Born of Fire

He winced. “I was there with them when it happened. She’d been so convinced that as soon as they saw the baby, everything would change and that they’d forgive her for falling in love with a pleb. But her father was colder than Indie had ever been. And she was so tore up over it. After that, Indie went insane cause he couldn’t make it better for her. He wanted her to have the life she’d had with her parents and to not regret marrying him. Since he couldn’t find a legal job that paid anything, he went back to what he knew. Filching.”


He let out a tired sigh. “And something happened to her after that meeting that day. She became real demanding about everything. Like she felt that she’d given up her entire life and dignity for Indie. Suddenly nothing he did could please her and she rubbed his nose in everything she didn’t have. She kept reminding him that she was a high-bred lady and he was shit.”

Shahara scowled. “Why?”

“I don’t know. She became an entirely different person and nothing Indie did was good enough. She started to take it out on Talia and then Indie would take out his anger on her for hurting his daughter. Then when she got pregnant with Sheridan, it only got worse . . . I half expected her to abort him.”

“Why didn’t she?”

His eyes turned dark. “Indie told her he’d kill her if she killed his son.”

Shahara was horrified by that. How could parents act that way? It was bad enough what they did to each other, but to do it to their children? “I don’t understand. Given the way he treated Syn, why did he care?”

“Indie still loved her at that point. I don’t know why, but he did and he worshiped Talia because she looked like her mother. Then when Sheridan was born, he was so proud and happy to have a son. Until the day he caught that bitch trying to drown Sheridan when the boy was only three weeks old.”

Her stomach hit the floor as disbelief consumed her. “What?”

He nodded. “I don’t know what made her snap, but she’d been holding the baby down under the water while she was bathing him. But for Talia running to her father to tell him Sheridan was dead, we’d have never known. Indie beat her down so bad that I don’t know how she lived. Not that I blamed him for that one. It’s the only thing that was justified.” He swallowed audibly as he glanced out the window. “She left not long after that and when she took off, it killed Indie. Whatever kindness he had inside him went with her. And he hated Sheridan from that point on.”

That didn’t make sense. “I don’t understand? Why hate him? He was just a baby.”

He rubbed a tired hand over his chin. “Indie blamed him for losing her. He had this screwed up idea that if Sheridan hadn’t been born, she’d have stayed, and so he wanted to make Sheridan pay for running her off. He even turned on Talia . . . again because she looked so much like her mother. And I felt even sorrier for her than I did Sheridan. She knew what it was like to have a father who loved her. Sheridan didn’t. She used to cry herself sick wanting to know what had made her father hate her.”

Shahara wanted to cry for all of them. “Who was his mother?”

The hatred in his eyes singed her. “I’ll never say that bitch’s name. May that old whore rot and die for all eternity for what she did. She could have saved Indie and pulled him back from his life had she not been so selfish. But she wanted her fancy baubles and houses. We weren’t good enough and that was what turned my brother psychotic. He got it in his mind that we were trash and that the only way to get respect was to take it and to kill anyone who wouldn’t give it to him.”

His gaze turned hard. “Syn don’t know none of this and I want to keep it that way. He thinks his mother left because she couldn’t take living with his father. No offense, I’d rather he keep thinking that, too.”

Because it was easier than to know his own mother tried to kill him. “Don’t worry. I would never tell him.”

He inclined his head to her.

Shahara pushed her food around on her plate. “So what about Syn? What made him a criminal?”

“That boy ain’t no criminal!” he snarled so defensively that she pulled back from him. “Sheridan never done nothing but survive and there shouldn’t be no crime in that.”

His unwarranted hostility surprised her. There was no denying what Syn was, reasons be damned. The man broke the law. A lot.

His gaze probed hers with an intensity that chilled her. “Tell me what you’d have done if you were only ten years old and found yourself without a family and no home? Them Rits took every last credit of Indie’s. Not a cent was left for Sheridan. He had nothing at all. I was thrown in jail when they arrested Indie and I thought that, as bad as it was for me, that at least he’d have a good home with decent people. But I overestimated those so-called decent people. None of them would take him in. Not even the government wanted him in an orphanage.”

She winced at that harsh reality. “Because of who his father was?”

He nodded.

The sins of the father are forever visited on the son. Conventional wisdom would say that whatever genetic defect had caused Idirian Wade’s behavior would manifest in his child. It was a rampant fear that she was more than familiar with.

“So what did they do with him?”