AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Drawing a deep breath, I began to unravel the material. The finger was whole except for the nail. That was still growing—and itching like a nest of ants had bitten the area.
Standing over me, Mallory examined the finger without touching it.
“What if it had been your hand?”
“Don’t know,” I answered. “And I don’t care to find out.”
“Could try it with one of your testicles,” he smirked, but stopped laughing when I blanched at the idea. “Okay, joking aside, any other extraordinary thing about you that’s likely to land me in deep shit?”
Really, that depended on the tolerance level of the Woodsmen, didn’t it?
“You’ll know when I know,” I answered.
“Fair enough.” Mallory gave another one of his shrugs then scooped up his house keys. “Let’s roll, kid!”
CHAPTER4
MOSA
He’s your father,Mosa…
Her words filtered through my thoughts like boiling molasses, all hot and swirling, an unrelenting churn of facts versus feelings until I was ready to vomit. Was it truly possible that the oh-so-proper Justine Leopold, née Acevedo, had taken a walk on the wild side and gotten pregnant in the process?
“So that’s why he hates me,” I muttered as my mother snapped out of whatever deep feels the wolf's image had triggered and dragged me toward her desk. “You were married when I was conceived.”
“No!” she hissed. “My father backdated the wedding certificate. There's so much you don't know, even about yourself.”
“But Henric knows,” I continued. “That’s why—”
“He has never questioned your paternity and he had no reason to doubt." For a second, she looked like she was going to puke. "Henric started taking liberties once we were officially engaged. I couldn't be sure he wasn't your father until the first time you shifted.”
My brain didn't process anything after she mentioned Henric "taking liberties."
That sounded like he had forced…
The rest of the thought washed away on another wave of nausea.
“I don’t under—”
“You can understand later. Right now, I need you to shut up and listen,” she snapped, unlocking the bottom drawer on the right side of her desk. From its interior, she pulled out her purse and dropped it on the floor. The drawer looked empty, but she reached back in and gave a little push and slide on the bottom panel to reveal a shallow space.
My lips parted in faint shock. Always looking for a way out of my life—short of Henric killing me—I had searched that drawer the exceptionally few times Justine had forgotten to lock it. Not once, not twice, but not much more than that. I had tapped, jiggled, tried to slide the whole of it out as if it might be an insert. No luck.
“How long has that been there?” I asked.
“What part of shut up and listen doesn’t register?” she snarled.
“The part where you’re not actually saying anything,” I snarled back, my brain slow to realize that she was removing stacks of hundreds and twenties and shoving them into a thin nylon backpack.
When she finally reached the true bottom of the drawer, what was left shocked me more than the money. A fake California driver’s license with my picture and someone else’s name. Next to it, a Social Security card with the same name and what looked like a California birth certificate.
“Aman—”
She clamped a hand over my mouth before I could complete the first name. My brain finished it in silence.
Amanda Mallory…
“Shut up and listen,” she repeated, replacing the false bottom, locking the drawer and grabbing her purse. “We’re going out to lunch. If anyone asks, you just have to proof the report and then you’re done, but you’re too hungry to concentrate.”
