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“Where’s Harper?” I snap out, raising my chin with a confidence I don’t feel. “If you hurt her—” A sharp slap across my face forces my head to snap to the side.
“Shut your filthy mouth. I refuse to allow you to speak her name any longer.”
My heart hammers, tears spring to my eyes, and copper fills my mouth, but I swallow it down, determined not to give her the satisfaction of knowing my pain.
“Is she okay?” I mumble, unable to help myself.
“My granddaughter is fine. Away from the likes of you and those sick bastards.” The spite and hate in her voice are clear.
I jolt on her words; this is the first time she’s referred to Harper as anything but her charge. I’d always been conscious of the fact that Mrs. Lancaster was trying to replace me as a mother, but she never mentioned wanting to be a grandmother. Let’s face it, the woman does everything in her power to seem younger than she is.
“Granddaughter?” My mouth runs away with me as I ignore the sting of my lip and seek answers.
Her lip curls up in a sneer. “That’s right, granddaughter. Of course, to have the courts grant me custody I would have had to make that known, and that’s not something my husband or I wanted, given the circumstances.”
My mind races with possibilities. She’s Jace’s mom? She can’t be. Jace’s mom was a crackhead; he found her overdosed body. He had one small photo of them both together, and Mrs. Lancaster does not resemble the petite blonde in his photo, not in the least.
“I can see the confusion on your face. You never were the sharpest tool in the box, Thalia.” The use of my full name has me flinching. Only Jace uses that name on me.
“That’s right. My son, Martin, disappeared,” she spits out with vitriol.
Holy shit, she’s Martin’s mom?
“And I’m convinced that you had something to do with it.” Her tone is laced with so much bitterness and promise, I tremble.
My lips part and air whooshes from my lungs at knowing Martin has met his demise. I quickly try to school my reaction to her bombshell, but the eagle-eyed prissy bitch didn’t miss it. She never misses a damn thing.
“You took something that belonged to me, now I take something that belongs to you.”
Terror floods me at her words, and tremors take over my body. “Please,” I beg.
Her hand snaps out, yanking my head back by my hair. “I’m going to make you pay, you little slut. Then I’m going to destroy you and those screwups you call family.” I whimper at the venom in her tone. She hates me, she actually hates me.
A tear falls down my face, and she smirks at the reaction I have to her words.
One small glimmer of hope remains inside me when she turns her back. She wants Harper, and she believes she’s her granddaughter, and the longer she believes that, the better.
I can only hope she doesn’t discover the truth.
She releases my hair, then digs her fingers into my face so deep I wince at the sharp pain her nails create, she presses them deeper, grinning like an evil Cheshire cat at the whimper that clogs in my throat. Then she shoves me back so hard my head bounces off the wall, causing stars to gather before my eyes.
Right before she steps through the door, her clicking heels come to a halt.
“Oh, and Thalia?” My head falls forward to face her. “You remember Viggo.” She smirks as she breezes past the guard holding the door open.
As my eyes connect with the man glaring back at me, memories assault me. Memories I pushed so far into the recesses of my mind I’d hoped they were lost forever.
My ability to breathe is stolen from me, and his menacing, piercing stare locks me in place as flashback after flashback send me reeling back in time, causing my throat to constrict in utter terror.
All has been kept hidden in the back of my mind so deep, I was sure it would never surface again, had hoped it would never surface again.
Lost for an eternity.
My eyes close on their own accord, trying to block out his face, the face I never wanted to see again. But when darkness encompasses me, all I see is him—the little boy with the lost eyes—and then I’m catapulted back to a time when I was witness to his inhumane suffering at the hands of numerous men. Including the one he trusted the most.
A harsh slap to my face causes the split on my lip to tear open further and tears to flow down my face.
The sound of his zipper makes me want to vomit.
