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I don't have any experience in feeling guilty over killing anybody. It's the opposite for me. I feel guilty that I haven't killed Carlos yet. I'm not sure I'm the right person for her to have this conversation with, but I also know I'm the only person she can. Fuck. I run my hand through my hair. "Even if you pushed her, Scarlet, it would have been justified. She bruised your fucking ribs."

Mentioning that I killed people for less probably won't help, so I don't say it out loud.

"She was my mother."

"Exactly. She was yourmother. She was supposed to nurture and protect you. To love you. Her abusing you speaks volumes about the type of person she was." Her eyes are still clouded with tears and doubt. I sigh and rub the back of my neck. This is so not the kind of conversation I usually engage in. I try to call up a few instances with Gigi where she needed me emotionally. Most of the time, I had her smiling in no time by promising to kill the person who hurt her feelings. I can't do that here, though.

I try a different angle: "Okay, let's say you and I had a daughter. " The look of alarm on her face at the mention doesn't escape me, but that is a discussion for another day. “Would you ever lay a hand on her?"

Scarlet's eyes widen, her hand moves to her stomach, and she rubs it unconsciously. Vehemently, she shakes her head. "No, never."

"So you do understand that what your mother did to you was wrong?"

She nods.

"You were a child. So you didn't act when she held out her hand." I shrug. If it had been me, I would have kicked the old bat; again, I keep that thought to myself. "You were hurt, confused, and scared. This was an accident, no matter how you look at it. Worst case scenario, from what you told me, she was about to throwyoudown the stairs, which makes your actions self-defense." I put all my emphasis into my words, needing to convince her. She's already carrying too much shit on her small shoulders. "It was an accident. Do you hear me? An accident."

She sniffs; her eyes tell me that she's not quite convinced yet. "Dad is in trouble because of me."

I shake my head, still holding her eyes. "Your dad is in trouble because he didn't man up when he should have. He should have called the cops. At that point, itwasan accident; even with all the other shit, they wouldn't have done anything to him. He's a fucking judge."

I take a deep breath. "He didn't want the scandal, Scarlet. This has nothing to do with you."

Her vehemence surprises me. "He's risking everything now! For me."

"Something he should have done ten years ago," I argue, and she falls silent. I can see the wheels turning in her head. I have a feeling that because she had such a fucking, shitty mother, she put her dad on some fucking pedestal.

"Scarlet, did your father ever bathe you, change your diaper, or help you get dressed?"

Her brows furrowed, ferociously, she replies, "He never touched me."

I sigh. "No, not like that. But fathers do change their daughters' clothes when they're little."

Something I know for a fact, while I was in training for whatever martial arts were on the schedule, Gigi took dance classes and shit like that. There were times when dad took her and helped her into her… whatever they call those fucking outfits… leotards? Fuck, I shouldn't even know that word.

"My point is that you can't tell me that over the course of fifteen years—Fifteen years!" I raise my hand to make a point. “That your father never saw your injuries, which were bad enough to leave scars years later."

If she doesn’t stop biting her lip, I might have to stop her. I worry she'll bite so hard it'll bleed, but she's thinking, so I won't make an issue out of it—yet.

"There were times," she reluctantly confides. “But Mom always had an explanation. She fell, she played with the neighbor's cat, she ran through bushes…" She drifts off.

Her forehead scrunches up as she goes through her memories. It's adorable as fuck, but I give her time to come to her own conclusions. It doesn’t take long.

"You think my dad knew?"

I shake my head. "He has to have known something, but I honestly think he didn't want to see it."

Civilians are funny that way. They would rather close their eyes to the truth than confront it; very different from men like me, who are raised toalwayskeep vigilant and never allow a potential problem to grow its own legs.

"Passerotta, the main thing here is you don't need to feel responsible for any of this. You were a child. Caught up in an impossible situation."

"So what am I supposed to do, just accept the fact that I may or may not have killed my own mother and move on?"

If she were anybody else, I would tell her exactly that, and my expression must have reflected it. So I hasten to say, "Nothing good will come out of you obsessing over this; it'll only drive you mad or make you feel so guilty you won't know what to do. Accept what happened for what it is. Something that happened to a very young girl who was hurt and abused. If you keepdwelling on it, you might start hating yourself or your father, which won't make it any better."

"Accept and move on?" She asks.

I nod.