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But I'd finally found a part of my fractured past, and I'd been waiting for the chance at revenge all my life. I wasn't sure I could afford a distraction like Aiden and Dominic and Xander.
We reached the house. Aiden and Dominic were both strapped, given that FBI agents always carried. Aiden pulled off his suit jacket impatiently once we reached the kitchen, then pulled off his harness and laid it on the long marble countertop.
"Are you ready to look through everything?" he asked.
I nodded, and we moved to the big, eat-in table on the other side of the kitchen. We began to go through the files. I didn't want to look at any of it with company, because I was afraid I'd see something that would make me cry.
To the best of my knowledge, nobody had ever seen me cry.
I'd shed my last tear in that closet, huddled in a corner, silent with fear.
Aiden and Dominic were silent as they worked through the files, occasionally sharing a look or murmuring something to each other. I couldn't concentrate, my mind was too full of thoughts about my parents and the unknown killers.
My hands shook with anger as I flipped through the pages of the file on their deaths.
My memories were fractured moments that I wasn’t entirely sure were even really true.
My mother rushing me toward the back of the house, trying to protect me, as my father headed past her with his gun toward the men breaking down our door.
The coats hanging around me. More gunshots. My mother’s scream.
The door swinging open.
The way I’d jolted out and run wildly. The open door that led out of the kitchen. A blurry glimpse of my swing set. My tunnel vision. The men near me, not quite as fast as a desperate four-year-old.
The man who had reached for me with his golden ring winking in the light, just before I slid through the storm drain.
I forced myself to keep reading, searching for any clues that could lead us to the killers. I studied the photographs of the crime scene, of my mother looking far smaller than I remembered her with half a dozen bullet wounds through her chest.
I’d been missing, presumed dead. My real name stared up at me from the papers like a talisman, something I’d left behind a long time ago. That little girl had a family. I was just Selena.
Dominic's hand found mine under the table, his touch grounding me in the moment. I looked up at him, and he gave me a small encouraging look before returning his attention to the files.
But I couldn't hold back my emotions any longer. As we sifted through the files, I sorted through pictures of my father’s battered body and a record of warm, cozy rooms I barely remembered, splattered with blood. My heart ached with pain and anger.
Dominic put a comforting arm around my shoulders. I leaned into him, feeling his warmth and strength.
"Let it out," he murmured. "You don't have to be strong all the time."
"That's not who I am," I said, my voice low and fierce. "Iamalways strong."
"All right," he said gently. "I know what it's like to be so full of anger, to have lost someone... I just want you to be free."
"I'll be free when the people who killed my parents are dead."
Dominic's face held a look of disappointment as if he knew that wasn't true, but he nodded. "Together, we'll make sure they end up dead, then. You don’t have to do this alone."
I didn’t trust myself to respond to those kind words. Instead, I focused on the devices plugged into the wall, charging. My parents’ cell phones had finally charged enough to power on.
I turned one of them on, and I opened it up. A photo of my four-year-old self grinned out at me from the lock screen. My stomach dropped into a pit.
I was smiling at the camera. I had those strange tiny white teeth that little children have and two scraggly pigtails tied with yellow bows. I hadn't thought of myself as truly being that little girl in so many years. The sight of her made me want to cry and it made me want to throw things, and my skin felt too tight.
I dropped the phone back into the box. "I can't do this around you guys."
"I understand," Aiden said. "I'll give you a minute."
He nodded to Dominic, who looked reluctant, but Aiden gave him a meaningful look and the two of them left the room.
