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He tries to speak again, but I won’t let him.
“You fucking abandoned me,” I snarl. “You sold me in exchange for Alan Montgomery’s help when your business almost went under.”
My father jerks back as if I physically hit him. He stands frozen for a moment as if in shock, his eyes widening slightly. It’s as if hearing the words spill from my lips in such harsh, blunt terms brings it all back to him. Maybe he’s tried to forget, just like I did for so long. Maybe he’s fought long and hard to bury it all—the guilt, the shame, the betrayal—and now I’m tearing it up with my bare hands, letting it lay out exposed for the whole fucking world to see.
“Did you enjoy it? Did you enjoy seeing your business flourish while you knew your daughter was locked away with a fucking monster? Or did you just shut it all out?” My voice is strained, hoarse from the emotions that tear through every word. “Did you just pretend I didn’t exist anymore? How the fuck did you manage to forget about your own daughter?”
Daughter.
God, I hate that word.
“Charles? What’s going on?” A feminine voice calls out from the other room, tinged
with worry. A few seconds later, a beautifully petite woman steps into the foyer, and my breath catches in my throat. The resemblance is unmistakable.
It’s my mom.
My heart twists in my chest. Something instinctual makes me want to run to this woman I never knew growing up, the woman who carried me in her own womb for nine months, the woman who easily gave me up, but my feet are planted to the floor. I don’t fucking know her, no more than I know the man standing in front of me.
When her husband doesn’t answer, Maria looks over at the rest of us. Her gaze meets mine, and it takes her less time than it took Charles to recognize my features. She jerks backward, her face dissolving into shock. Her mouth falls open, a faint tremor going through her entire body.
“Sabrina…” She whispers the word, her voice shaking. “Sabrina…”
When she says my name—the name they gave me, not the person I am now—she breaks. But her expression isn’t full of panic, anger, and guilt like her husband’s is.
Instead, shocked joy blooms across her face.
Tears stream down her cheeks as she rushes toward me with open arms.
21
I stiffen, my body reacting as if she’s running toward me with a knife or a loaded gun.
The look on her face makes my heart twist, but this isn’t meant to be some loving reunion. I’m not coming back home for the first time since leaving for college. No. I’m seeing my mother and my father for the first time since they traded me away like a piece of property.
Maria tries to hug me, but I back up without thinking, and the Sinners close ranks to stand in front of me. Their faces are hard, their postures tense and ready for a fight. Maria stumbles to a halt, looking at the three men with confusion and a touch of fear. She tears her gaze from me to look over at Charles.
“What’s going on?” she demands. Her tone is desperate, almost panicked now. No one answers her question, and she shifts her focus back to me. “Is it really you?” she whispers. “Please, God, let it be you. My baby. You came back.”
My throat is dry. I can’t talk. I manage a nod, but I can’t say anything, not when I take in the tears streaming down her pale face, streaking her perfectly applied mascara. Her lips tremble as she blinks at me, and she looks both hopeful and scared, as if she’s afraid someone is going to wake her up from a dream.
She looks so fucking relieved to see me that it makes my heart crack.
It’s like… like she loved me. Loves me.
I can take my father’s disdain, his belligerent shock, because I can respond to that in the way I was prepared to—with the wrath and anger that’s been boiling inside me for years.
But this? Maria’s reaction? It’s nothing like what I was expecting. After all, if a parent cares so little about their fucking kid that they’re willing to trade them as collateral, surely they wouldn’t shed a single tear over that child.
“I thought you were gone,” Maria whispers hoarsely. “We never knew if you ran away, or if someone abducted you. But we searched for you, baby. We hired so many detectives. I wanted so badly to find you. I… I tried to hold out hope, but they said the leads all dried up. That there was no hope. That you’d never come back.”
She breaks into a heaving sob, and I realize with a flash of horror that she… she doesn’t know.
Either she’s a fucking Oscar-worthy actress, or she genuinely doesn't know what my father did. I glare at him over my mother’s shoulder, but he looks just as cold, just as distant as he did when we first barged in. I’m not sure why that hurts, but it does.
“Mom.” My mouth stumbles over the word, and it sounds strange and awkward. “That’s not what happened. I never ran away. And I wasn’t abducted either. I was taken—no, I was given away. I was given away by the man standing behind you.”
Charles moves as I speak, his footsteps ringing on the stairs as he descends them quickly. His face is twisted into a grimace, and his eyes flashing with anger.
