tom Cooper. They had never used his last name, though and she didn’t know why.

Elisabeth and Adam shared a look.

“What? What is it?” She was so damn sick of being kept in the dark. Maybe if she’d pushed Mama more she would have told her what was going on.

Then, she wouldn’t be in this situation.

You can survive this.

“From what we know of your dad, he, well, he wasn’t always on the right side of the law,” Adam imparted.

“What?” She sank into a chair. “No.”

“I know this is hard to hear, sweetheart,” Elisabeth said. “We tried so many times to convince Penelope to leave him, but she wouldn’t. I guess she loved him. He could be charming. So much fun. But then he had this darker side.”

That wasn’t what Mama had told her. She’d said he was kind and fun. She’d never said he was a criminal.

“That’s not true! Mama would have told me.” She stood, anger thrumming through her. Why were they lying to her? Mama was gone and her dad was dead, and all they wanted to talk badly about him?

“I’m sorry,” Elisabeth said.

Rage flooded Ágata at the pity in her eyes. She didn’t need pity. She needed answers.

“Mama wouldn’t lie to me.”

Still, unease filled her. Because she never thought that she’d leave her either. Getting up, she ran from the room. She didn’t go far though. Her legs didn’t want to carry her. Instead, she slumped against the wall and slid down it so she was sitting on her ass.

What was she going to do without Mama?

It had always been them against the world. Her friends lived hundreds of miles away. Ágata had never felt this alone. Wrapping her arms around her legs, she sniffled. She hated this.

She was strong. Always strong.

Leaning her head against her knees, it was all she could do to hold back the sobs.

“Leave her for a bit, Elisabeth,” Adam said through the open door.

“But she’s hurting. And she has every right to be upset, Adam. How could Penelope just leave her like that?”

“She thinks she’s doing the right thing. It was probably to protect us. But especially Ágata. She knows we’ll look after her.”

“Of course we will. If Ágata will let us. But what if she tries to leave? To find Penelope?”

“Shit,” Adam said.

“Do you think we should have told her about De Almería?” Elisabeth whispered.

Ágata tensed. Who?

“Christ, no. You’re already worried about Ágata running off and you want to give her a target?”

“A target?” Elisabeth asked.

“We don’t know whether De Almería was involved in Tom’s murder,” Adam said. “But there’re rumors Tom was working for him. He could know what happened to him, could know what Penelope is running from. Hell, he could be the reason she’s running. We have no idea. What I do know is that De Almería is bad news, and that Ágata won’t be able to resist going after him. It’s way too dangerous. Hernán De Almería is a bad man. He’ll kill her without a hint of remorse. Or worse.”

Worse?

She swallowed heavily and quietly got to her feet to creep upstairs.

At least now she had a name. Hernán De Almería.

It was a start.

“You sure you want to do this, Ágata?” Aine asked through the phone. She had them all on speaker.

Was she sure? Nope.

But this was what she’d been working toward ever since Mama left. Well, she’d had to finish school first. She’d promised Mama.

However, now it was time to set things in motion.

“I have to,” she told Aine. “You’ve made sure their regular server is out?”

“Yep, I just caught her call in to work saying that she’s got a tummy bug,” Isaac assured her. “Your manager is freaking out.”

Ágata looked at her uniform in the mirror of her crappy apartment. Adam and Elisabeth had wanted her to go to college after graduating from high school. They’d even offered to help her with finances, as well as telling her that she was welcome to live with them as long as she wanted.

But she couldn’t do it. It had felt like she was taking advantage of them.

So instead, soon after graduating high school, she’d moved into this crappy apartment.

It was shitty, located in a bad neighborhood, and the security was non-existent. The first thing she’d done was add her own deadbolt to the door. She also had a baseball bat by the door and knives hidden around the room.

Not a gun. She’d just never been able to bring herself to buy a gun. They kind of scared her. Although she’d never been entirely sure why.

When she left the apartment, she always carried something from the protection kit Aarón had given her. He’d made one up for each of them. Each contained Mace, a stun gun, a rape whistle, a personal alarm, pocket knife, and a folding baton.

Aarón liked them all to be prepared. And safe. The guy was a walking weapon. And considering the way that Renaud’s singing career was picking up, he might need all those skills to keep his brother safe.

Some of those fans could get overzealous.

“I’ve got to do this. You know that. And this is the first chance we’ve had to get close to De Almería.” With that, she ended the call.

Hernán De Almería.

She’d wanted to go after him as soon as she’d learned he might have something to do with her dad’s death. The night she’d heard his name mentioned by Elisabeth and Adam, she’d raced up to her bedroom to call the others.

Thankfully, they’d managed to talk her out of her stupid idea. Getting close to De Almería took some finesse and work. If she’d tried before everything was set up, then she’d have failed.

Or worse, gotten his attention and ended up dead.

De Almería was a bad guy. Isaac’s research into him had built a picture of a dangerous, smart, and powerful man.

No. This was much smarter. Even if it had been hard as hell to wait and plot. He was the only lead he had for how her Dad died. And maybe why Mama had taken off the way she had.

Abandoning her.

Still, he might not have any answers, though. This could all be for naught. Years of planning, and she might end up no further ahead than she was now.

Maybe Mama left because she got sick of taking care of you.

