"Boss."

I looked up from where I had been conducting my business at the dining room table. Ledgers and invoices scattered the wooden surface as my tired eyes roved over them slowly, methodically. Jack and Philip were standing in the doorway, two other men held between them. I wasn't sure which of them had spoken but my eyes shot to Jack when I answered.

"Is this them?" I asked, my jaw ticking in annoyance.

Jack and Philip both gave a single, solemn nod.

I rounded the table slowly, glaring at the men standing before me. One of them was enormous, a big, hulking brute meant to intimidate with a long, white scar over his left eye and nearly every tooth in his head vacant. His companion was thin, reedy, and had a malicious gleam in his eye that displayed the wickedness within him.

"I-sir, we used to work for your father," the larger one said, watching me warily with something akin to fear in his expression.

"I know what you did," I snapped.

They fell silent, blinking at me as though they'd been struck. I came to a stop before them on the other end of the table. I leaned back against it, bracing myself on my hands as I examined them again.

"My father put you onto a man from the merchant's district who owed a rather large sum in gambling debts. He owned a bookshop. You set it ablaze," I said, every word clipped, my tone dropping to a dangerous growl at every word.

They exchanged a glance.

"Y-yes, sir," the lanky one replied.

"Tell me everything you did to that family," I snarled.

"Sir, it was your father's orders-" the big one began to argue, sensing my rage on the subject and looking to subdue it.

"Tell me. Now."

"Mr. Keene sent us to collect a debt," the thin one said. "We tried but the old fool didn't have the money. When we went back empty handed, your dad told us to show him what happens when he doesn't pay his debts and to keep showing him until they're paid off. So we went back and we, uh, burned the place."

"Did you know there were people inside?"

"We, uh, we didn't think much of it."

I grit my teeth at the sheer callousness of their actions and their attitudes toward it even now.

"What else?" I ground out.

"The son-in-law," the big one blurted. "He's a butcher the next district over. We caught him outside one night and broke his arm. As a warning, you know. Common practice."

I was seething by now but I waited for them to tell me more. When they didn't volunteer the information freely, instead looking back and forth at one another as if debating telling me the rest at all, I snapped.

"And?" I asked.

"We- well, you see, we didn't know at the time that later on the girl would come to mean something to you," the lanky one started again and my heart bottomed out when I understood who they were speaking of and what might be coming. "If we had known–"

My very blood was thrumming, my heartbeat pounding so loudly in my ears that I could hardly hear them.

"What did you do to her?" I growled.

"We, uh, well," he started, scrambling, and I waited, hands fisted at my sides, jaw clenched so tightly it ached. "We'd been following her, you know. She and the brother-in-law were the only ones going around making the payments. That old fool hardly ever left the butcher's apartment. Then we started seeing her hanging around this rich man, working for him. But still, those payments were coming in slow and your father was getting impatient. We waited for a time we might find her alone but she was always with that rich man. He seemed the savior type, you know, so we didn't want to engage when he was around. So we waited. And one night she was coming out of this fancy party real late, just her and her friend, blonde woman that we'd seen her with a time or two before. We stopped their carriage on a dark road by taking out the driver and dragged those two from the back. We were only going to threaten the blonde one, scare them both, and send them running on their way so that the daughter might pay us back more, faster. But she pulled a pin from her bag and stabbed it deep in Bart's shoulder so we... lost our temper."

My fingers curled around the edge of the table. I gripped it so tightly my knuckles turned white as I glared at them, waiting.

"We, uh, we slashed her wrist and then... well, her stomach. Deep."

The air entirely vacated the room. I made a conscious effort to regain control of my breathing, reminding myself that she was alive, that she had made it. But at the very idea of the pain she must have suffered, for the first time I began to understand why she came after us, why she was so determined to see my father fall.

He ruined my life.

Indeed, he had. He had nearly taken it.

I hadn't known. All this time, I had thought she had just toyed with me for those weeks she lived among us, keeping me around to see if I might be of use, unable to decide whether or not she wanted to use me herself. But I had never been a possibility for her and hurting me hadn't been a part of the deal. It was my father she was after, only my father. And sure, she used the rest of us in any way she had to in order to get closer to him but she never intentionally went after any of us. Not once. But she remembered what we did and how we did it, she remembered the pain my brothers inflicted upon men whose only crime was an addiction and a crippling debt. She remembered the callous way my sister spoke of the poor, waved off their pain, inflicted some of her own. And she remembered that I had always hesitated to do the same, that I had never wanted to be a part of it. Had she seen the pained, conflicted expression I always tried to hide when doling out my father's so-called justice? Had she seen through that painstakingly crafted mask that I had perfected over a lifetime of living among evil, the one that hid my doubts, my fears, my aspirations? I think, perhaps, she had. And after everything my family had done to hers, she still found it in her heart to forgive me, to give me another chance.

I thought she loved me. I thought she wanted to hurt me. But maybe she had never expected me to fall for her. Maybe she had never intended for that to happen. And she felt just as bad about hurting me as I felt about being hurt.

"Boss?" Philip asked and I blinked back to reality, seeing the men standing before me once again, the men who had inflicted so much pain upon the woman I loved.

But it wasn't their fault. They had been following my father's orders just as the others had. Just as I had. Charlotte had given me a second chance because she knew I could be a better man than my father. I could respond without violence. I could leave this world better than I found it. So, even though my fingers itched at my sides, ready to loop around these men's necks and strangle the life right out of them for what they did to her, I turned my gaze away from them and made myself say the words.

"Get out."

They stared at me for a moment, in utter disbelief. So I turned my rage-filled glare upon them and repeated myself, much louder, much scarier.

"Get. Out!"

That time, they scurried out of the house as quickly as their legs could carry them. I watched them go before reaching for the knife I kept concealed at my waist and stabbing it so hard into the dining room table that the wood split and sawdust rained down onto the freshly polished floor beneath.