"That was not the man she was with when I left," Nathaniel frowned as he thought back to his last visit with his adoptive mother. "Clarisse wouldn't be with a man like that."
"But she is, Nathaniel," Jay said. "That's what she was protecting you from. Clearly, you wouldn't need protection from people like that, but she didn't know, I didn't know."
"And Nathaniel, this is the same guy," Nico said grimly.
Nathaniel could feel the world around him disappear, he remembered the man Clarisse Rue was with all those years ago.
The man didn't seem like he could be connected to anything illegal or powerful. He seemed to be quite normal except for his occasional abuse of Clarisse.
He remembered telling her not to trust him, to leave him, even back then he felt off with the man, but Clarisse insisted that she loved him.
