Chapter 2 #2
The Keres started following me a couple of weeks ago, and I knew it was the favor Atos had already asked Hayden for, which I didn't like, not even a little bit, for more reasons than one, but I understood it.
The Keres were volatile, but they could help if they got their orders directly from him and having Hayden in our corner is better than going through this all alone.
Atos always defended him even when everybody else said he was the worst thing to happen to the island, and I could never understand why. Hayden Raev is cold, calculating, a fucking asshole to most, but I can't deny the fact that he looks like half the man he should have been. And I understood why.
I understood, but I didn't like the strings of fate that were pulling us all together. Hayden had no idea about her, about our baby girl, and I wanted it to stay that way.
My baby, my Kaira, she isn't meant for this world.
I didn't want her to have the same fate as her father would, so I will leave. I'll leave the island and never come back here even if it means leaving everything I know behind.
My heart was racing as I kept reading over and over and fucking over the part where she wrote who my father was. Where she admitted who my real father was.
"She lied to me," I whispered to an empty room, my brain trying to connect the dots. "She fucking lied to me."
Benjamin Harley, the dark-haired man I knew my entire life. The man who taught me how to ride a bike and the man who went with me to my first father-daughter dance, wasn't my father at all.
They all lied to me my entire life.
This man, Atos, if that was even his real name, was my biological father. I didn't need to read ten more entries from her journals to realize that.
I grew up with Benjamin, thinking this whole time he was my biological father. I never suspected he wasn't, especially because he and my mother seemed so in love with each other. They were best friends. They were finishing each other's sentences, but…
"Holy shit."
My eyes kept on scanning over her words, over her messy handwriting and the names she dropped, but none of them seemed familiar to me. She had never mentioned any other family. She had never mentioned she had a sister or that I had an aunt. She never even mentioned Nevermere Island.
Was that her birthplace? Was that where my biological father was potentially still living? Was he even alive? And what were all these cryptic messages? Who the fuck was Hayden?
"Jesus, Mom," I murmured to myself, flipping the pages of her journal to one of the last entries, from December the same year. "I didn't know you at all."
December 24th, 1996
It's done now.
We left the Nevermere yesterday, crossing into Ashbourne with the first morning ferry, and I never knew pain like the one I felt when I saw Atos standing there at the docks, looking at us as we left the island for good.
If it wasn't for Benjamin, I don't think I would've been strong enough to get myself out of the ferry and onto the docks as we arrived in town.
Kaira kept kicking the entire time and I hated the fact that I wouldn't be able to tell her that her father gave her that name.
I would never be able to tell her that she got her hair from him, or that her eyes reminded me so much of his.
I saw her in my dreams again, this little blonde girl, running around the meadow, chasing butterflies as Atos looked over her. I saw her curiosity, her determination, and what she could become.
But I hope she will never have to come back to Nevermere Island. I hope she would never step foot onto that soil even if it broke my heart.
I hope that the dreams I saw are just dreams and not the reality awaiting her. I really, really hope my sister was wrong and that the three sisters were wrong.
Tomorrow, Benjamin is going to take us to the East Coast, where he has a friend who would help us to get settled in and to start our lives.
Alyana knows why I left, and even without me saying anything, she knows about Kaira.
She saw her, maybe even better than I do and she warned me.
God, she warned me and I would do everything in my power to prepare my daughter for the future I hope would never come.
But she would be ready. She has to be ready.
Even if it kills me.
Tears streamed down my face as I closed her journal, trying to make sense of everything she wrote. Trying to make sense of my lineage, of her past, but most of all, of the fear she was obviously living with.
What was she running from? Was that the reason she pushed me into martial arts from a young age and why she encouraged me to stay fit even when I wanted to just go out with my friends and have fun?
I did gymnastics, karate, ballet, Muay Thai, swimming, fencing, and I was even on my high school's track team until I graduated, and I never understood why she encouraged all those sports.
Was someone after her? Did they want to harm her? And why would they be against my biological father and her getting together? What was so wrong with the two of them having a child together?
Why did he let her leave without him?
God, I had a million questions and no one to answer them. No one to tell me about her past, to clarify all these things.
Her writing didn't make sense, and how could she have seen me in her dreams, and know I got my hair and eyes from my biological father, even before I was born?
And her sister… Jesus fucking Christ, I had an aunt somewhere out there, maybe even cousins, and I didn't know about them at all.
I had no idea where they were or if they were even alive.
Was my biological father still alive?
I opened the journal again, found the entry I had just read, and looked back at the two words I kept seeing—Nevermere Island.
She didn't want me to go back there, but I had to. I had to know the truth. I had to know what happened to her and why she left. I had to know the truth about my biological father.
I had to go back to Nevermere Island.