And then what?

I think about this for a few seconds. My heart thumping inside my chest.

The last clue came from Lyssa herself when we were walking through the park towards her apartment.

That. That right there is the last piece of this puzzle.

Now… what do I do with it?

I have a friend who writes wedding announcements in the paper for socialites in the city. I haven’t seen her in a while but when I call her and tell her what I need to know—did they get married early? Or is this wedding still happening on Saturday?—she’s willing to give that information up for nothing.

No. The wedding is on schedule as planned.

Which means I have time.

Her stepfather is pretty damn sure of himself. Pretty damn certain I won’t show up last minute and make everything go to hell because I haven’t heard a word from him or any of his associates since that last call.

He is untouchable, after all. He said that to my face.

But no one is untouchable.

Not even him.

I just need to find someone just as powerful who might take my side.

Good thing I hunt people for a living.

Maybe I’m not the good guy I made myself out to be when Lyssa and I were together, but there’s people out there worse than me, that’s for sure.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR – LYSSA

I see my stepfather. His mouth is moving and I’m pretty sure words are coming out.

But I can’t hear him.

This doesn’t worry me like it used to. The first time it happened I was around twelve. He’d become insufferable on school breaks. So much so that I begged my mom to send me places for breaks. Sometimes I went to friends’ homes, but more often than not, I was sent to a spa or some kind of camp.

But it was Christmas when I first stopped hearing him, so I was home. I told my mother and she took me to a few doctors, who diagnosed high stress levels and told her to make my life easier.

My stepfather blew up when he heard that. Literally lost his mind.

How could she be stressed? Look at this home I provide? Look at that school I pay for? What could she possibly be stressed about?

And I get it. It does seem a little absurd if you only saw me from the outside.

If I only had a way to show people the inside. Maybe then they’d understand?

Not him, of course. He knew exactly what I was stressed about.

My mother was already very sick back then. She was weak, and depressed, and probably bi-polar, though she, nor anyone else, ever told me that.

When you looked at my mother you saw her future and it was blank.

I was actually amazed she made it as long as she did.

But back then she wasn’t so bad yet.

She took pills and sometimes I took them too.

But the biggest difference between my mother and me was how my stepfather treated our issues. He wanted her to rest in the dark and not be disturbed. He wanted me to come to work with him.

This is why I stopped coming home on breaks and this was why I decided I didn’t want to hear him anymore and just… shut him out.

I didn’t understand the transient deafness back then but I didn’t care. If I couldn’t hear him I didn’t have to listen when he put the clothes out and ordered me to get dressed. I didn’t have to listen when he told me how to do my hair. I didn’t have to listen to any of it.

Of course, by then I already knew what to do.

So I did it.

I’d put the clothes on, and someone would put my hair up in a childish style, and he always made me lick a sucker when we entered his private offices at work.

He didn’t touch me. Ever. And neither did his friends.

Not with their hands.

But they did touch me with their eyes. Sometimes reaching inside their pants to massage themselves. And then there would be moaning and a stain would appear between their legs.

All the while I had to lick that sucker.

But it’s what they talked about when I was with them that really made me stop wanting to hear things.

I didn’t want to know.

I wasn’t really deaf. I just… stopped being present and went through the motions. Because there was no way out of this. I understood that from the very beginning. Ever since he came in our lives and offered my parents an indecent proposal.

I can’t say I remember much from the days before I became Lyssa Baylor. I don’t remember my father’s face at all. But I do remember how my parents would fight about money. And how I was always hungry and sometimes, I was cold too.

And then one day I was never hungry or cold again.

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