Anna, oblivious to what was going on in Kate's room, went from room to room, until she found Adam and Ian in a room with lots of guns hanging up, as if it were a Hoploteca.
Anna crossed her arms and hissed to make them aware of her presence.
Ian looked at her and then at Adam, with a guilty look on his face, and Adam looked at her with a longing, carefree look, when he saw that she looked exactly as she did at sixteen. He felt his love inflate his chest. He regretted the resources he had to use to get her to come home with him, but he didn't know how to detach himself from that love. She was an addiction he liked to have. He still craved her, as if he had never touched that body. However, while his feelings towards Anna didn't change, Adam discovered that he loved Bonnie too. Not in the way that you love a woman and want to have children with her. But in the way that he delighted in her presence. He still didn't know if Anna would demand that she leave, but if she wanted to, he would cut her out of his life. He wouldn't lose Anna again, for the same mistake he'd made in the past.
"They're just guns, Anna. We know he won't get hurt with them."
"You always think about the 'smallest details', don't you? What if he hurts someone? He's only a child and he won't know the difference between someone who doesn't get hurt and someone who does!"
Adam looked at Ian and they started laughing, as if Anna had said something very funny.
"What's so funny? Tell me, I want to laugh, too."
"Mom! You don't know the difference, but I do. I can smell another werewolf when they're still three kilometers away. I know who I can shoot. But you die, Mom. You're weak." Ian said and ran out of the room, past her.
"I'm going after him, Anna. I'm really sorry about that." Adam said.
"You don't have to. You didn't see it, but... His eyes turned yellow while he was saying those things... Usually, when that happens, he doesn't remember anything afterwards."
Adam frowned.
"Has that happened other times?
"Yes, but I never told anyone, in the hope that he wouldn't develop his werewolf side and..." Anna interrupted herself. Adam was staring at her as if he were seeing a ghost. "What happened, Adam?"
Adam shook his head and his gaze became pensive.
"I don't know how to say this, but... No werewolf can manifest itself without me sensing it. That's one of the uses of witches. They allow me to filter, so that werewolves can manifest without passing through my mind, because otherwise, I would live seeing places where I'm not, but since I met Ian, I've broken that filter with him. I've made a direct link between the two of us..."
Anna didn't know what to say. Was her son more abnormal than a werewolf? She didn't want to even begin to think about that possibility and began to look more closely at the weapons.
"I bet Ian will like rifles." She said, looking at a small gun.
"Yeah, I think he'll like the one you're looking at better."
Anna shook her head.
"Are you going to try to stop him getting these guns?"
"It's not the decoration I'd choose for my son's room, but... I think Ian would choose every detail of this room as it is. And I'm not going to care about that reality anymore, Adam. Ian is going to start living a life here that he will never leave. No matter where he is, whether in Japan or Brazil. This need and attraction to weapons will never leave him. And since he's going to be living with guns, he'd better know how to handle a gun and understand what it means to kill a person. I think you could have waited another ten years or so to pick him up, but now that he's here... Take it upon yourself to teach Ian everything you know.
Adam stared at Anna in surprise.
"Who are you and where is my Anna?"
Anna smiled.
"There's no point in trying to swim upstream, Adam. My father, he thinks I don't know, but he was introducing Ian to this world, discreetly."
One of the men entered the room at that moment, carrying Ian, and looked directly at Adam.
"He was at the edge of the pool, a bit confused. I think he forgot where he was."
"Thanks, Alexandre." Adam said and the man left and Ian came in, looking around the room.
"Did you like the room, Ian?" Anna asked as she looked around. Was it what a mobster's son's room should look like? Full of silencers and gun ammunition, and targets on the wall in the shape of men. She still didn't know what to make of it.
"I love it, Mom! Can I have one like that when we get back?" Ian turned to her with excitement and a genuine smile of joy.
However, before Anna could answer, Adam took him by the arm and turned him towards him.
"Ian... You can have everything you want, anywhere in the world, because I'll make sure that's the case, but for now, don't think about your return. Live this month here as if it were your final home. Can you do that for me?"
Ian looked at Anna for help, but found none. She wasn't willing to influence the choices Ian made, since he wanted to act like an adult and take the consequences, so she turned her face away and pretended to be admiring the new curtain. Ian then turned to Adam.
"All right. I'm not going to talk about my house. But I want to talk to my brothers, and my grandfather, and my grandmothers, who stayed there."
"You can talk to them tomorrow. Today is a day to rest from traveling." Adam said and stood up, letting go of Ian's arm.
Ian looked at the huge television and the state-of-the-art Playstation, and his eyes lit up.
"Can I use it?"
"Of course. Everything in this house belongs to you, too." Adam said with a serious look on his face.
Ian expertly turned it on and put on the game his father hated and wouldn't allow them to play, taking advantage of the freedom he enjoyed there. The game was about robbery missions and escaping from the police. Anna didn't even try to stop him.