I don’t know why, but I couldn’t seem to pull myself away from Suria’s house.

Suria.

Sirene.

Whatever her name was.

I finally had to leave for a little while toward evening and go deal with some shit at the garage, but the moment I was done, I headed back over to the little run-down house and parked on the cross street where I could just barely see the front of the house.

There was a different car parked in the driveway, I noticed. It had been there the first time I came out to see Suria and part of me wondered if maybe she’d come back.

But she wasn’t likely to do that, was she?

It seemed like she had run.

The woman on the sidewalk had circled the block twice, head bowed low, wearing a pair of jeans and a short-sleeved t-shirt. Maybe that was why it didn’t click who she was. Not until she stopped under a street lamp at the end of the block and tipped her head back, staring up at the sky as if searching for something.

Son of a bitch.

Suria.

Unable to stay in the car, I got out just as she started to turn around.

She tensed at the sound of the door shutting, going still.

The sight of her eyes going wide as I approached made me feel a little petty – had I scared her? Why didn’t that bother me?

Oh, yeah. She’d scammed my mom for thousands of dollars.

Relief flashed through her eyes as I drew closer, and I didn’t like that. At all.

I didn’t want Suria to be relieved at seeing me.

“Expecting somebody else?” I asked softly, coming to a stop in front of her.

She glanced toward my car, her mouth still open. She snapped her jaw shut as she swung her head, telling me no. “I wasn’t expecting anybody,” she said, her voice quiet. “What are you doing here?”

“Oh, I was just feeling restless, decided to go for a drive. Thought maybe I’d see if I could get my future told.” I gave her a caustic smile. “What’s the going rate? Ten grand? More?”

She flinched.

That pissed me off.

“What’s wrong? Didn’t expect to get caught?” I took another step toward her.

She eyed me narrowly, caution written all over her face.

It was too late for caution, though. She should have shown some caution when she was thinking about scamming my family.

“What, don’t you have anything to say…Sirene?”

To my surprise, she lifted her chin and met my gaze squarely. “What do you want me to say, Kian?”

“How about the truth?” I demanded. At some point, I’d taken another step, and now there was no room left between us. Glaring down at her, the scent of her filling my head and teasing feelings I didn’t want to have, I fought the urge to grab her and haul her against me…or maybe shake her. “Why don’t you try telling the fucking truth? Or do you know what that is?”

She lifted an eyebrow at me. “I’m not sure you want to hear the truth, Kian. It’s not a pretty story.”

“You conned my mother,” I snapped. “You used her dead brother to do it. Trust me, I already know it’s not pretty.”

She swallowed so hard, I heard the click in her throat. “That’s just the tip of the iceberg,” she said, her voice weak. “I did what I had to do. Maybe if you were me, you’d understand.”

“I don’t want to be you,” I fired at her. “I don’t want to understand what would drive somebody to manipulate somebody who was hurt and grieving. What makes you think that’s okay, Suria? Sirene…I don’t even know what to fucking call you!”

“My name is Suria.” She lifted her chin as she met my eyes. “And I never thought it was okay. But I did what I had to do.”

“Yeah?” Without thinking, I shot my hand up and grabbed that proud, arrogant chin of hers, forcing her head back when she would have looked away. “Why don’t you tell me just why you had to con my mother out of so much money, Suria?”

“I did it to save my sister.” She said those words in a flat monotone. At the same time, she reached up and grabbed my hand.

To my surprise, she pressed down on my wrist in a way that made my hand go almost numb, and when I let her go, she stepped away. Arms crossed over her chest, she moved to the edge of the sidewalk, staring out into the night. “Have you ever felt responsible for somebody, Kian? Felt like it was your job to take care of them?”

“I…shit, what the fuck has that got to do with anything?”

She shot me a dark look. “Everything. I’m all my sister has. We’re half-sisters. My mother died when I was practically a baby. So did Joelle’s.”

That name rang a bell in my mind, but I couldn’t remember why.

“She’s five years younger than me, although it sometimes seems like more.” Suria was no longer looking at me. “She’s…younger than that in some ways. Or maybe I was just older than my years at her age. I had to be. I didn’t have anybody to take care of me the way she did. Papa sure as hell wasn’t interested in it.” A wind kicked up, and she shivered a little, rubbing her hands up and down her arms. “Papa taught me how to run a con when I was twelve years old. I’ve been doing it for the family since I was thirteen. It’s how we make our living.”

Her eyes slid my way once more. “We’re Romany. Gypsies. I’ve heard that some clans out there actually make their living honestly, but I don’t think there’s an honest family in my clan. I don’t think one would know how to survive. Every penny we make, the head of the clan gets a huge cut out of it. It took me years just to set aside a couple of thousand dollars. I always planned to leave, me and Joelle, but then…”

She stopped, reaching up to press her fingertips to her eyes. “Why in the hell am I telling you this shit?”

