They look at each other, talking among themselves without words, and I feel like the outsider I am. When their gaze is back to me, it’s soft, not full of pity like I expected. Just…warm.
“We didn’t know you have a daughter,” Jesse says.
“Had. That’s the big thing I did to piss Grandpa off. I got myself pregnant, so he shipped me to a ranch. ”
Major winces, and I almost feel bad for him. He didn’t know. He thought he was treating me like a normal ranch hand, but nothing in this situation is normal.
“Where’s Mirasol?” Derrick asks.
I guess I was screaming her name. My heart speeds up when I hear her name from his lips. I jerk and sit up straight, almost asking him to say it again.
Call her name, come on, say it.
All this time, Mirasol felt like a hallucination. Something I shouldn’t be thinking about, a lie I told myself. In a second, the spell is broken. She’s not a figure of my imagination anymore. She’s my daughter. My little baby that he took from me.
“He took her.”
“St. James?” Major asks, and I can recognize a menacing tone a mile away. But this is not aimed at me. It’sforme.
“He said I wasn’t going to make a good mother and insisted I give her up for adoption. I agreed.”
The sound he makes is not human. There’s something monstrous about the way his jaw ticks, his whole body vibrating with tension. The excuses I gave my grandpa are on the tip of my tongue, but this time, I don’t repeat the lies. I let his actions speak for him. It’s not my job to make him look like a good guy when he doesn’t bother to act like one.
“He took your child and sent you away?” Derrick sums up.
Oh yes, that’s exactly it. I nod.
The temperature in the room goes up a notch. Rage rolls off them like steam, and my own sadness finally morphs into something more.Anger.Certainty is now louder than the lies I was fed from an early age. How could I let him manipulate me like that? I deserve better. My whole life, I deserved so much better than what he had to offer.
Grandpa’s cruelties left me broken beyond repair at Wilde Ranch. I was a ghost of myself, and I bet he thought he broke me for real now.If I wasn’t strong enough to fight for my daughter, I’m never going to be a problem again, right?
Wrong.
He broke me, yes, but I’m building myself up from sturdier stuff. For the first time in my life, I see the villain who raised me for who he is. I see it all so very clearly, and I reject every single lie he spilled.
“I want my daughter back.”
The moment the words are out of my mouth, I know this is the most important truth in my life. Grandpa manipulated me when I was in my most vulnerable state. He used the absence of my mother to make sure I would do whatever he wanted, and he knew it would work as long as he poisoned me enough. I’m ashamed of falling for everything he said, but I won’t waste my time feeling sorry for myself. I have a daughter to fight for.
My eyes flick from Derrick to Jesse and land on Major. I’ll do anything to get my daughter back, and I know I can do it alone, but I really want to have them by my side. I hold my breath, the unspoken question hangs between us until Major nods.
“Then we’re getting Mirasol back.”
twenty-four
Veda
“Idon’t want to make decisions for you,” Anne starts with a grimace. “But there’s so much that needs to be done now. And the township won’t wait much longer.”
I shovel bacon into my mouth and nod.
I don’t particularly like anyone making decisions for me, but someone needs to take the wheel in the situation, and I’m too caught up in the Omega stuff to really understand what I should do next.
The things going through my mind are not about the town or the lack of Omegas everywhere. I’m thinking about Grandpa and if he knows about any of this. I’m wondering if all this means that my daughter is one, too.
When I entered the kitchen this morning, no one brought up the nightmare last night. The whole night felt like a dream. Major planted a cup of coffee in front of me, and his hard gaze showed me all the certainty I needed.
This man is going to bring my daughter back.
