Love alone can't fix anything

It was plain to see from Vital's anxious body language that he was about to tell them about events he'd rather forget.

"He hated the lux. Viscerally. But it wasn't a focused, purposeful hatred. It ate at him from the inside. He saw his father in all their faces. He told me how all his father's friends knew he beat him and his mother black and blue and no one cared. He told me about all the kinds of conversations he overheard, and the kinds of things that were said to his face. 

"There was this kid his father wanted him to be friends with, who Ivan hated. One day they went out to a club on his father's orders, and this guy took a girl who worked there to a bathroom against her will. Ivan confronted him about it, and this guy just told him if he wasn't taking advantage of someone, that meant someone else was taking advantage of him. And that if he was so broken up about the girl, he was welcome to take her place.