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Dominic looked at Aiden. “After his capture two nights ago, they transported him directly to Cresbel Asylum—”
“What the hell?” Seth said. “He’s human.”
“You’re right. They didn’t move him there to imprison him.”
“So what’d they do?”
Dominic looked at Riley. “They wiped his memories before transporting him back to the States.”
“Wait. Back to the States? Where is Cresbel Asylum?”
“That’s…” Dominic lowered the container and sucked a breath through his teeth. “The exact location isn’t information privy to the masses. Only members of the Blackthorn Clan, like me, know the exact location.”
“I thought it was in Eurasia, somewhere in Russia,” Layla said, her lashes fluttering as she blinked in confusion.
“Well, yes. That’s well-known amongst our kind, but that’s a lot of land to cover. It’s not in a convenient location for a reason.”
“Why?”
He smiled. “So the humans don’t find it.” He winked, and she dropped her gaze, flushing. “And so rogues don’t try to infiltrate the walls.”
Riley shifted on Seth’s lap. “So her father’s not there anymore?”
He shook his head negatively, meeting Charlotte’s eyes next. “He’s back in Florida; but in wiping his memories of everything to do with the Vasirian, they had to eliminate his memories of you.”
“What? Why?” Blaire said, her hand covering her mouth.
“We don’t know how far back the memory of our kind goes, but he knew of us before Charlotte’s birth.”
“Wait a minute,” Charlotte said, sitting upright. “You’re able to see inside his head? That’s insane. I never thought about how you wiped memories. How can you get in someone’s head? What else can you do? Did you find out anything else?”
Dominic laughed at her rapid-fire questions and set down the container of food.
“The way compulsion works allows some of us to not only paralyze the body, but also influence someone to our will. Not all of us have the ability, but it’s never used for harm—unless rogues use it. Beyond that, there exists an even smaller number of Vasirian who possess both the power of compulsion and the ability to manipulate memories. They can’t see every thought and memory a person has, rather they single in on a subject—in this case, Vasirian—and purge every piece of information associated with that subject.”
“That sounds dangerous. What about everything around it? Like, if you took away my memory of Blaire, how would I fill in the gaps around things we did and things I did while knowing her?”
“You wouldn’t. In some cases, the mind is able to piece together enough information to smooth over the loss of a person or subject matter and it doesn’t influence much. But in other cases, where the subject is a dominant part of the person’s mind, it acts as a reset.”
“Reset?” Layla asked. “I don’t know a lot about compulsion. No one in my family can do it. What does a reset do?”
Charlotte didn’t like the sound of it. By definition alone, it unnerved her.
“Most who have a memory wipe after learning of the Vasirian have seen them once, and only need that moment in time eliminated. It doesn’t affect their lives in any way. With your father, he’s known about us for years. There will be gaps in his memory, but he is stable. His mind was strong enough to recover, and he seems forgetful at worst. If he delved too deeply into it, the doctors would likely conclude a case of amnesia—but he would never recover from it.”
“Okay, but how did you know you needed to get rid of his memory of Charlotte?”
Dominic looked at Riley, who looked seconds away from springing out of Seth’s lap and going on a tirade around the central garden.
“After such a deep wipe, the authorities at Cresbel ask questions and run a human through a series of tests to assess the possible damage and how far back their memories of our kind go. They do this by bringing up events and people related to the person throughout the years.” Dominic looked down at the ground, his lips thinning. He didn’t look happy about what he had to say. “When asked about you, he didn’t know anything about you. We didn’t explain who you were, only asked if he knew you. We didn’t want to disrupt his psyche by informing him of a daughter he couldn’t remember.”
Arms slipped around Charlotte’s waist, dragging her into a lap. The scent of vanilla and orange surrounded her.
The news hit harder than she wanted to admit out loud. Even if her father was an evil man who chose the wrong path in life, it still hurt to know he wouldn’t know her if they met on the street. Though mere days ago she wouldn’t have known him either. Was it so different?
“If it helps,” Dominic said, and she looked up. “He doesn’t remember anything of the things that turned him into the man you met. His mannerisms became docile and polite. With this, he’ll get a chance to start over and build a new life for himself. Whatever darkened his heart and made him seek power over our kind became lost.”
Riley crossed her arms. “Hopefully this time he chooses the path of not being a jackass who abandons his children and tries to run a syndicate filled with a species more powerful than him, like some glorified mafia boss.”
