REprisal - Kathy Coopmans Page 0,30

I register what he just said.

“Wait. You just said my daughter. How can that be true? The last time I made love to my wife was over a year ago.”

“There’s more to this story. A lot more,” Zack says, visibly trying to stay calm.

“Just tell me. All of it, from the very beginning. Every damn thing you know, Zack. Don’t bullshit me or beat around the goddamn bush anymore.”

“She’s with my mother.”

What in the hell did he just say?

“Tina?” I whisper. “I don’t understand. Clove doesn’t want a damn thing to do with her. How in the hell could she be with her?”

“Sit back down, man, and let us explain,” Martinez states from my right.

I sit.

“Explain then.”

“Clove isn’t with her because she wants to be. My mother has premeditated this entire thing.”

“What the fuck?”

“My mother found out about the money... your inheritance. For reasons we don’t know yet, we believe she was the master manipulator behind this whole thing.”

“Good God almighty. I knew she was hateful but this is entirely something else.” My head falls into my hands.

“Do you know if Clove is hurt? Where has Tina been keeping her this whole time? Is she here?”

I can no longer hold my bottled-up anger in. Her own mother did this? All of it? From having me kidnapped, to having my brother pretend to be me, to kidnapping her own child. Her own grandchild. What has she been doing with her this entire time? I feel sick at the thoughts surging through me. So many nights I have laid in my bed trying to wrap my head around who would want to do this, or why? Never would I have guessed it would be the woman who brought my beautiful, kindhearted wife into this world.

My mother’s intake of breath behind me has me turning around to see her hand trembling as she brings it up to her mouth, only half covering up the sound of her choking sobs.

“Melody. Here, have a seat.” Zack brings around another chair for my mom whose body looks deflated. My father-in-law looks no better. “Dad. Come on, you sit down, too. Are you sure you want to hear all this again?”

I study my father-in-law, Bill, as he collapses into the chair without saying a word. God, he looks like he’s in rough shape. His soul is broken. To hear that the mother of his children could do what Tina has done must be devastating.

“I’ll be fine, Zack. You just need to fill Turner in on everything. Finish up now. I’m good,” says Bill with his mouth, but the windows to his soul say something completely different.

Zack returns to his seat.

No one speaks for the longest time. All I can think is, Clove is alive. She needs me. I have to get to her.

The sound of a throat clearing brings me back from my thoughts and Zack starts recounting the whole, fucked up tale.

I listen, ready to kill anyone in this damn room if they even make a sound. For over an hour, Zach lays out the whole sick, twisted plan to ruin our lives over money I didn’t even know existed.

So Tina found out about the inheritance by hiring a PI to dig into my mother’s family business, then somehow convinced my father and brother to go along with her fucked up plan to destroy her daughter’s life.

Details are sketchy about what happened at James Calloway’s house after I was shot, but Zack has one more bombshell to lay on me.

“Clove tried to kill herself,” he says solemnly.

I feel like I have been shoved in a blender with every emotion known to mankind, and someone has sealed the lid and set the bitch on high as my body spins so fucking fast from one place to another, shooting my brain to my feet while slicing the hell out of my heart. I can’t even begin to describe the rawness I feel.

Thank you, God that she wasn’t successful. She was saved by Tina’s ex-husband, a Dr. Caleb Hollis. The same doctor who delivered the baby.

Martinez takes over from Zack, who looks too drained to continue.

“As soon as we started looking into Tina, it led us straight to Caleb Hollis. Once we apprehended him, he confessed everything, right down to the dirty little details. And one of those details is that he performed a vasectomy on Trent before he made the switch, so there is no way he could be the father of that little girl.”

“How can he be