I reached out and took his hand, then held it tight in mine. I said nothing, but I knew that he’d continue when he was ready.

“I didn’t think I’d ever talk about her. I wanted to forget her. To pretend the bitch didn’t exist.”

“But she did exist,” I said softly. “And even if you could forget her, it wouldn’t change whatever she did to you. But it helps to talk about it.” I managed a small, supportive smile. “In case you were wondering, I have it on good authority that talking about childhood shit with someone you care about helps a lot.”

He held tight to my hand for a moment, then released me and stood up. After a moment, he moved to the window and spread the curtains wide. It was late now, the sky pitch-black, the stars unable to push through the curtain of ambient light that rose like a halo to surround the city.

Beyond Cole, I could make out the silhouette of buildings, most just a few stories tall, that filled the view before ending abruptly at a dark expanse of ocean that seemed to reach up and merge with the deep black of the night sky.

“I was eleven when I got in tight with the gangs. Young, but not for that life. Especially not for a kid like me who needed cash. Because it was just me and my grandmother and my aunt, and it was me who took care of them. There was no other man, not who stuck, and I don’t think I would have relied on someone else, anyway. How could I when my grandmother had taken me in and worked herself to the bone taking in laundry and sewing when my bitch of a mother had dumped me on her? And then was left with nothing when her mind started to go?”

“Where is your mother?”

“Dead,” Cole said, without any emotion at all. “She was a junkie and a whore, and she died when I was five. And good riddance to the bitch. She’d already poisoned herself. Poisoned me. She drank, smoked crack, did god knows what when she was pregnant with me, and then gave birth to a scrawny, screaming baby who was as much an addict as she was.”

I sat frozen, completely clueless as to how to respond to something like that. What I wanted to do was stand up and hug him. What I did instead, was simply give him space.

“Fuck,” he said after he ran his hands over his head and sucked in air. “I didn’t mean to get off on all that. Point is, my grandmother took care of me practically from the day I was born. Made me work, made me think, made me something better than I would have been. So when early-onset Alzheimer’s started to kick in, I knew I’d be the one to take care of her and my aunt even though I was only eleven.”

“Not an easy thing for a kid,” I said.

“No, not easy. And damned near impossible if you want to come by the money legitimately. But if you’re not too picky, then there’s always the gangs. And since the gangs are there—right under your nose from the first moment you set foot in the world—they already feel like home. Hell, I was practically part of the Dragons from the moment I slid out of the womb, but when I was eleven I made it official.”

“The Dragons? That was the name of the gang?”

He nodded.

“That’s why you have a dragon tattoo.”

“No. I have the tattoo because I got out.” He turned so that I had a better look at his back. “The gang sign was a small dragon on the right shoulder. See it?”

I peered, then found an outline of a dragon hidden inside the bolder, wilder artwork of the beautiful creature that covered Cole’s back.

“This one’s mine. I drew it. I designed it. I hired the artist to do the needlework. And the most important part was covering up that mark. Making my own symbol.”

“It’s wonderful,” I said, feeling absurdly proud that he had not only done that, but that he’d thought of it. “You took something horrible and made it beautiful.”

“I tried,” he said. “But the horrible still creeps in around the edges. I’m getting ahead of myself,” he said, before I could ask what he meant. “I was talking about the gang. We were into everything, but drugs mostly. That and guarding our turf and all the bullshit that goes along with that life. Even then I knew it was bullshit,” he said, meeting my eyes. “But I also knew it was the only option I had.”

“It must have been so hard.” I could picture him, so young, his innocence stripped from him. Tears pricked my eyes, and I brutally brushed them away.

“Wasn’t easy,” he said. “But I didn’t mean for this to be a lesson in gang culture.”

“You wanted to tell me about Anita,” I prompted.

“She was my rite of passage,” he said, in the kind of flat voice that made me want to pull him close and hold him tight.

“What does that mean?”

“It means that no one gets a cut of any real income without being fully inducted. And no one is inducted until they’ve popped their cherry. More than that, though. One night wasn’t enough. No, you had to be fully initiated. And that’s where Anita came in.”

“She was your first.”

“In so many ways.” His voice was raw. Hateful. “She liked pain. Serious pain. Giving and receiving. Cigarette burns. Wire pulled tight around your cock. Knives. Straws jammed up your urethra. God knows what up your ass. She was a sadistic, masochistic bitch, and she tied every single goddamn orgasm to one of her fucked up games.”

I shook my head, not really willing to believe that what he was saying could be true. “She made you—”

“There’s a parabola of pain, you know. After a period of time, it turns to pleasure. Not just the kind of pain I’ve shared with you. But real pain. Torture pain. The kind of pain that pulls state secrets and turns spies. But you cross a line, and that torture doesn’t work anymore, because the victim has slipped over into euphoria. So if you want to fuck up somebody’s sexual wiring, then you take a kid—a kid who’s barely had a hard-on much less an orgasm—and you wind him up and jack him off over and over. You make it hurt, then you make it feel good, then you make it hurt again—” His voice had gone hard, and now it broke. “Shit,” he said.

“You don’t have to tell me any more,” I said.

“But I do, because with me there was more than just the way her fucked up games messed with my mind and rewired everything that gets me hard. She pushed my limits with sex—and couple that with the shit my mother left me with—impulse control problems, anger management, all the bullshit that lingers when you’ve got that goddamn ‘crack baby’ label. Makes me like a goddamn bomb just waiting to explode and you can damn well bet that sex is one of the triggers.”

He paced to the end of the room, then came back and started the circle again. I watched him, my heart breaking for the boy he’d been and the man he’d become.

Finally, he stopped in front of me. “Bottom line is I’m fucked up.”

“No,” I said, standing so that I could press my hands to his face. “The bottom line is that you’re the strongest man I know.”

“Kat—”

“No,” I said fiercely. “Don’t you dare argue with me. Maybe you are fucked up. So what? I mean, who isn’t? But you’re not screwed up like that. You don’t take it that far. You don’t explode—not really. You don’t hurt yourself or me like that.”