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. That wasn’t what happened. Hernán De Almería had to know something about her dad’s death. Isaac had tried to find answers down other avenues, but they couldn’t just go around asking people if they knew how he’d died. Isaac had tried to get hold of any police or coroner reports, but there was nothing.

De Almería was the only clue she had.

She was going to move forward with the plan. Get close to Hernán De Almería and find out what he knew.

Or die trying.

As soon as she walked through the doors of the upscale restaurant, the manager was on her in a flash. She’d worked here for close to a year now. She’d needed experience to get a job at a place this upmarket.

Gaining Ernest’s trust had been slow going. She’d wanted to bulldoze ahead with the plan. But the others had cautioned her to go slow.

If they took Leyla, the usual back room server out of the picture too early, then Ernest would just give the job to someone else who’d worked there longer.

So she’d worked hard like a good little employee, taking every shift offered, even when she’d felt dead on her feet with exhaustion and the effort of smiling and taking customers’ bullshit had started to take its toll on her temper.

Ágata wasn’t known for her patience or her control. So these last few months had been hell.

But tonight was the night.

De Almería was due to come into the restaurant for a poker game out back. An illegal poker game. With some of the worst criminals in the city.

Ágata had someone slip something into Leyla’s coffee this morning. She got the same coffee from the same shop every morning at eleven.

Yeah, Ágata kind of felt bad about making the other woman sick. But . . . Leyla was also a bitch. Ágata couldn’t prove it, but she was certain that she’d stolen her tips from her handbag one night.

And she looked down on everyone.

So if anyone deserved to spend a few miserable hours on the toilet, it was her.

And really . . . she should change up her routine. Ágata was doing her a favor.

“Ágata!” Ernest said in his fake French accent. She didn’t know how people thought that was real. “Ágata, thank God you are here!”

Ágata gave him a feigned wide-eyed look of shock. “Ernest, what’s wrong? You look worried.”

“Leyla is ill.”

Ágata frowned slightly. “Gee, that’s too bad.”

Crap. That sounded so fake. She didn’t want Ernest to suspect that she hated that bitch’s guts.

Luckily, he just nodded. “I know. I know. Poor Leyla.”

Okay, that sounded off. Maybe Ernest didn’t like the other woman that much either. Or perhaps he was worried about the high-rolling illegal poker game being played in the back room.

The one that she wasn’t supposed to know about.

“Here’s the thing.” Ernest looked around. Then he grabbed her arm and dragged her out to a back room. She wanted to twist her arm free and teach him not to touch her without permission.

Patience.

It wasn’t like Ernest meant anything by it, anyway.

But Ágata didn’t really like to be touched. Not by anyone except her closest friends and Adam and Elisabeth.

Just some left-over trauma from the Deity and his Sentinels. May the Devil torture their souls for eternity.

Push that back. Focus.

“What is it?”

“We have a, um, a private function in the back room and Leyla was meant to be their server.”

“Oh, right. And you need someone to cover? Do you need me to get one of the others?” Damn, she was a good actress.

Her heart raced. It was finally happening. Okay, she wouldn’t get the answers she wanted tonight. But she was finally going to get close to De Almería.

This was the first step in her plan.

Get close. Find some evidence of what happened to her dad.

And maybe that would help lead her to wherever Mama was.

She knew it was a long shot. Aarón complained all the time that what she was doing was idiotic.

But what else could she do?

“Yes, I need you to work the back room,” Ernest told her.

Okay. This was the part she had to maneuver carefully. Fuck. Ágata wasn’t that good at being subtle or lying.

“Oh no. I couldn’t do that.”

“You have to, Ágata. No one else can handle these guys.”

“Why not? What do you mean? I’m not giving them anything extra, if that’s what you’re talking about.”

“What? What do you mean . . . oh no, no! That’s not what they want. No one expects that. We run a legitimate business here. Nobody is expecting you to sell your body if that’s what you were thinking.”

Go carefully.

“Sorry,” she said hastily. “I didn’t mean to insult you. It’s just with the way you were acting . . . you seemed worried about this group. And well, I haven’t worked here the longest. I thought you’d get Callum or Airam to cover Leyla’s shift.”

Ernest shook his head. “No, they won’t work. See . . . this private group, they are all men. Powerful, rich men. And they tip very, very well. Have you seen the car Leyla drives? Her expensive bags? All earned from tips from these men.”

Really? Ágata thought they might have been bought using the tips she stole.

“That means they expect a certain level of service. So while you are not required to do anything. No one will touch you, uh, they do like something pretty to look at.”

Ernest gave her a fake grimace. As though he was horrified at the idea and didn’t agree with what these rich and powerful men wanted.

But she knew that he got a cut of Leyla’s tips.

Jerk.

It was amazing what you could discover with a few well-placed listening devices in the staff room and his office.

But she nodded. “All right. I guess I can do it, as long as they’re only looking and not touching.”

Fuckers better not touch her.

“Thank you, my dear.” He took hold of her hand and she managed not to shove him away. Just. “I owe you big time. And you’ll find that while these men might be arrogant and demanding, they tip very well. Just give them whatever they want.”

She smiled at him, even as an alarm bell sounded.

“Within reason, of course,” he added hastily.

Of course.

Hernán De Almería was going to kill someone tonight.