Chapter 27

Alexi comes back and sits opposite me on the L-shaped couch, giving me plenty of space, hunched forward as he holds his glass in his two hands and swirls it slowly. His eyes are downcast on his liquid refreshment as though he is deep in thought.

“Nice guy. And your mother?”

Really? Alexi is a nosey bastard.

He likes to know everything about everyone and anything. It’s tiring, and I am not naïve. I know he collects information to store in that fast brain that he can use at another time. Usually, I have seen him do it easily to get in your head or under your skin.

“Dead. She was a HA, and she died at my feet when I was fifteen.” Actually, on the floor a few feet away, but who’s picking apart the details? The stupid bitch did it to herself, and I watched her die with no sense of remorse at all. Another slight tingle of bitterness about a past I have no space for hits me low in the gut, and I swallow it away with the memory. People use you and discard you anyway.