The door opens, and Victor Blanc looks at me with his steel-grey eyes like I'm a particularly interesting ghost that's wandered into his home. He's wearing the same clothes as before, or perhaps identical ones. Behind him, I can see a hotel room that looks barely lived in - bed neatly made, no personal items visible except for a folded newspaper on the desk.

  "Samantha," he says, with a slight nod, as if he's been expecting me.

  "It's Sam," I correct him automatically.

  "Sam," he acknowledges, stepping back from the doorway. "Come in. The cats are under the bed."

  I step inside, trying not to look as nervous as I suddenly feel. The room is aggressively generic - standard hotel furniture, beige walls, a TV that doesn't appear to have been turned on. There's a small duffel bag zipped shut on the luggage rack, and a trucker's atlas on the nightstand. Nothing else that would indicate someone's been living here for days.

  "You travel light," I observe, standing awkwardly in the middle of the room.

  Victor closes the door and shrugs. "Don't need much." He gestures toward the bed. "Box and Coal are under there. They don't like new places."

  I crouch down and peer under the bed. Two pairs of eyes - one yellow, one green - stare back at me from the darkness. I make a soft clicking sound with my tongue, the way I've seen people do with cats on VidShare.

  "Here, kitty," I say, feeling slightly ridiculous.

  To my surprise, the black cat (Coal, I'm guessing) immediately creeps forward, whiskers twitching. The gray one (Box?) follows a moment later. They both slide out from under the bed and approach me cautiously.

  "They like you," Victor says, sounding faintly surprised. "Coal doesn't usually come out for strangers."

  "I guess I'm good with animals," I reply, holding out my hand for the cats to sniff. Coal bumps his head against my fingers, and I scratch behind his ears. Box circles around to my other side, rubbing against my knee.

  "Coal doesn't like being petted," Victor reminds me, watching the cat purr under my fingers.

  "Seems like they both like me," I say, unable to keep a hint of smugness from my voice.

  Victor makes a small noise that might be acknowledgment. He sits on the edge of the desk chair, watching me with the cats. His face doesn't change, but there's something in his eyes - not warmth, exactly, but a kind of focused interest. Like I'm a puzzle he's trying to solve.

  "You came," he says after a moment.

  "Yeah." I continue petting the cats, finding it easier than looking at him directly. "Mom told me not to."

  "But you did anyway."

  "I wanted answers."

  Victor nods, as if this makes perfect sense to him. "About what?"

  "About you. About why you showed up after sixteen years. About..." I hesitate, trying to organize my thoughts. "About what happened with you and Mom."

  He watches me for a moment, then gets up and walks to the desk. He opens the drawer and pulls out a phone - not a smartphone, but an old flip phone. He hands it to me.

  "Look at the texts," he says.

  I flip open the phone, surprised by how unfamiliar it feels. Who still uses these? The screen shows a list of messages from a number with no name attached. I scroll through them:

  Unknown Number: Mr. Blanc, we have a proposition regarding your family in Philadelphia. Please call when convenient. All expenses paid.

  Unknown Number: This concerns your granddaughter, Samantha. We’ve cleared the time off with Maeve at Thornton Transport. Room at the Residence Inn reserved in your name starting tomorrow.

  Unknown Number: We understand discretion is important. This is a personal family matter. No strings attached.

  Unknown Number: A little girl should know her grandfather, don’t you think? Your choice, of course. The offer stands through the end of the month. Hope to hear from you soon.

  The last text was sent about two weeks ago, ish, just around the start of September.

  "Someone wanted me to come see you," Victor says, watching my face. "Not my idea originally."

  "Who sent these?" I ask, though I'm already forming a suspicion.

  "Don't know. Never responded to them. But someone arranged everything. Talked to my boss. Paid for this room." He gestures around him. "I was curious. Wanted to see if you were real."

  "If I was real?" I look up at him, confused.

  "Could have been a scam. People try things." He shrugs. "But I checked. There was a Rachel Small in Philadelphia. Married to Benjamin. Had a daughter named Samantha. Right age. The hotel room was real. So I came."