“Right now, I can’t even tell what it is you’re telling me,” I pointed out.

“You wanted to know why,” she said, turning back to me. “I’m telling you. Do you know what it’s like to have to beg to be allowed to go to a regular school? Most of the kids in the clan are homeschooled. The only reason we weren’t is because there isn’t a mother around to teach us, and a few times, social services came by. Papa likes to keep up appearances.” She curled her lip as she said it, the venom so thick, it all but dripped from each word.

“When I graduated, I wanted to get a real job – something where I could work and get a paycheck and have a banking account.” She snorted, throwing her hair back over her shoulder. “I even offered to pay rent, but I was told no matter what job I had, I’d still be responsible for bringing in the same kind of money I always had, and if I didn’t, the family would suffer. We would suffer – Joelle and me.”

“What’s that mean…you’d suffer?” Something uneasy slid through at the look on her face.

“There’s no telling with the clan. They might have kicked us out – Papa, me, Joelle. Or it could have just been me. I’d have to leave my sister alone. Or it could have been…worse.” She shivered a little. “I made the clan a lot of money, so I was given more freedom. But if I wasn’t as much use, they might decide it was time I be married.”

“Isn’t that kind of up to you?”

“You don’t know anything about the Rom,” she said quietly. She lifted her face to the sky. “I could have tried harder, I suppose. I could have left. I would have been okay, I think. It would have been hard, but I can handle hard. I just didn’t want to leave my sister behind. And now…” She laughed bitterly. “Sometimes it seems like it was all for nothing.”

“What are you talking about?” That uneasiness had grown, in spades. It had something to do with the dead look in her eyes, or maybe the bitter edge in her laugh. But something was really, really wrong here.

“Papa has arranged for my little sister to be married,” she said, cocking her head. “She’s to marry a man who is forty-two years old.”

I blinked, not quite following. But as I waited for her to elaborate, or for some sick punch line, she stayed quiet.

“Wait,” I said slowly as I began to understand. “You’re fucking serious?”

“At what point did I ever make you think I was joking?” Her lashes lowered briefly over her eyes, then she looked at me, dead on, and the seriousness of her gaze cut right through me.

“Joelle,” I murmured, and it hit me why the name was familiar. It was the girl I met the day I came out here to find Suria that first time. That was Joelle. She was just a kid.

The young, sweet girl who’d ignored the jibes tossed her way by kids her age, the girl who’d told me that her sister was working on some big project and wasn’t home.

That girl was supposed to marry a guy older than me?

“When is this wedding?”

“I don’t know.” Suria shrugged. “But it will be soon. Papa wouldn’t want to wait.”

“Fuck your papa,” I snarled. “What about the kid who’s supposed to be the bride? She’s not old enough to marry.”

“It’s not up to her,” Suria said simply. “This is how the clan does it. And she won’t say no. She can’t. And she doesn’t have the strength to fight.” She smoothed a hand down her skirt, her face lost in thought. “That’s why we were going to run. I had to get her away, but I couldn’t do it without money. The few thousand I had wouldn’t be enough. I needed more.” Now she shifted her gaze to me. “I didn’t want it to be your mom, you know. She was…nice. I liked her. But I didn’t have time to wait for some rich dirtbag to fall into my lap. I had to make something happen fast. My sister needed me.”

I turned away from her, struggling to take in everything she’d just told me.

Not sure how to handle it, I paced the sidewalk.

When I looked back, she was standing exactly where she’d been. I closed the distance between us, grabbed her upper arms, and hauled her up onto her toes. “Are you serious? This is legit?”

She stared at me impassively. “Yes.”

“If you’re serious, then why are you here? Why aren’t you on the other side of the country?”

“We should be.” Her voice cracked. “We were in a hotel, laying low. I was going to wait a few more days in case Vano had people watching the local bus lines. But Joelle called home to talk to Trice, our cousin. She was…you met her at the club that first night for just a minute. I think Joelle was worried about Trice and she called. But Papa was standing right there, and he heard everything. He came after her and made her come back, and now I don’t know where he has her or what’s going to happen.” Tears glinted in her lovely eyes as she stared up at me, and all the emotion that hadn’t shown in her eyes was now stamped on her face. “Everything I did, every lie I told, and it was all for nothing because Papa has her hidden somewhere and I don’t know where! I don’t know what I’m going to do now, Kian!”

I let her go, then without thinking about it, I hauled her into my arms.

She collapsed against me and to my shock, she started to cry. “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she said again through the tears.

I had no idea what to tell her, no idea what might make this better.

Because I couldn’t fix it, because I had nothing to offer, I just stood there and stroked her hair as she cried.

Turmoil tumbled inside me as the sobs tumbled out of her.

What in the hell was I supposed to do now?