Adrian Sterling's POV

The sight of that woman made me sick.

And I did not mean the dull ache still lodged in my chest, or the pressure pulsing beneath the bandages. Marlene and my father stir something worse in me than pain.

Something darker.

Something older.

It was not the kind of disgust that came from the stomach.

It came from memory.

The kind that woke up when certain faces crawled back from the past like parasites that never needed permission to return… because they always bel