  I stare at the phone, pieces clicking into place. Someone went to a lot of trouble to bring Victor to Philadelphia. Someone who knew our names, our address. Someone who would benefit from throwing my family into chaos.

  "I think I know who sent these," I say slowly. "A group called the Kingdom of Keys. They're... bad people. Criminals. I've gotten in their way a few times."

  Victor takes the phone back, studying it. "Why would they want me to see you?"

  "To mess with us. With Mom, especially." I feel a surge of anger. "They're using you as a weapon against her. Psychological warfare."

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  He considers this, face impassive. "Makes sense," he says finally. "Rachel was always afraid of me."

  The casual way he says this makes my stomach twist. I stand up, dislodging both cats, who make disgruntled noises and retreat a few feet.

  "So you're just... okay with being used like that?" I challenge.

  "No." For the first time, I hear a hint of something in his voice - not anger, but a firmer edge. "I don't like being anyone's puppet. That's why I'm telling you. I could've just kept this information to myself. If someone's fucking with me, I am going to fuck with them back. That's how we do it here."

  I study him, trying to reconcile this information with my expectations. "So you didn't just randomly decide to look me up after sixteen years? This whole visit was arranged by someone else?"

  "Yes." He sits back down in the desk chair. "But I was curious. Would have found you eventually, maybe, but probably not visited you. They just made it convenient."

  "Why were you curious about me?" I move to sit on the edge of the bed, keeping some distance between us.

  "Never met you." Victor says this as if it explains everything. When I don't respond, he elaborates. "I've met most of my grandchildren once or twice. Your side of things, though, is more slippery. The de Leons don't want anything to do with me. Understandably."

  "You have other grandchildren?" This is news to me. "From who?"

  "Other women. Before and after Camilla." He says this without any hint of embarrassment or pride. Just stating facts. "Seven that I know of, probably more. Most of the moms have my number, but they don't want to chat. The charm runs out fast."

  My head spins slightly at this revelation. Seven half-aunts or uncles I've never heard of. More cousins out there somewhere.

  "And you've met them? These other grandchildren?"

  "Some of them. There's at least twelve." He looks at me directly. My nostrils flare. Twelve cousins I've never heard of, and will likely never meet. "None of them tried to punch me, though. That's new."

  I feel heat rise to my face, remembering my impulsive punch at our first meeting. "Yeah, well, you were saying stuff about hitting my mom. It made me angry."

  "How much did I hit her?" Victor asks, repeating my unspoken question. "That's what you want to know?"

  "Yes," I say, my hands automatically curling into fists. "And be careful how you answer, because depending on what you say, I might have to kick your ass." The threat sounds ridiculous even as it leaves my mouth, but I mean it.

  Victor's expression doesn't change, but he tilts his head slightly. "You're threatening me wrong," he says.

  "What?"

  "You want me to give you accurate information, right? But you just told me that depending on my answer, you might inflict physical violence." He explains this like he's talking about the weather. "So now I have an incentive to lie to you. You have to save the threat for if I don't give you any information at all."

  I stare at him, momentarily speechless. "Do you ever just answer a question directly?" I finally manage, sputtering it out after a couple of seconds.

  "To answer your question," he continues, ignoring my frustration, "I can't tell you for sure. I spanked her when she was young and doing dangerous things - running into the street, playing with electrical outlets. Teaching her not to hurt herself." He pauses. "It was mostly her brother David that was the troublemaker."

  "David?" I frown. "Mom doesn't have a brother named David."

  Victor blinks, the first sign of surprise I've seen from him. "He changed his name?"

  "No, I just... We don't..." I don't know how to say I only found out Camilla even existed like a year and a half ago. So I just say that. "I only found out Camilla even existed like a year and a half ago. I guess she kept that side at arm's length."

  "Camilla has a lot of children, too. A lot of them were at your parents' wedding. You have a bigger family than I think you know," Victor replies, matter-of-factly. "David de Leon. You have an Uncle David."

  I pinch my face shut for a moment. "Sure. Okay. Can we get back to hitting my... Mom?" I answer back, trying to restrain myself. Is he trying to teach me how to... get better at threatening people? What a strange man.

