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She pulls two photos out and lays them side-by-side, one is my goofy dad, the other is the stern dad. Together like this, you can truly see the harsh differences.
“How much time is there between these photos?” I ask her before pouring a glass of wine for us.
“Six months.” I almost spill the wine, pushing the bottle and the glass back as I take a closer look. There’s no way these pictures were taken only six months apart. No way my father could have aged three years in that short time.
“The council did that to him.” My mother says as she watches me, “They break people down and build them back up in whatever form will be beneficial to them. They make you someone the world will fear, they give you money, power, and respect, but they can easily take it all back and leave you worse off than when you started, trust me, I’ve seen them do it. Yet that’s not the worst part.” Something bitter hardens her jaw as she says that, as though she knows this from personal experience.
“What’s worse?” I’m not certain I want to know, but I have to.
“Picture a bug passing across the sidewalk you’re walking on. It’s just trying to get by, trying to do whatever it is bugs do and live in peace. Just as it thinks it’s in the clear, you step on it, squishing its life away without a backwards glance. It’s just gone. Its life is over in mere seconds. Now picture you and your family as that bug and the Society as the person walking by. That’s how easily they can erase you from existence. Wipe your whole life away as though you were nothing but a bug on the sidewalk. Play the game, you live, defy them and you die.”
“Who are they?” I ask in a whisper, as though one of these motherfuckers can hear me.
“Put it this way, mija, they have one of their own in every political seat of the world, not just this country. They have their fingers in pies you didn’t know existed…even the archdiocese answers to them.”
I feel the hairs on my arms stand on end, the same way they did with that creepy guy outside Mr. Dumar’s. A ball of dread forms in the deepest part of the stomach, twisting and turning with every word my mother speaks. Her voice is dead, her eyes far away, her soul completely defeated.
“Mom?” I ask with a shaky breath, “If these people are as bad as you say they are, then why am I going there?”
I fear her answer, my body breaks out in a cold sweat as my mind runs through a hundred different answers, but deep inside, I think I know. My father owes a debt and I’m the payment.
“Because we have no choice. It’s either you go and fulfill the obligations set or…I suffer for it.”
What. The. Actual. Shit.
SEVEN
* * *
‘YOU WEREN’T SPECIAL’
CORBAL, GENRIX, SHILOH DYNASTY
“We leftwhen we found out we were pregnant with you. At first, your father didn’t want to go, he wanted to stay and complete his ascension to the highest level of novice so he could be granted a seat of power within the Society. He had plans that he wouldn’t confide in me, but I trusted him. I trusted he would do the right thing, maybe even take down the twisted Council from the inside.”
She chuckles but there’s no humor in the sound, “How wrong I was. He gained power, yes, but he reveled in it. He forgot about me; about the life we created growing in my womb. All he wanted was more power; theCoat of Armswasn’t enough for his hunger. He decided my family name wasn’t powerful enough to tie to his, so despite my love for him, he married someone else.”
I feel my brows hit my hairline at that confession. My eyes tear up, for what? I don’t know. Maybe for the fact that my father hurt my mom so badly, or that she was so blinded that she didn’t see the heart shattering aimed at her...or maybe it’s just the injustice of it all.
I rub my eyes, refusing to cry, begging my anger to rise because fuck this pain. Fuck this hurt. Fuck my pathetic, evil fucking father.
“Tell me the rest.” My voice sounds dead even to my own ears.
When she shakes her head and covers her eyes, I can’t help the rage that shoots through me. I jump from my seat and slam my fist to the table.
“TELL ME NOW!”
My mom jumps from her seat as well, her eyes hard and red, “What do you want, Val, huh? You want me to detail how I had to watch your father marry someputawho already had a bastard child? How your father gave her and him his last name because he not only needed a more powerful familial tie but also a son to be his heir? Or how about I tell you the details of losing everything because I wanted to expose the Society for what it is and how they came after me, killed my mother, father and baby brother as they tortured them for information on my whereabouts?!”
She sobs, her voice breaking, and I feel my heart beating wildly in my chest as I think about all that my mother has gone through.
“Mom…” I whisper.
“They didn’t know where I was,” her voice is barely above a whisper, her shoulders sagging, “so they killed them. When the Society finally found me, it was your father who got them to change their minds on killing me with you still inside me.‘A life for a life, a debt for a debt,’he said when they left,‘because you are the mother of my princesa, I will let you live, but for that you owe me a debt’. Once you turned seventeen, you were in their sights. In your father’s sights.”
“You gave up too easily.” Noah’s angry voice has us both jumping from the table. He’s sitting on the top step of the stairs, hidden in the darkness. He stands and walks down the steps, his heavy boots bringing him into the light. Each thud on the steps matches the churning of my insides. When he’s at the bottom of the stairs, his angry hate filled eyes lock on my mom.
“But I’m not weak like you.”
