Page 99 of Iron Rose

In his arms was a bundle. A sleeping baby with a fist out of the wrapping. He was smiling at her, his fist up too, as if in a playful boxing match.

I had never seen that photo before. But it was me. My fuzzy black hair came to a point at my forehead, like a little troll. My mama always tried to put a ribbon on it, but it never stuck. First, because my hair was too slippery. Afterwards because I hated them.

There was a single document on the desktop. A single pdf with my name on it. I double clicked it and it opened to a letter.

Dear Daughter,

That wasn’t a promising start, since he never called me that in life.

Your mother and I met at a drive-in theater. Maybe you won’t know what those are. Google it. But they were showing old Hollywood movies. Wouldn’t you know it? The first time I saw your mother, Nelson Eddy, was singing to Jeanette MacDonald on a canoe. That’s why we gave you this name.

My mother had told me as much, and I always asked her why she would do that, when the man she was with had abandoned her with a child. She should have named me for herself. She just looked at me, indulgently, and told me I’d understand one day.

Your mother was one of the few people outside of my world who knew what I did for a living. We knew it was too dangerous for me to be in your life.

Well, didn’t that sound fucking convenient? He abandoned his lover and child because of his work? As if.

There were no CCTV cameras back then. Not everyone carried phones with cameras on it. But when that technology was created, it opened up a new world for me.

I was there, watching you when you graduated from Middle School, and Lupang Hinirang. You had the voice of an angel. I saw it all through the camera lens of some unwitting parent.

I was there when you were skating at the mall, where you shouldn’t have been skating. You fell into the fountain and scraped your arm. But you got up as if nothing happened and went on breaking the rules.

I used to watch you walk to school, then take the same route back, and I watched until you were home and safe.

I was skeptical but I read on.

Your cousin was in trouble when she visited the Philippines. That’s Lea, by the way. I left for a while to train her in the business, because she had a capacity for it, and she needed guidance. She reminded me of you in many ways. I threw myself into training her because I thought it would be great practice for when you grew up, and then I could come into your life and tell you everything.

But that never happened, little Rose.

So he was a parent to Lea, when he was never a parent to me. Was that supposed to endear me to him?

I lost precious time with your mother, and when I came back, she was gone. You were alone. I couldn’t give you access to the funds your mother had. They were secret accounts. I couldn’t just have them appear in your name.

So in my eagerness, I came back thinking that I would sweep you into my arms. But that didn’t happen. You were uneasy around me. I was uneasy around you. All of that spying and I couldn’t even talk to you about simple things. So I drank. It was my greatest disappointment, and greatest shame, that I couldn’t connect with my own precious Rose.

I remember those first few meetings. He had stood there, his hands in his pockets, expecting me to speak when I had nothing to say. I had lost my mother and this strange man who vaguely looked at me, who had never taken the time to see me before that moment, was expecting me to be his daughter. As if my mother never existed.

So I did what a man in my line of work could do. I trained you. I trained you to be a warrior. I have trained many warriors. Ajax LeBlanc and Jericho Vasiliev were the tip of the iceberg. They hated me too, at first. But then they grew to respect me. Later, we became family. I thought we had time to go through that process too, but I’ve been burned and I won’t live much longer.

At the familiar names, I paused.

Vasiliev and LeBlanc have promised to find you and take care of you. Every year, they sat during your birthday parties as we spied through your mother’s phone. We used to call those days a jubilee, because we were celebrating the anniversary of my life changing. They’d indulge me and watch, drink, and let me show them pictures of everything you had done that past year.

That word. Jubilee. Did I choose that name? Or did Brett? No, it was him. He had decided on that name. I felt a pit growing in my stomach. It wasn’t proof that any of this was true, but it was too big of a coincidence to ignore.

This computer has everything that I have collected of yours over the years.

You’re also a rich woman. I know you have your heart set on making a fortune in the underground MMA championships. If that’s what you want, then do it. But you don’t need to work another day in your life if you don’t want to. All of that will be accessible to you right here.

And lastly, try to listen to LeBlanc and Vasiliev when they give you advice. Mind your manners. And be happy.

-Papa.

I spent hours going through the computer, trying to keep my tears at bay. I had to make my veins ice cold. Concentrate on the job at hand.

There were pictures of me, grainy and pixelated, when I was at the market. There was a security camera video of me on a date when a boy from school took me to McDonalds. That’s a strange place for a date, but in the Philippines, those golden arches represented a lot of things and were ridiculously popular.

Source: www.allfreenovel.com