  "I told you. I spanked her for dangerous behavior when she was small. Later..." He pauses, seeming to search for words. "It was different after the stroke. It wasn't as easy, and it stopped being effective, so I stopped doing it. Children understand pain very easily. Sensory experiences are... sharp. Messy. Stark. I still remember skinning my knee and my Mom kissing it all better. You don't forget childhood pain. Teenagers... Teenager are always in pain."

  "Hold on, walk it back a couple of steps. The stroke?" I echo. This is the first I've heard of any stroke.

  Coal has ventured back to me, rubbing against my legs. I reach down automatically to pet him, grateful for the distraction. Box remains closer to Victor, watching me with unblinking yellow eyes.

  "1983. Rachel was seven." Victor's hand moves to his left temple, touching it briefly. "It changed things."

  "Changed what things?" I press.

  He looks past me, to the window with its closed curtains. For a moment, I think he's not going to answer. Then he says, "I had a massive stroke, and got very lucky that I didn't die. It damaged my brain quite severely. I had to relearn how to walk, talk, and eat."

  I try to imagine Victor at forty-something, in a hospital bed after a stroke. It's hard to picture him as anything other than this impassive old man sitting across from me.

  "So you were... different before the stroke?" I ask carefully.

  "Different after," he corrects. "More... controlled. Less..." He seems to struggle for the word. "Less angry."

  "You were angry before?"

  "All the time." For the first time, there's a hint of something like emotion in his voice - not current anger, but the memory of it. "It was easier being angry. Everything was so much, all of the time, all of the noise and all of the smells, it was all so sharp. It was easier to be emotional about things." He looks back at me. "Then it got quiet." He taps his temple again. "Like a big layer of cotton. It stripped away the pretense. All the layers I had built up over time."

  I'm trying to reconcile this with what Mom told me - that he was always calm, always calculating. But if he had the stroke when she was seven, maybe her earliest memories were of a different Victor. A more volatile one. So I puncture the bubble.

  "But Mom said you were always calm. Even when you..." I trail off, not wanting to say it.

  "After the stroke, yes." Victor nods. "Before, I would yell. Break things. Hit walls." He says this without any apparent shame or regret. Just recounting facts. "But she was too young to remember most of that. And for a while, I didn't have it in me to swing anymore, so it had to become threats. Do this, or I'll hit you. Don't do that, if you do, you're going to get a spanking. If you go out with that boy, I'm going to hit you with the belt. And then, I realized that worked better than hitting, so I stopped hitting and started threatening more."

  A chill runs through me as I begin to understand.

  "That's why Mom is so afraid of you," I say slowly. "That's like... what. You could never feel safe in an environment like that."

  I think about the way I feel walking down the street. How I have to constantly keep my head on a swivel because I am literally picking fights with actual honest to god supervillains. Fuck, man. Does my Mom have PTSD?

  Victor considers this, then nods. "Right. It's like the nuclear bomb. You're not supposed to feel safe. You're supposed to be predictable, because when you are predictable, you are safe. That's a parent's job, is to keep their kids safe. The threat is the nuclear deterrent. When you hit them once, it proves that you can back up the threats. Then, ideally, you don't need to hit them again, and they'll act safely. My dad didn't understand that. He was just hit, hit, hit. Do something right? Hit. Do something wrong? Hit. It just became background noise."

  He inhales quietly. "What a brute."

  I stare at him, unable to decide if this level of self-awareness makes him better or worse. He understands the effect he had on people. He just doesn't seem to care.

  Box has finally decided I'm acceptable and joins Coal at my feet. I reach down to pet them both, grateful for the moment to collect my thoughts. These animals seem so normal, so affectionate. How can they belong to someone like Victor?

  "The cats really do like you," Victor observes, watching them purr at my touch.

  "Animals usually do," I say, looking up at him. "They're good judges of character."

  He chuckles, which is a sound I find extremely weird coming from him. It sounds like a tin can getting opened, sort of. "Trying to say something?"

  "Just an observation," I reply sarcastically.