way since we left that factory where I was being held over a month ago. I feel like every mile I went to break away from that city that my father seems to rule was a mile closer to becoming the person I wanted to be. The man who could stand by Shepherd’s side and be someone worth saving. So I tuck my head against his and as the van rumbles on, I wonder what cards I hold. And what cards I need to play.
“I promise I’ll keep you from becoming the man you hate ever again,” I whisper, but Shepherd’s asleep, the drugs and his injury putting him under. “I promise.”
Age Twenty
“Did you sleep with my father?” I ask, horrified.
Rose quickly turns to me from where she stands in my father’s bedroom. I’ve found them laughing and talking more and more and now she’s in his room.
She stares at me for a long moment as I watch her expression. When did it become so hard to read her? When did I start to care so much for her? While she thinks I’m horrified at the thought of her sleeping with my father, I’m horrified about something she doesn’t know I know.
I’ve known it for weeks now.
She is Tony Warren’s daughter—the man my father hates, the man my father spends his waking hours trying to ruin.
And what better way to ruin someone than through their daughter.
Does he know who she is? Is that why he’s letting her into our home? He was always so against me doing anything, yet he never minded her here or me hanging out with her. Did he always know?
“I told you to stay away,” I hiss as I rush at her and grab her shirt. I want to shake her, smack her, yell at her. Do something so that she’s so afraid she never comes back. So she stops this and while she might hate me for it, it might save her life. I need her to be terrified, otherwise I’m afraid she’s going to die here. But instead, I yell, “Why did you claw your way into my life?”
She grabs my wrists but doesn’t try to force my hands off her. Instead, she just holds them tightly. “I had to.”
I shake my head. “No, you didn’t! Did your father put you up to this? Is that why you’re here? Did you worm your way into my life to use me? To use my father?” I ask. And I realize that I don’t know how I want her to answer this. Of course I don’t want to lose her, but maybe it’d be simpler if she was using me so I could hate her and I could push her away to keep her safe.
There are tears in her eyes now and I can’t tell if they’re real or if they’re just to add to the theatrics she’s used so far to get me to trust her. To get me to care about her and love her. She’s been the only one there for me for so long and this is how she treats me. The moment I tell her that I can’t love her, she runs off to my father?
“Rose… why?” I sound so fucking desperate that I hate what she’s done to me.
“Because I need to know what happened to Brandy.”
I stare at her, confused because out of everything that I thought was going to come out of her mouth it wasn’t this. I thought she’d tell me she was using me because that’s what her father wanted or her trying to root into my life so she had insight; not once did I think it had anything to do with my sister.
“Brandy? My sister?”
She throws her arms into the air. “Yes, your sister! It’s like none of you care or ever talk about her. It’s like she doesn’t even exist. I started to think I was wrong, that she wasn’t part of your family until I found her room… until I found those photographs of her because there isn’t a single fucking photograph in this entire house!”
What is she talking about? Information on me and my sister isn’t readily available, and after my father found out my sister wasn’t his, he seemed to forget she even existed. He never took her before the cameras like he would me. He never made her talk about how her father was such a brave and selfless man to make the people love him.