already in a cell. A cell I’d created.
So, I was going to tell him. He’d probably look on me in disgust, and the truth of who I was would certainly send him running. But at least I would finally be out of my personal prison.
Of course, all of this was slightly easier to bear because we would probably die in this dungeon.
One perk to confinement and torture?
No long-term worrying about the consequences of my actions.
Because death was imminent.
Not that I was giving up. I would fight tooth and nail to the end, but I also understood that the deck was stacked against us, that it wouldn’t be a fair fight, and that unless KTS managed to track us down, our chances of getting out weren’t great.
All of this had me lifting my chin, releasing a deep breath, and saying, “By one of them, I mean that for the first sixteen years of my life, I lived and breathed the Toscalo life. I hurt people, and I didn’t care. I—” Shame washed over me. “I wanted what I wanted. I relished the power. I enjoyed it when someone was punished because of some perceived slight to me.”
“What happened when you turned sixteen?”
My eyes burned, that shame a heavy burden. “They hurt someone I actually cared about.”
“Who?”
“My nanny.” I shook my head. “It was silly to still be close to my nanny, especially at sixteen, but my mother wasn’t involved in my life except for the odd comment about the way I dressed or how I wore my hair.”
“Your father, though,” Dan murmured. “He wanted to make you his heir.”
Heir to a sick and twisted empire.
“Yes,” I said. “I was the oldest and always his favorite. The way he always told it is that he’d say he knew exactly how smart I was going to be from the moment I opened my eyes as a newborn and glared at him. I was a precocious child with a fiery temper, and my father relished that in me.”
“And then you grew up.”
“I did very well in school. Much better than my younger brothers and so, by the time we were all in double-digits, there was no doubt I would be taking over the Toscalo name.” I shook my head. “My father didn’t care that I was a woman. He only cared about three things: power, ruthlessness, and money. I’d proven I cared about only the same by the time I was ten.”
A long pause.
Then “How?”
I blew out a breath, closed my eyes. “Want to know what it’s like to grow up with a child who is given every advantage but rarely told no?” My laugh was brittle. “I can tell you. It’s not pretty. If someone teased me, I wouldn’t tease back or get mad or even hit them. No, I would find the one toy or possession that was most precious to them, and I would either destroy it and return the broken pieces . . .” The memories of my brother’s favorite truck, my so-called best friend’s favorite doll, and how I’d relished breaking them flashed through my mind. “Or, as I got older and was better able to control myself, I would ransom it back.”
“Ava.”
I ignored him. “And my father was so proud of me. He couldn’t stop talking about how ingenious and ruthless I was. He encouraged me, and I fucking loved doing it.”
“Until something happened with your nanny.”
“Yes.”
“What, honey? What happened?”
“I caught her stealing, and—” I broke off. “I—”
He waited, and I pushed through the shame.
“I was the one who hurt her.”
The sharp inhalation had my heart sinking. Then his voice was gentle, too gentle. “I’m sure that’s not everything.”
“Don’t be nice,” I said. “It was my fault. I reported her to my father. And h-he made me—” Horror washed over me, like I was in that room all over again. Like I was the one lifting the blade, bringing it down over Isa’s hand. “No. I could have stopped it. I should have stopped it.”
Dan came over to me, took my hand. “Should have stopped what?”
“I should have stopped him from cutting off her hand!” I swallowed the bile that rose in my throat. The memory of the blade slicing through skin, getting stuck on the bone, Isa’s cries of pain made me physically sick, but not more than the fact that I’d done it. I was the reason she’d been in that room. I should have . . . done so many things differently, not the least