Page 21 of Maddening Fixation

A muscle flickered beneath his cheek.

He looked down at me as though I were something foul that had crawled onto the marble at his feet.

“I have never called you my son,” he said, his voice calm enough to be cruel. “So don’t stand there calling me Father.”

The word struck harder than Uncle Seamus’s lamp.

“I don’t know whose blood runs through your veins, but it isn’t mine. Perhaps you carry the blood of the man your mother spread her legs for. Perhaps that’s why violence comes so naturally to you.”

My breath caught.

He didn’t stop.

“You expect me to believe your lies when you were found in Sarah’s room moments after she went through that window?”

His lip curled.

“I don’t know you well enough to say what you’re incapable of. Whatever mercy you came here begging for...” He took one slow step closer. “You won’t find it from me. If you murdered your sister, then you’ll answer for it.”

His voice was colder than the deepest winter.

“Take him away.”

For a long moment, I could only stare at him, feeling my heart splinter beneath the weight of his rejection until there was nothing left of the hope I’d carried all my life.

Medved Flynn had never truly been my father.

Not after my mother died giving birth to Sarah.

I’d heard the story countless times over the years, whispered behind closed doors by servants who thought I was too young to understand.

My mother’s labor had gone terribly wrong.

What should have been the happiest day of their lives became a race against death.

The doctors fought desperately to save them both, but in the end there was nothing more they could do.

They told my father the truth no husband ever wants to hear.

Only one life could be saved.

His wife...

Or the child she was carrying.

My father chose the baby.

He chose Sarah.

And so, my sister took her first breath at the exact moment my mother drew her last.

Sarah survived.

My mother never left the delivery room alive.

I never blamed Sarah.

She had been an innocent baby.