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“What?”
He hands me the paper, and the font is a scratchy ink from decades ago, but there it is.
Father: Edward Sinclare
“How could he hide this?” I ask quietly.
“He has a lot of people working for him, Little Bird. Look at this one too.”
He snaps pictures of each of the documents before he hands me more and more papers with my name as well as my mother’s with big bold words likeLegal Guardian,Power of Attorney,Life Insurance, and on and on and on.
Edward Sinclare is also my Power of Attorney, it seems. And my mother and I both have very hefty life insurance policies. And we didn’t sign for any of these.
Ed did.
All the pieces click into place. His reason for hiring someone to off me. The attempt on my life.
Fear slices down my spine at this. If he’s trying to kill me because of a life insurance policy, what is he trying to do to my mom? A sickening feeling claims me as I wonder if she’s even still alive. If Ed owns the private institution she’s in, he could easily kill her and cover it up. Is that why I’m not allowed to see her? Talk to her?
“How is this possible?” My hands shake as I keep reading. I try not to let premeditated grief consume me.
“Forgery. I have a guy. We’ll take it to him, and he’ll get us out of all this, Little Bird.”
“A guy?” I look at him, and I can’t help the desperate sound in my voice. That anxiety threads through every little piece of me. Worry for my mother, for myself. For our futures, which suddenly loom with uncertainty along the horizon.
“An attorney,” he whispers with a smile. “Not everyone I know is a bad guy.”
“You think lawyers are the good guys?” I whisper out and he smiles.
But I feel empty inside. I haven’t felt this in months, but it’s creeping back in like a sense of lostness. I fucking hate it. Ed has once again reduced me to that little girl I was before. The same one who’d been hauled against her will by the police and thrown into an institution where I became a shell of myself. Where I stewed in my hopelessness time and time again, with no option of getting out. The sadness crept into my bones until it became a part of me.
Rowan takes the papers before taking my hand in his, pulling me out of my trance, and leading me out of the room and back downstairs. We pass the shitty snack trays, and I’m not sure what he’s doing, but then he pushes open the dining room door, opening it to hundreds of chairs as they all listen intently to the man with the microphone at the front of the room.
Ed pauses in his speech for a fraction of a second when he sees us. It should be comical, and any other day, I would have gotten sick satisfaction out of watching him flounder. Except there’s nothing funny about this.
That bastard ruined my life. He took my mom from me. He took my stability, tried to have me raped and murdered.
I hate him. I don’t think I’ve ever hated someone as much as I despise him. I didn’t ask to be born. And he stands there doused in riches, preaching reforms about immigration while he helped spawn a half-Mexican child.
He’s a hypocrite. A dirty fucking hypocrite with evil living and breathing through his fucking soul.
A dark bruise highlights his gaze that follows us as we cut across the back of the room. Only he pays attention to the two shadowy figures on the outskirts of his lovely gala. His voice rumbles on, but I never look away from him, and he never looks away from us.
The two children he should have raised with a bit more care.
The two fucked-up kids he created, molded into what we are today.
We pause at the side door. Rowan turns with a sick, twisted smile. He takes a moment, waving at his stepfather, my father, with a fistful of papers in his hand. It’s a knowing fuck-you move, but it lifts me in that moment. We’re the underdogs. We fucking win.
The door pushes open to the cool evening air, and a sense of pulsing triumph overtakes the numbness inside my chest. I’m alive. I’m safe. And soon, I’ll be free of Edward Sinclare for the rest of my life.
Rowan twirls me on the sidewalk as we make our way to the front. A small laugh slips out, and he does it again and again, dancing with me in the sweetest way.
When we get to the circle drive, bright lights pull up instantly. It’s like everything is perfect and perfectly planned. Right down to the timing of our driver even.
Except it isn’t our driver. It’s a white van. And two men rush out, tackling Rowan to the ground. Everything overtakes me too fast. My scream sounds far off and vacant. Hands grip around me. A bag shoves over my head as my pulse pounds in my ears, and I lash out at all the palms touching me at once. It’s like reliving a nightmare over and over again.
And then I’m shoved inside.
