Venom glared at Torment. “She is not my prisoner.”
Torment shrugged. “We’ll agree to disagree.” The master interrogator trained his gaze on Dizzy. “To answer your question—when we’re done here, Venom can choose to keep you or send you packing. It’s an indulgence he’s earned for his years of brave service. Don’t make him regret it.”
Her small hand gripped his. “I would never do that.”
“Then let’s get back to the interview,” Pierce said, pulling them back on track. “Let’s talk about your mother.”
Venom swore inwardly. He had a sneaking suspicion his choice to delay telling her about the blood test results was about to bite him in the ass big-time.
Chapter Nine
Dizzy blinked at the man called Pierce. “My mother is dead. There’s not much to say.”
“I disagree. I think there’s plenty to talk about when it comes to your mother.”
Dizzy couldn’t believe this guy. Wasn’t it bad enough that he had just humiliated her in front of Venom? What more did he want from her? He’d already insinuated she might be a terrorist sympathizer.
Torment, the scary-looking one, remained stock-still in his position behind Pierce. The man’s deadly vibe made her legs tremble. She wasn’t dumb enough to tangle with a guy named Torment. By the looks of him he had earned that name in ways she refused to even imagine.
Dragging her gaze back to Pierce, she asked, “What do you want to know about my mom?”
“Where was she born?”
The question seemed innocuous enough so she didn’t feel bothered by answering it. “She was a colony girl. She came from Jesco where her parents were professors at the university there.”
“What would make a colony girl leave behind the freedom of the colonies for your planet?”
“Love,” Dizzy answered simply. “My mother was a free spirit. She won a lot of pageants and beauty contests as a teenager. She wanted to be a muse. What you call a model,” she explained, remembering the term Venom had used. “Apparently my grandparents weren’t very supportive. They wanted her to get an education and make something of herself but she wanted to travel and enjoy life. She got a job working as a stewardess with Cross Colony Air and that’s how she met my father.”
“And how long did she work as a stewardess?”
“Um…six years? I think she was around my age when she left that job and started her muse agency in The City.”
Pierce tugged another photo from his stack of folders. “Let’s talk about this man.”
Her gaze settled on a surveillance photo of her father leaving one of the known gambling dens in Low Town. “My dad?”
“Sure.”
Her brow furrowed as she considered all the paths this part of the interview might take. “What do you want to know?”
“How did he meet your mother?”
“Oh. Well…he was on vacation in Safe Harbor and Mom had a layover there. They met on the beach there and had a whirlwind romance. A few weeks later she resigned her post with Cross Colony Air and married my father.”
“Because she was pregnant with you?”
“Yes.” She wondered at the odd way Pierce had asked that question. Was it because his culture took a negative view on pregnancy outside marriage?
Pierce thumbed through his paperwork. “Your father was a very wealthy man. You enjoyed a very nice lifestyle until the recession.”
Her fingers skimmed the scars on her neck. “After the bombing the recession hit. Dad’s bank suffered badly. They were overextended and heavily invested in real estate near the embassy and Up Town sector. Within a few months of the explosion Dad was bankrupt.”
As if sensing how hard it was for her to dredge up the darkest time in her life, Venom caressed her arm. If they had been alone he probably would have kissed her tenderly and spoken soft words to her. The intense scrutiny of the secret police duo kept Venom from showering her with the affection she’d grown accustomed to receiving from him. Instead he remained silently supportive of her. It was more than enough and gave her the courage to keep going.
“After we lost the house I got my own small apartment. I couldn’t work as a muse anymore. Not after…” She gestured to her neck. “But I’d always been very good at designing clothes. Dad gave me some cash to get my business started. I’ve been supporting myself ever since.”
Pierce consulted another folder. “Your mother owned and operated a muse agency.”
“Yes.”
“And your parents were very high in society down in The City?”
“They were.”
Pierce showed her various photographs of her parents at political parties and cultural events. “Do you know any of the people in these photos?”
She studied them and pointed out faces she recognized like the former mayor and a chief of police. “I don’t run in those circles anymore so I haven’t seen any of these people in years.”
“After his bankruptcy what did your father do to make money?”
Dizzy frowned at Pierce’s odd pattern of questions. “Is this some kind of interrogation tactic? You know, get me talking about one thing and feeling comfortable and then blindside me with something else?”
Behind her Venom laughed quietly. “Sounds like you need to work on your game, Pierce.”
“My game is just fine, thank you,” Pierce grumbled. “Tell me about Jack’s current line of business.”
“You already know what he does.” She let loose a resigned sigh. “He’s a fence and a black market dealer.”
“Do you receive money from his illicit activities?”
She carefully answered his question. “I’m not sure whether the money to start my business or pay my first few months of rent for my apartment came from legal or illegal sources.”
“That’s fine.” Pierce sat forward. “So—tell me what you were doing at the embassy the day of the bombing.”
She swallowed hard. “I was following my mother.”
Pierce looked interested. “Because?”
Did he know or was he just fishing? Remembering that the deal required absolute truth, she couldn’t very well hold back the facts she’d already told Venom. “I followed my mother because she was having an affair with one of your men.”
“Did you know the Harcos man?” Torment asked the question this time and he was anything but gentle in his delivery.
“No.”
His eyes narrowed with skepticism. “No? You’d never seen or met this man?”
She shook her head. “I heard my parents arguing about him earlier that week. It was the first indication I’d ever had that things weren’t perfect in their marriage.”
“How long was your mother seeing this man?”
“I don’t know.”
His eyes narrowed even more. “Would you recognize him?”
Venom shifted beneath her. His fingers tightened around her arm. Was he worried they were pushing her too hard? “I doubt it. I only caught glimpses of him. It’s been years.”
“You don’t think it’s the slightest bit suspicious that your father, a man with underworld contacts, sold his only daughter into a Grab when his wife had been conducting an affair with a Harcos male?”
Dizzy didn’t like Torment’s tone. “What are you getting at?”
“What color was your mother’s lover’s hair?”
Venom cleared his throat but Torment didn’t seem the least bit interested in easing up on his rapid-fire questioning.
“His hair?” Dizzy’s shoulders bounced. “Why in the world does that matter?”
Torment seemed irritated. “Was it the same color as yours?”
“The same color as mine?” She started to touch her hair but stopped. A strange sensation invaded her chest. All her life people had remarked on the white-blonde color of her hair because it was so very rare among people in The City. Her mother had always claimed it was very common among the Earth settlers who had founded the colonies on the planets surrounding Calyx.
Chest constricting, she asked, “What exactly are you trying to insinuate?”
“I’m not insinuating anything.” With an exasperated exhale, Torment stared over her shoulder to Venom. “You didn’t tell her.”
“Tell me what?” Dizzy twisted on Venom’s lap for a better look at his face. Outwardly he looked calm—probably the effect of years of frontline battles—but he had a grim darkness about his expression. “Venom?”
His right eye twitched. She sensed he was waging an internal struggle. He tenderly touched her cheek and confessed, “Your blood tests before your surgery had some unexpected results. They showed that your father is one of us.”
“That’s not possible. They have to be wrong.” Her clipped, rushed reply came even before she’d processed what Venom had said. She simply refused to believe it.
“They weren’t wrong. Our medical tests are highly sensitized and accurate. Your father is not the man you think he is.”
His words bounced around in her head but she couldn’t make sense of them. Her brain seemed to be on the fritz as she tried to reconcile twenty-three years of her life with the earth-shattering bomb Venom had just dropped. “My father is Jack Lane.”