Evie took a step to the side, distancing herself from the table. She didn’t care for this. This was moving in the direction oftalking, and she already did plenty of that. With Georgina and with the patrol teams who interrogated her. She didn’t want to suffer it with Natalya too.
Would she make her? Force her to share, somehow? She already knew Natalya could read her emotions and even enhance them. Maybe she would do something to make Evie talk. Maybe she would get angry if Evie didn’t have satisfying answers.
“I just want to talk, darling,” Natalya said, the final word moving through Evie like a breeze. She said it so serenely. Just like she’d done in the kitchen and at Varro’s estate. It was calming then. It was that now too.
Natalya patted the back of the chair. “I’ll stop whenever you want me to. But I need you to try. For me. Can you do that?”
Evie didn’t want to. There were only few things she’d like less than this. But Natalya hadn’t asked if Evie wanted to. She asked if she could.
With Natalya, Evie felt like she could do things she otherwise thought impossible.
Hugging herself, she sat on the dining chair Natalya had pulled out for her. Natalya sat across from her.
“What do you want to know?” Evie asked, masking her unease by keeping her tone indifferent.
“Aleksander wants me to push you harder. Regarding what went on at the estate.”
Evie took a deep breath. This was just as she thought it would be. Awful, terrible talking and the forced recollection of painful memories.
“I’m not going to ask you about that,” Natalya said. “For now, I only want to know how you ended up with Varro.”
“Stefano noticed me,” Evie said bitterly. “And I was easy to take.”
“What about your family? I suspect Varro asked about them too.”
Evie had to fight not to lower her eyes. When he’d found out how rare she was, Varro had gotten adamant about finding more of her bloodline. He’d been disappointed. He wasn’t gentle when disappointed.
“I don’t have anyone.”
“Everyone has someone.”
“Not me.” Evie swallowed to keep her voice from quivering. “I don’t know who my dad is. My mom got behind the wheel drunk and died in a crash when I was ten. I had no other family, so I got put into foster care and was passed around until I turned eighteen.” Evie’s voice turned cold. “Like I said. I don’t have anyone.”
She’d told all this to Varro, but it was different here. It hurt to say these things in front of Natalya. It hurt to open up, showing all the facets of her past that made others cringe away.
Natalya didn’t cringe away. Evie wanted her to. It was what she was used to and what she had responses for. She mirrored Natalya’s hard expression.
“I have a record. Did you know that? Started moving drugs through the lockers when I was in high school. Got kicked out for it, and I never went back. I hung out around strippers and sex workers instead. I did—”
“Were they kind to you?”
The question stunned Evie into silence. Most people hearing about her past either got uncomfortably quiet or made an excuse to change the topic. They didn’t ask questions like that. They didn’t care.
They didn’t care about Patricia, who had been like a mother to her and who let Evie sleep on her couch after she ran away from home for the first time. They didn’t care about Nell, who had let Evie move into her one-bedroom studio when she got kicked out of her apartment, saving her from living on the streets. They didn’t care about Harper, a girl she loved like a sister, who sat with her in the ER all night when Evie broke her wrist after an altercation at the club they both worked at.
They had been her friends. Her family. They’d raised her more than the people who were supposed to.
She hadn’t talked to them in over a year. It was too risky. Varro might target them if he found out she’d contacted them.
“Were they kind to you, Evie?” Natalya repeated.
“Yes,” Evie said tightly. She didn’t trust her voice not to tremble if she didn’t strain it. “They helped me.”
“Helped you how?”
What the hell were these questions? Invasive and, at the same time, not. Questions with simple answers that were like needles going into her heart.
“They taught me things. Gave me a place to sleep. Fed me, sometimes.”
