I couldn’t bring myself to lie, so I smiled in what I hoped resembled confidence, shrugging.

“Your secret is becoming not so secretive. Doesn’t bode well for your role as the chairman of Green Living. At any rate, I’m here to tell you that was the last time you hit your son. I am taking this to Child Protective Services. Since it’s not my first rodeo with CPS, let me tell you how it’s going to play out. I will file a complaint, they’ll visit your house within twenty-four hours to check for the wellness of your children, and once they find signs of neglect or abuse—which they will, because Tinder is physically injured—they’ll remove the children to a foster home and press charges against you.”

Joelle nearly choked.

“Since I’ve worked with numerous schools during my short career and know quite a few CPS agents, I can probably help Joelle get full custody since she wasn’t complicit in the abuse. Now, as for you—” I turned to Joelle, who buckled with her back against the wall, crying on the floor. Her face was wet with sweat, tears, and snot.

“You should put your children above all else. Always.”

“I did.” Joelle grabbed ahold of my dress, tugging at it desperately. “I do! Do you think I liked what he did? Do you think it’s my fault? I had no idea it was going to be this way. I would have never married him, Persy. Ever.”

I didn’t think it was her fault. She wasn’t the abusive party. If anything, she was a victim, too. But I knew her children might not see it that way. They might grow up to resent the woman who clung on their father’s arm with a big smile on her face, knowing what he did behind closed doors.

“Doesn’t matter what you thought. It’s time you take responsibility and step away from this toxic relationship. Put you and the twins first. Consider this my official resignation. Oh, and Andrew? Drop the lawsuit against my husband. You’ll either have to resign or get fired within the next few days, and you have bigger legal fish to fry.”

I grabbed my keys and bag, glancing behind my shoulder. What I saw broke my heart. Tinder and Tree were huddled together on the last step of the stairway, gaping at me with tears in their eyes.

I broke down, falling to my knees, letting all the tears I kept at bay loose. Starting this job, I knew I’d get attached, but I never thought I was going to love them so fiercely.

“Come here, boys.” I opened my arms.

They ran to me, yelping. As always, I fell back from the momentum, from the storm of their embrace, allowing them to bury their heads in my shoulders, crying along with them.

Later that night, I sifted through the material on the disc-on-key Sam gave me.

It took me three hours and two glasses of wine to find the file I’d been looking for. It was simply named. CFF.

Cillian Frances Fitzpatrick.

I double-clicked it, downed the wine, and said a prayer.

I didn’t know what I was in for.

I just knew I wasn’t ready for this.

The Past.

The first time I stepped into a juvenile treatment clinic was at age fourteen.

Earlier that week, I beat myself up so bad, I was still pissing blood and spitting teeth. My face was so swollen, it took three of my peers to recognize who I was when they found me on the library floor.

My mother accompanied me into the Swiss clinic. Reluctantly. I was covered in a coat, hat, and sunglasses to hide my battered figure, like a D-list celebrity zipping through an airport, trying to remain unidentified. Mother remained silent most of the plane journey from England to Zurich, save for a brief conversation, whispered after the stewardesses were out of earshot.

“Your father can’t know.”

That was the first thing she said.

Not how you are doing.

How’d it happen.

Your father can’t know.

I stayed quiet. There was, after all, nothing to say. She was right. Athair couldn’t know. And at any rate, there was no way to explain what had happened. One second I was sitting in front of my textbooks in the library, studying my ass off to finish first in class as always, the familiar weird pressure—an intangible tension I couldn’t explain—skulking up my spine like a spider, and the other, I was on the floor, beaten to a pulp, not sure who did it.

Now I knew who that person was.

It was me.

I beat myself up to a point of unconsciousness.

“Cillian Frances, did you hear me?” Mother linked her fingers together over her lap, face rigid, posture perfect.

“Loud and clear.” I looked out the window at the passing clouds.

“Good.” She frowned at an invisible spot on the cockpit door. “He will blame it on me, somehow. He always does, you know? I can never catch a break with this man.”

My mother wasn’t a bad person. But she was weak. Convenient. Now more than ever, having given birth to my sibling, Hunter, less than three years ago.

The new baby had put a strain on my parents’ marriage. When I came for a visit during the summer, they’d barely spoken a word to each other. When my mother asked if I wanted to hold my brother, my initial reaction had been hell no, but then she gave me that sheepish, poor-me look, and added, “Your father never holds him.”

So I’d held him. Looked down at the tiny, old-looking bald person who stared back at me with big blue eyes that looked nothing like mine and told him, “Buckle up, little bro. You were definitely born into one heck of a family.”

“Anyway,” Mother chimed again on the plane, rearranging her pearl necklace, “I hope this has nothing to do with Andrew Arrowsmith. You won’t be seeing much of him anymore outside of Evon.”

“I haven’t heard or seen him since Athair fired his dad,” I admitted in a vain attempt to try to get some info.

“His father wouldn’t have been fired if he wasn’t a crook,” Mother huffed.

“I don’t care about his father.”

“We’ll see if he finishes his studies at Evon,” she continued, ignoring my words. I’d often wondered why I bothered answering her at all. “Your father is suing him for everything he stole.”

“They used to go golfing together. Take annual vacations. Visit casinos in Europe. Go fishing,” I said, leaving out the escorts, strip clubs, and underground joints they’d promised to take Andrew and me to when we were older.

She rolled her eyes. “Don’t be naïve, Cillian. People will do anything to get close to us Fitzpatricks. We can’t have real friendships.”

Mother dropped me off at the clinic as soon as we landed, signed the paperwork, and told me she’d come to pick me up in a few hours.

“I would stay,” she sighed, “but you know how jittery I get in clinics. They’re not my scene. Besides, I have some shopping to do. You understand, don’t you, Kill?” She pinched my cheeks. I stepped away, turned around, and left without a word.

A nurse led me to a white small room with a desk and a chair. She locked the door behind me. I sat down, looking up at a security camera that was trained on me. I was obviously being watched.

They kept me like this for twenty minutes or so before a male voice sounded behind a two-way mirror.

“Hi there, Cillian.”

“Hello.”