I had the common sense to wait until she shut the door to start shouting, but after that I lost control. "Who the fuck are you? What are you?"

She sighed and rolled her eyes. "Johnny..."

Her attitude only made me angrier, and my thoughts got all disorganized. "You stopped us from leaving that shitty bar in Kansas! You fucking shot me up when I was trying to get clean! You-"

She laughed, her face full of genuine amusement. "Me? Every choice you made was of your own free will."

Hearing her say that brought me back to the night in the bordello, and a mixture of shame and rage brought tears to my eyes. "You stopped me from leaving that satanic brothel to go back to my mom's place! You must've known Gretchen was there! How?!"

Instead of denying any of it, she sat down on her couch and lit a joint. Again she motioned for me to have a seat, but I wasn't having it.

Carried away, I said something out loud I'd never even admitted to myself in private. "You raped me! You pressured me to shoot up and then started fucking me when I said no!" She smiled, predatory, and a tear escaped my eye. "We didn't even use a rubber, Gretchen said you answered my phone..."

In the wake of her indifference, bombarded by pain, I fell into an armchair as tears started to run down my face. I'd told myself I'd wanted it, that I'd just caved to temptation. But the fact was that Lily had... when I'd said no...

She leaned over to offer me the joint. I stared at her for a moment, then shook my head. My voice came out smaller than I wanted, "what the fuck are you? Are you Capricorn?"

She snorted and raised an eyebrow. "Thanks for the flattery, but no. That just needed to be a believable lie. You had to be angry enough to pull that trigger." She grinned, "apparently you don't like the idea of fucking the same person as your mother. Though it is true that the truth has been under your nose all along."

I didn't understand, and I didn't have the patience for head games. "What the fuck are you even talking about?" A streak of clarity brought me Vic's words once again. "Are you Capricorn's daughter, then? Is that how he got in the brothel, how he knew Ricky was dead, how he knew you'd just fucked me? How he always knew where we were, how-"

She scoffed, "he doesn't need me for that shit. And I'm not his daughter. I'm human. Just like you."

I stood up and pointed at her, "you're nothing like me! I... wait. Whose daughter are you? What-" I stopped mid-sentence when I heard the sound of a key in the lock to her front door.

Seeing Lily smiling in anticipation, I stood up, panicking. I had thought Lily lived alone, that I wasn't in danger coming here. How could I be such a fool? How could I have taken that for granted when everything else I'd thought I'd known about Lily had turned out to be a lie?

There was only one way out of the apartment, andthe door to it was opening. I would have to make a run for it. I tensed, readyto fight for my life to get out of there. But when Gretchen walked through thedoor, I froze.