Start fresh? The words bounce around my skull, refusing to settle.
My gaze slides to Harrison, who is watching us both with disgust in his scarred face. There is blood in the seams of my fingernails. My blood. How could I ever start fresh under the same roof as the man who abducted me, and the man who ordered him to do so?
“You’re all insane,” I whisper, eyes sliding back to Fredrick's disappointed frown.
“Shut it,” Harrison snaps, the back of his hand cracking against my cheek. I save myself just short of falling off the chair, touching a hand to my face as if it’s the worst injury I’ve sustained tonight. Spoiler alert, it’s not. Beside me, there’s a scuffle. I brace myself for the next hit that doesn’t come. Instead, Harrison gains the upper hand and grips Fredrick by the throat, shoving him back against the table.
“All those years locked up inside and this is what you crawled out for? A fucking family dinner?” His cold eyes flick to me before returning to Fredrick’s icy glare. “Some formercellmate you are. Fredrick Walters, feared by everyone, full of big talk. Now look at you. Pathetic.”
It occurs to me, through the pounding in my head, that Fredrick has stopped fighting back. His head rolls to the side to look at me, his arm outstretching. I stare at his hand warily, confused by the simple notion. This is what he wanted. All he wanted. A second chance at connecting with one of his daughters. His other one, Avery, suffered greatly at his hand. The very same hand that’s reaching for me now, pleading for forgiveness.
For some unexplainable reason, maybe through self-preservation to get out of here, I lift my arm, my fingertips just brushing his when a bang detonates in my ears. A violent white flash jolts through my entire body, the world is hurled into silence and blood spatters across my bowl of soup and my face. I don’t recognize the glint of metal until Harrison pulls back, holding the gun in his hand with a heavy rise and fall to his chest. On the table, the man who was seeking forgiveness, the man whose DNA runs through my veins, is staring through wide, glassy eyes, a bullet hole in the side of his head.
Drowning in shock and confusion, the hand I’d quickly withdrawn to cradle against my chest lifts, fingers touching my cheek. They come away red. Then, as if in slow motion, Fredrick’s body slides and slumps onto the floor, taking the soup bowl and tablecloth with him. The splash of soup, the finality of the thud, the splatter across my lips, it all hits me like a freight train.
I scream. A curdling shriek that tears out of me, and once it starts, it won’t stop. I scream at Fredrick on the floor. I scream at Harrison standing over him. I scream at the blood on my hands, on my face, in my mouth. I scream because my father, the man I only met for the first time today, is dead.
My chair crashes backward as I scramble away, falling and hitting my hip hard against the floor. I try to crawl, even if I don’t know where I’d go. Away is the only direction that matters.
Not missing a beat, Harrison catches me by the ankle and I attempt to kick him in the face. My heel glances off his shoulder before his grip tightens enough to drag me back across the floor, my fingers clawing at the rug, nails tearing as I fight for purchase.
“Let me go!” I cry out, the words mangled by sobs, terror, and the ringing in my ears. “Let me go, let me go, let me go!”
“Shut the fuck up,” Harrison snaps, a new furious edge to his tone. He hauls me up under the arms, and I thrash so hard my skull bursts with pain, black spots eating at my vision. Harrison drags me through the house kicking and screaming, my bare feet striking walls and furniture, anything in my reach. I fight as if I still stand a chance against this brute and his intentions for me.
Eventually being flung over his shoulder, I look up just in time to catch one last glimpse of Fredrick sprawled beside the table he prepared for dinner, and whatever tiny part of me that was trying to understand what was happening here collapses in on itself.
I am not coming back from this. Something has been torn wide open, and even if I live, even if by some impossible miracle I crawl out of this alive, I know with bone-deep certainty that I will never be whole again.
Chapter One
“Meg?” a voice rings out in the hollow room. My gaze slides from the cream colored wall, distantly taking in the eyes all staring at me. A dozen youthful faces, or rather, a dozen mindless drones in gray sweats, all seated in a circle of chairs. “Meg, did you want to share with us today?” I pick at the cuff of my hoodie, readjusting my shoulders.
“Nope,” I raise a brow to Counselor Stevens sitting opposite. Her preppy collar sitting outside of her green sweater and the suede tassels on her stupid smart shoes irritate me as much as her understanding smile. She doesn’t understand because regardless of what my admission paperwork says, she doesn’t know shit about me.
She doesn’t know that I never cared for who my real parents were. They weren’t there for me, and I didn’t give a shit about the reasons why. She doesn’t know that my adoptive mom, Keren, was secretly pleased I never asked questions. Although, being a therapist, she no doubt had multiple theories as to my closed mindset.
Before I left for university, we had our routine, our quaint little lives. A top-floor apartment with a roof terrace. A schedule for who cooked and who cleaned each day. I stayed at my best friend’s mansion on weekends while my mom, unable to give up on her quest for love, would go to bars or on dates. It was simple, uncomplicated, perfect.
Until the secrets of my lineage wormed their way out of my past, physically kidnapped me and put me in the warpath of a madman. My entire world was torn apart a year ago, and the consequences continue to plague me. What I wouldn’t give to be ignorant about my parentage again.
Usually, Counselor Stevens would accept my rejection and move on, but apparently, today is my unlucky day.
“Meg,” she sighs, keeping the smile fixed in place. “You’re coming to the end of your treatment here with us, and you’ve yet to share anything. Surely there’s something you want to discuss? Something you could get off your chest before you’re discharged? I’ve heard you’re returning to uni. How are you feeling about that?”
Ugh, don’t remind me. Before I came to this rehab clinic, I had to make a choice. Return to Hollowbrook Academy, where I was once captain of the lacrosse, debate and swimming teams, or go home. My mom would have accepted me with open arms, but I knew what would happen. She’d analyze my every sigh and catalogue my every movement. I’d become her biggest focus, and in the times she wasn’t around, I’d succumb to the loneliness I feel every day in my padded cell.
So, I chose Hollowbrook, and they moved me to a facility in the same area to help me ‘readjust’. I’d hardly describe a chaperoned visit once a week for coffee as helping me do anything, but it’s better than the bitter shit they serve here.
Counselor Stevens is still patiently waiting for a response, and I realize she’s not going to move on without one. I exhale through my nose, tilting my head back against the chair.
“I’m absolutely buzzing with excitement,” I drawl sarcastically. “I can’t wait to see the people I used to call friends, who haven’t visited, called or messaged me since I came here. One mention that I’m in this facility, and the rest of the blanks were filled in without any truth behind them. It doesn’t matter that the residents here are dealing with trauma, PTSD and the likes. A rehab is a rehab to small-minded people.”
A murmur passes through the room, a mix of amusement and unease. It’s the most I’ve said in this room, and an entire word-storm fights its way into my throat.
I clamp my teeth down on my tongue, halting any more of the unbridled anger simmering beneath my surface from coming into the light of day. Not including the many,manymessages my twin is leaving with reception, clearly not getting the hint that I’m not ready to talk to her yet, I haven’t heard from any of the old team mates I used to call friends. It’s not like I haven’t reached out first either, sending several texts to say, ‘Hey, I’m alive. Please come entertain me.’Every message is read and then forgotten. Traitorous bitches.
The counselor, unshaken, clasps her hands together in her lap. “That’s an interesting perspective. Would you care to elaborate?” My nostrils flare. Fuck’s sake, hasn’t this session been an hour yet?
