Chapter 253

#120

I stare at the screen for a long moment, rereading the same line over and over like it might rearrange itself into something less absurd if I just give it enough attempts.

Nora Ellis.

The Red Room. My mother. A private BDSM venue.

For nearly ten seconds, my brain simply refuses to process the combination of words. It isn’t even the fetish element that throws me – in a strange, twisted way, that’s almost the least surprising part of the equation. What knocks the breath out of me is the realization that this is yet another massive piece of my parents’ past that has been entirely rewritten, sanitized, and buried beneath a decades of silk blouses and charity galas.

Over the last few months, I have discovered my Dad was a mafia Don who might or might not have had a hand in his best friend’s death. Now I find out my mother, the picture of upper-class domestic elegance, once helped manage a sex club.

I lean back in my desk chair, letting out a quiet,