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She picked up the pen again, her lower lip jutting in disappointment. “Five.”

Every muscle in his body tensed despite her charming pout, but he did everything in his power not to show his knee-jerk reaction. “And this has something to do with an ability?”

She pressed her lips together. It hardly detracted from their fullness. “Yes.”

“So, you give people orders, and they just follow them?”

“Yes. Everyone.” She glanced up at him. “Everyone but you.”

“Why?”

She scoffed. “You tell me. No one has ever been able to disobey my orders. Ever.”

That was strange, but he’d been referring to the ability. “I mean, why would anyone follow your orders?”

“I don’t know. They just always have. Since I was little.”

“What did your parents do?”

“Anything I wanted them to.”

He nodded in understanding, seeing before she explained the fragile circumstances that could create.

“Do you know what a two-year-old with that kind of power is capable of? One who has no sense of right and wrong? Nosense of morality?” She shook her head and went back to the paperwork. “My poor mom.”

“How did she deal with it?”

A small smile crept across her pretty face as she worked. “Headphones.”

He laughed.

She joined him. “We literally learned sign language and used it for most things until I was old enough to know right from wrong. But even then… I put that poor woman through hell.” Her smile faded as she thought back. “That’s how my mom met my stepdad. He had a Deaf aunt. She was teaching sign language classes in a town near us, and my mom took one—with me in tow, of course. Her nephew showed up one night to help her with the projector and spotted my mom. She was such a beauty.”

“I can imagine.”

She shook out of her thoughts. “They hit it off, and the rest is history.”

“So, it’s auditory? The sign language didn’t work?”

“I couldn’t mesmerize at first because I didn’t know how to use it to get what I wanted. Later, even the sign language became an issue for my mom. I was incorrigible.”

He blinked in surprise. “You can give orders using sign language, too?”

“Yes, but I’m not very good. I once told a Deaf boy to stop being rude. At least, I thought I did. He stripped naked in front of me. Apparently, hand placement is very important in ASL.”

He rubbed his mouth to hide his grin. “And your biological father?”

“He was never in the picture. My mom never told me what happened, but she ended up marrying my stepfather when I was around four.”

“And he saw a way to make a quick buck,” Michael said, seeing all too clearly how that would’ve scarred her from a very young age.

She nodded. “When my mother found out, she tried to take me and leave.” Her brows slid together, ostensibly in response to a difficult question on the papers in her lap, but she wasn’t fooling him. He spotted the telltale wetness between her lashes. She cleared her throat and added, “He killed her for it. For me. To keep control of the goose that laid the golden eggs.”

Michael didn’t move, didn’t speak, lest he give away the dark emotions churning inside him. He gave her a moment before questioning her further. He could definitely see why Elwyn had chosen Izzy. She would be a powerful ally in the coming tribulations, but the last thing Michael wanted was for this lovely woman to get mixed up in their lives. Their very dangerous, incredibly volatile lives.

“Did he tell you he killed her?” he asked, hopeful the man had lied and just abducted Izzy, leaving her mother alive and searching for her daughter for over two decades. It was better than the alternative.

She gripped the pen so hard her knuckles turned white. “He didn’t have to. I saw the whole thing.”