“Yeah, those flow—” he cuts himself off, his hand wrapping around my wrist and bringing it closer. “Where’s the wall?”

“There was no wall.” I shake him off, my frown moving from Maddoc to him. “When she was little, Donley Graven kept her locked in a studio, a garden outside the doors, and stone wall surrounding it, covered in thorns and ivy.”

Maddoc frowns. “Donley Graven got a bullet to the back of the head months ago, he’s six feet under and Collins Graven took off to Europe. His every move is tracked, hasn’t looked back since.”

Raven’s hands slide along her belly, tension in her eyes. “Yeah, but knowing about the wall and considering everything else, how I had their shit burnt, the fire screams Graven to me.”

“She might have different enemies, Raven. She ended up here, she didn’t start here.”

“Didn’t she?” she challenges. “You said she was born here and kept locked away.”

“Yeah, but she had no human contact then, not until Mero—” I cut myself off. “Wait. She did talk to one person there.”

“Who?” she asks.

Royce flies from his seat right then. “Incoming.”

We jerk around to spot a black car rolling up the driveway.

Nobody comes down this road.

Maddoc pushes Raven behind him, but she shoves him, gripping his arm to see best she can.

The door opens and none other than Connor fucking Perkins, our old principal, our father’s once friend, and my biological father, steps out.

What the fuck?

I’m down the porch steps, freezing him in his before he has a chance to close the door behind him.

“The fuck are you doing here? You were told to leave this place.”

“Where is she?” he rushes out, ignoring me completely.

Anger builds in my gut and I move closer. “You are not seeing my daughter.”

“Not her, Captain. Victoria.” He shocks me.

My muscles grow stiff.

Royce pushes forward, eerily slow. “Why you care?”

Perkins’ shoulders fall, his eyes moving across us. “You sent her away like you sent me away, didn’t you?”

Maddoc pushes forward. “Why wouldn’t we?”

Perkins’ head tugs back, his eyes flying between ours. “Maybe I made a mistake. I guess I thought...” He closes his mouth, nodding. “Never mind.”

“No, no, no.” Royce slips by him, yanking the keys from his hand, putting them in his pocket. “Say what you came to say. Why do you care about a poor little group home girl?”

“I think she’s in danger,” he says.

My gut twists. “Why?”

“I went to Maria’s. It’s gone.”

“We know,” I snap. “If that’s all, you can go now.”

His mouth falls open the slightest bit, and he shakes his head, eyeing me. “Was I wrong to believe Victoria means more to you than she does?”

My jaw tics, but I give him nothing.

“Did she explain anything to you?” he asks. “Why she came?”

“Let’s pretend she didn’t,” Royce snaps. “Fill us in, Perkins. Now.”

“All right.” He swallows with a nod. “I guess I’ll start at the beginning,” he says.

“Victoria was born but never held, stolen from her mother, and taken back to the Graven Estate,” he begins. “She was raised but never spoken to, fed and clothed, but left alone.”

All shit I already know but is news to my family, so I let him continue.

“She had a garden she cared for, and nothing else. Not even a name, no identity whatsoever.”

“Until Mero,” Raven guesses, reaching out for Maddoc’s hand.

Perkins nods. “She’d never even seen beyond the walls she lived in until Mero Malcari showed up and bartered for her. She went from being invisible to being adored. From having her own garden to her own greenhouse. Mero was everything to her, so she followed him blindly. It wasn’t until she came here, she began to question everything she ever knew.

“After years of coaching her, he was finally ready to come home, back to Brayshaw. He asked his precious tool to come first.” I glare, and he moves his eyes to the ground a moment. “Her job was to find one secret, something nobody else knew. She started with who she saw as the weakest link.”

Weakest link?

He must see it, because he shakes his head. “Not you, Captain.”

“Mallory,” Maddoc guesses.

Perkins nods. “He set her up in a hotel for a week, but it only took her twelve hours. She knew everything there was to know about this town, the Brayshaws and her bloodline, the Gravens, or at least Mero’s version of the truths, so she knew what he would do with what she’d found out.

“For the first time Victoria was faced with a moral decision, and she chose right. She waited out her time here and went back to the man who gave her a purpose in life, the man she idolized until that moment, and lied straight to his face. She let him down for the first time in her life, to save a baby she had no ties to.”

“He knew she lied.”

Perkins nods again. “And he punished her for it, severely, but she was his future, as he saw it, so he made sure it was nowhere anyone could see.”

Her scars.

He cut her up, blended his marks with the marks left by the thorns from the ivy tower she was once locked inside of. A reminder she was not free, though she might have felt so.

“As I said, Mero saw her as his future, so from the moment he had her, he began making sure she was ready for what that meant.”

“He taught her how to defend herself,” Raven whispers.

“Yes,” Perkins says. “She fought back and won.”

She killed him.

“Victoria was on my doorstep, bloodied and frail, not twenty-four hours later. I was ready to send her off, thought she was some crazy looking for a payout, when she threatened exposing me as your biological father,” he tells me, a small smile finding his mouth. “Still not sure how she figured that one out.”

“She’s smart.” My body aches.

He nods. “I didn’t know what to do with her, so I leased a small place on the edge of town and put her inside it. Mallory disappeared a week later.”

She didn’t convince Mallory to leave me like Mallory twisted the situation to make me believe.

She convinced her to keep Zoey, and the only way to get Mallory to agree, was to hide her away. She’d have the baby and walk away like nothing happened, and nobody would ever know.

“She moved her in.”

“I didn’t learn that until later, but yes,” he confirms. “During the pregnancy, she made her way to you guys. She convinced me to get her in contact with your dad and went to see him. I was surprised when he so easily gave her a safe place in the girl’s Bray house, and had Maybell help enroll her into school. From that day, she spent every other giving back to your family the only way she knew how.”

“Finding and giving us secrets.” Maddoc frowns.

“You said Mero bartered for Victoria.”

Perkins’ chin lowers the tiniest bit as if he was waiting for me to ask.

“Why would he do that? Her being Graven blood meant nothing, they didn’t claim her. Why did he want her?”