squeezed my hand, his gaze seeking mine, trying to determine if I was okay.
I wasn’t sure what I was feeling. My emotions tumbled all over themselves, and I’d thrown up what little I’d had for breakfast. This was the summit I had to climb. Every kill until this point had been mere preparation for this day. When I’d talked to Dad yesterday, he’d offered to kill her if I couldn’t go through with it. Adamo, too, wouldn’t hesitate to take this burden off my shoulders, but I couldn’t allow either man to kill for me. This was between my mother and me. She was the one who’d sold me to the highest bidder, who’d ripped me away from my home and my father because she wanted freedom. Dad had never revealed the details of their relationship—until last night.
He’d met her as an escort but their sexual encounters had ended in my mother becoming pregnant with me, and my father insisting she kept me. Later, he forbade her to work as an escort, sent her into a rehabilitation clinic and forced her to live in his mansion, so I had a mother. He’d wanted me to have parents but my mother had never wanted to have me, to be a mom, to be clean. She wanted her life back and when it became clear my father wouldn’t give it to her, she used me as a means to punish him and to get what she wanted.
“Dinara?” Adamo asked, worried.
I snapped out of my thoughts. We were parked in front of the apartment building where my mother lived. She’d tried to run away yesterday after she must have found out about the murders, but a Camorra soldier had kept watch over her place. Now she waited for us to arrive. I wondered if she knew that she’d share the same fate as every other name on our list or if she hoped for mercy.
I grasped the door handle. “I’m ready.” My voice sounded resolute, determined, calm—the opposite of what I was feeling.
Adamo and I took the elevator up to the third floor then headed toward the last door on the left. A dusty, stale stench lingered in the corridor and the carpet had seen better days. Adamo knocked. I balled my hands into fists to stop them from trembling. I’d waited for this day for a long time but now I was terrified. A middle-aged man, the Camorra soldier, opened the door and let us in. Adamo went in first and I followed after a moment of hesitation. The place wasn’t what I’d expected. I’d thought it would be a sad, dirty place, but the apartment was clean and newly furnished with plenty of glass, fake marble, and golden décor. Black and white photos of my mother in lingerie hung at the wall over the white leather couch. I didn’t find a sign of myself anywhere in the apartment. My mother had probably forgotten about my existence.
When I spotted her, a shiver raced down my spine and the desire to leave became almost unstoppable.
Last time I had only seen my mother from afar. Now only a few feet separated us. I remembered that Dad had compared my beauty to my mother’s when I was very little, before he never spoke of her again. Beauty still lingered under her wrinkles and the frown lines around her mouth and forehead. She was dressed in an expensive-looking dress, with immaculate nails and hair. A cigarette burned in the ashtray on the glass table in front of her. Her eyes darted between Adamo and me, anxiety lining her face.
“Katinka,” she said softly, as if she was happy to see me, as if she had any right to call me by the name she’d ripped away from me.
“Don’t,” I seethed. “Don’t use that name. I’m Dinara now. Or maybe you want to use one of the many names you chose for me while you let one man after the other rape me?”
She blanched. I could see how she was trying to come up with something to say. She reached for the cigarette and took a shaky drag. I’d never smoke again. Her jittery energy told me that she needed something stronger than tobacco. Drugs. I couldn’t believe I’d followed in her footsteps and also fallen trap to addiction. I swore I’d never touch anything ever again. I’d never become the despicable woman before me.
“Dinara,” she began hesitantly. “I never meant for you to get hurt. I was