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JD didn’t answer but I could hear his breathing go shaky as he fought for control and my heart broke. He knew he was about to lose me, just like he lost his wife. There was so much I needed to say to him but I couldn’t risk more than a few words.
“Take care of Cody,” I whispered.
And I followed Radoslava’s men towards the restaurant.
67
LORNA
The restaurant was bare concrete, echoey and stark and it didn’t provide much shelter from the storm outside. Rain poured in through a huge hole in the ceiling where one day a massive skylight would be. The wind shrieked as it blasted down a set of stairs that led up to a VIP roof terrace and through the gaping window holes that would eventually give diners the best views in the city. Barrels of diesel fuel were everywhere.
Radoslava was dressed in black combat gear. She was facing away from me, looking out through one of the empty window frames, with Cody right in front of her. The whole city was laid out before her, a glittering, magical map. I’d spent so much time in New York, I’d kind of forgotten how beautiful it could be.
“I used to think about you,” she told me without turning around. “Every night, when I went to bed. Other little girls go to sleep dreaming of princesses. But I knew there really was a princess, called Lorna McBride, growing up here.” She swept her hand at the skyscrapers, the stores, the riches.
I’d known there was more to her story than she’d told us. Was that what it was really about, jealousy? She hated me because my family were rich? “I’m sorry,” I said sincerely. “I didn’t even know you existed until a few weeks ago. I’m sorry my dad abandoned you. I think he was trying to do the right thing, giving your mom the money.”
Radoslava spun around, pulling Cody with her. “He fucking cursed us with that money! My mother burned through it in ten years. She did so many drugs she couldn’t work. By the time I was a teenager, we had nothing, we couldn’t afford food! Do you know what happened then?”
I glanced down at Cody’s tear-stained face. He was flinching each time she yelled, absolutely terrified. The woman he’d trusted, who’d been part of his life for months, suddenly turning into this… You and me, I mouthed to him. You and me together, we’ll get through this.
Radoslava was still waiting for my answer. I shook my head.
“That’s because you grew up rich.” Her voice was like a blade made of ice. “You don’t understand what happens to teenage girls who need to eat and have no money.”
Light dawned. Oh. Oh shit.
“I spent every night on my back,” Radoslava told me. “Man after man. Just so we could afford bread, and blankets, and heat in the winter. I could have gone to college, Lorna. I’m smart. My mother was smart. She was a math prodigy when she was young. She could have been someone, but she burned out and dropped out of college.”
“I’m sorry—” I began.
“When I was fifteen, I got chlamydia,” Radoslava interrupted. “By the time I found out, it was too late. It had left me infertile. As soon as I was old enough, I joined the army. I thought that if I couldn’t bring life into the world, I might as well bring death.”
I stared at her, horrified. Now I understood why she hated us so much. “I’m sorry,” I said, walking towards her. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry my dad fathered you and left you there—”
“That’s what you think?” she asked, her face twisted in disgust. “You think that bastard was my father?”
Wait, what?! I gaped at her. Suddenly, I didn’t understand anything.
“I was two years old before your father ever met my mother!” she snapped. “My father was a local man who ran out on us before I was even born!”
My mind was spinning, trying to catch up. So Radoslava wasn’t my dad’s child. “But my dad got your mother pregnant,” I said. “What happened to the baby? Did it die?”
Radoslava stared at me as if astonished I could be this stupid. “The baby didn’t die. Your father stole you from us.”
68
LORNA
The world seemed to dissolve beneath my feet and I plummeted sickeningly into the void. Radoslava wasn’t my father’s secret love child: I was.
The truths I’d known for thirty-seven years skittered past my fingers as I clawed for a handhold. “No,” I said weakly. “No, my mom was Catherine McBride. She died in a car crash. I was in the car, I—”
I broke off. I’d been about to say, I survived. The same miracle story I’d been told my whole life. But with an awful, creeping certainty, I knew what had really happened.
