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“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” I murmur, sitting down all at once on the dusty floor. “I just…I just wanted justice for Adam.”

A heavy silence stretches between us. But finally, Mrs. Graves speaks again, her voice laced with bone-deep sorrow. “I know what it’s like to have an all-consuming rage claw at your soul, that desperate need to make someone pay for an unforgivable crime...” She trails off.

But I want to know more. “What...what happened?”

“When my daughter was taken from me by cruelty and violence...” Her voice fractures but she pushes on. “The rage, that driving need to inflict that same agony on her killer…it nearly destroyed me, Scarlett.”

“What did you do?”

“I hired two young girls with a reputation for enacting street justice.”

Hadria and Lyssa. “And…did they?”

It takes a moment for her to answer, a single nod of the head. I watch her, transfixed and suddenly, strangely, afraid, as she relives her past in her own mind.

“Did it help?” I whisper. “Getting that eye for an eye…did it help?”

She shakes her head, her lips curving in a rueful, heartbroken smile. “No, child. It didn’t. Lyssa asked me that recently, you know. And I—I lied to her. Told her I felt some measure of justice. But I didn’t. Because I didn’t want justice, did I? That wasn’t what I wanted and it wasn’t what I got.”

For the first time, I truly think about where this insatiable quest for vengeance will lead. Is this what Adam would have wanted for me? For me to sacrifice my humanity, to damn my own soul?

To kill, like he was killed?

I blink back the burn of tears clouding my vision as Mrs. Graves reaches across the divide and covers my hand with her palm. “I think you have a good heart beneath all that pain, Scarlett,” she murmurs, squeezing my hand. “Don’t let it consume you, like mine did.”

“You don’t understand,” I say miserably. “I don’t have a good heart. I—I’m the one who killed all your Syndicate members.”

She stares at me for a long time. Ashamed, I keep looking down.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” she says at last. I look up at last, find her somber and still. “Very sorry indeed.”

I open my mouth, desperate to respond, to find absolution. But this woman can’t give it to me, any more than killing my brother’s murderer could bring me peace. I see that now.

And I see, too, that I can’t take her to Grandmother. I’d be signing her death warrant. One more life on my hands. One more terrible deed. And I can’t bring myself to do it. So the only thing I can do is let her go, and try to free my parents myself.

I get up and walk a few paces away. “You need to go.”

She doesn’t move.

“Mrs. Graves, I’m not kidding. Go. Now. Please,” I add, when she still doesn’t move. “Why are you just sitting there? This isn’t a trick. I’ve changed my mind. I…”

She gets up and crosses to me and takes me by the shoulders. “You have done terrible things, Scarlett. But what about your parents—are they bad people?”

I stare at her in horror. “Of course not! They’re completely innocent. This is all my fault, they had nothing to do with it. They have no idea I’m…” I feel sick at the idea of them finding out what I’ve done, too.

“Then you need to do whatever you can to free them. Right now, that means taking me to this—this Grandmother.”

“I can’t take you to her,” I whisper, dragging in a ragged breath as fear wars with shame in my chest. “If I do, she’ll kill you.” The look of pity that crosses Mrs. Graves’ features surprises me.

“No, she won’t.”

“I can assure you, Mrs. Graves, she will.”

“We’ll have to agree to disagree. But either way, you must take me to the people you’re working for.”

I stare at her. “But…why?”

“Because I won’t be the cause of two innocent lives being taken. And I, Scarlett, no matter what you might think when you look at me, I am not an innocent in all this. I understand my girls all too well, and the business they run. So you will take me to this Grandmother, and we will hope that she keeps her word and releases your parents.”