Page 214 of Sins of the Hidden

I thrust the blade forward, cutting the exposed skin above the collar of her shirt.

She didn't even flinch.

My eyes grew wide.

The knife fell from my nerveless fingers, clattering to the floor between us. My throat sealed shut with horror so thick I couldn't even scream.

She smiled as she ripped open her collar. There, carved into the pale flesh of her collarbone, was the scar I'd given her when she'd broken into my apartment.

"Finally figured it out?" She leaned closer, her face inches from mine, dropping her voice to a cruel whisper, "I made my son pretty, don’t you love his scars, Oakley?”

Son.

The word exploded in my brain like a bomb, shattering everything I thought I knew. The universe collapsed around me as pieces locked together with sickening clarity.

Daphne. V's mother. The monster from his nightmares. The woman who'd tortured him. The demon who'd sewn his lips shut with thread and needle.

Right in front of me. Making me tea. Tasting my pastries. Hugging me. For a year.

The world tilted violently beneath me. The room blurred around the edges, oxygen suddenly scarce as my lungs forgot how to function. The simple, automatic process of inhaling—in, out, repeat—became difficult. My mind couldn't form coherent thoughts, just fragments that crashed against each other like waves in a storm.

I couldn't swallow. Couldn't blink. Could only stare, my mind replaying every interaction we'd ever had through thisnew, terrible lens, recategorizing what I'd thought was maternal warmth as calculated manipulation.

Her smile widened at my stunned silence, feeding on my horror like it was sustenance. She traced one stained finger down my cheek in a grotesque parody of motherly affection.

"Nothing to say, Oakley? No defense for my precious boy?" Her mocking tone sliced through the air. Her nail dug into my cheek, breaking the skin. "You know those scars intimately now—but do you think your kisses ever soothed the memories I stitched into him?"

Tears slid down my temples, into my hair. Not for me—for him. For the child who never had a chance. For the boy who'd grown into a man incapable of love because he'd never seen it modeled. For the monster V had become because being human had brought him nothing but anguish.

Her fingers hovered near my lips, their proximity making me retch. "Want to know why? Because he kept stealing my fucking boyfriends." She tapped my lips. "So I shut him up permanently. Sewed those pretty lips together while he squirmed. Embroidery thread, actually. Blue, I think? I was quite the artist back then."

The way he sometimes touched his lips absently when deep in thought. The first time I'd kissed him, how he'd gone completely rigid, how his breathing had stopped, how he'd trembled beneath my touch. I'd thought it was a desire.

It was trauma.

"My men always wanted him—my beautiful boy," Daphne continued, her eyes glittering with sick nostalgia. "They'd offer me more money, more drugs to have him instead of me. Always slipped a sleeping pill in his drink to have a turn."

That was why sleeping pills didn't work on him anymore.

The image her words painted burned into my brain—a young V, terrified, in anguish, betrayed by the one person who should have protected him. What kind of monster could do that toher own child? I thought of the V I knew—dangerous, intense, possessive—and for the first time, I saw those traits not as flaws but as armor, forged in the fires of a childhood I couldn't even imagine.

I understood now why he sometimes went days barely speaking, communicating only in touches and glances. Why he'd go rigid when someone mentioned their mother. Why he'd looked at me with such confusion, such disbelief, when I'd first shown him kindness. He'd never known it before—had been taught from his earliest memories that love was just another word for hurt.

"Divine Diligence," Daphne continued, her voice taking on a reverent quality that made my skin crawl. "Such a pretty name for what it really was. Men in clerical collars who'd press their erections against you while praying over your sins. Women with gentle voices who'd hold you down for purification rituals that always seemed to involve being stripped naked."

The name "Divine Diligence" echoed in my mind, connecting to the recent revelations about my parents that I was still struggling to process. The place my father had escaped from with me as a baby. The place where my real mother Valerie had died trying to save us. Daphne had no idea about my connection to that same hellish place—and I felt a small, desperate relief in that one small mercy.

My father's haunted eyes whenever he spoke of that place. The nightmares that still plagued him decades later. The scars on his back that he'd never fully explained. All of it connected to this woman, to V, to a cycle of horror that had somehow, impossibly, brought us together.

"You know..." Daphne's voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. "Years ago, there was a story at Divine Diligence. A whisper about a couple who tried to escape. They were madeexamples of." Her smile turned knowing. "But that story gave me hope that escape was possible. That there might be a way out."

My pulse hammered against my ribs, deafening in the silence. Was she talking about my parents? Did she know more about what happened to my mother? I fought to keep my expression neutral, terrified that any reaction would reveal my connection.

"When they wouldn't let me leave with my son, I made them promise," she continued, oblivious to the dread spreading through me. "They would help me escape, give me a new identity, a new life—but only if I brought them my son in return." She shrugged, as if discussing a minor business transaction rather than sacrificing her child. "Fair trade, I thought at the time. The boy for my freedom."

Her expression softened into something almost dreamy. "Now they pay me well. For every girl I send them, every troubled teen whose parents are desperate for spiritual guidance—I get a cut. The pretty ones fetch the highest prices." She touched her expensive watch, the diamond earrings that caught the light. "And the men there—they appreciate a woman who understands the game. Who doesn't pretend to be better than what she is."

My stomach twisted with revulsion. My parents had risked everything—my mother had given her life—to get me away from Divine Diligence, while this woman had not only abandoned her son to them but now actively helped them find new victims.

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