Chapter 38
ALICE
Iam hollow inside. Mom knew all the time where I was and chose to stay away. She says it was for my safety, but I’m not so sure. More like her own, and yet how can I judge her. She obviously did what she thought was for the best, and my walls come up, leaving me with more questions than emotion.
“I don’t understand why that woman spared your life and arranged all of this?”
I sweep my hand around the room because it’s obvious living like this doesn’t come cheap.
“She didn’t.” Mom shrugs. “I was given enough to rent a room in a town in oblivion, as she called it, and never to show my face again. If I did, she would carve your face from your body and send it to me as a souvenir.”
“Oh my God.”
Simeon sprints to my side and pulls me hard against him and says roughly, “Enough. We don’t require any more descriptions. Just tell me who this woman is and what family she is from.”
“No.”
Sarah glares at him, and my heart drops.
“Why not?”
Simeon is fast losing patience with this situation, and I can see it escalating wildly.
“Because it’s obvious what you are.”
Sarah fixes him with a derogatory sneer.
“I don’t want my daughter caught up in a mafia war; it’s what I’ve spent all these years preventing.”
Simeon is raging; I can tell by the pulse clicking in his jaw, and I attempt to calm turbulent waters.
“Listen to me!”
I have their attention.
“This is getting us nowhere. Simeon is not the enemy, Mom. He saved me from one criminal and has been nothing but kind.”
“Kind.” Mom shakes her head. “You married him, Alice. It’s obvious why.”
Simeon makes to speak, and I shake my head in warning.
“I know why, Mom and if you think I’m so gullible, you don’t know me. I have listened to your story, and it sucks. But what about my story? Are you even interested in that?”
“Of course.”
Sarah’s eyes fill with tears. “This has always been about you, Alice. Keeping you safe, and I’m not sure if I consider that the case anymore.”
Her sharp gaze could spear Simeon’s heart, and I hiss, “Simeon is the only man I trust right now. You say you gave up trying to get custody of me. You changed your name and hid here in the middle of nowhere to keep me safe. More like yourself, you mean. Do you have any idea what it was like for me believing you were dead? At the mercy of people who didn’t love me, just protected me like the investment I was to them.
It’s no wonder I ran away with my sisters for a better life when our father died.
It was our chance to escape another cruel woman who is even better at it than you. ”
“That woman.”
Sarah almost spits her disdain.
“That woman was the one who paid for me to disappear. She orchestrated this entire madness and then moved in for the kill.”
“Morgan!”
The penny drops as I catch up, and Sarah nods.
“She never loved Enrico; she merely wanted his business. Everything that happened in your life and all our lives was because of that family. They use human weakness to strike, and like a cancer, they rot away hope. They have everything covered and leave you nowhere to go. My father became an abuser because they blackmailed him over inappropriate meetings with a rival’s wife.
They bled him dry, and he took it out on my mom and me with his fists.
They isolated us from him, and when you were born and my inheritance transferred to you, courtesy of my mom, my fate was sealed.
I was no longer of any use to them. They visited my mom and terrified her into paying my father’s debt.
She had a stroke out of fear and never recovered.
One digression caused or detected by them is enough to ensure you are in their debt forever, and they destroyed my family and were about to do the same to you. ”
She takes a deep breath.
“I couldn’t risk it. I had to play by their rules, but there isn’t a day that passes when I don’t regret taking you with me that day and heading straight for the cops.
One split-second decision cost me everything and subjected you to a childhood of misery.
I am not proud of my part in that, but at least you are alive—we are both alive, which is more that can be said for your father. ”
“Do you think she killed him?”
Simeon asks and Mom shrugs. “I’m not sure. I have no dealings with them, and knowing Alice was alive was all that concerned me. She probably made sure she was named as his beneficiary and had no further use for him. I wouldn’t put it past her.”
“Annie!”
A loud voice comes from the front door, and we note a huge man racing into the room, concern swamping his face, followed by three huge men who could well be his sons.
“Jason.”
Mom smiles in relief. “It’s okay, this is, um, Alice. My daughter.”
The man stops short, his shock apparent, and he glances between us, apparently at a loss for words.
“I don’t know what to say.”
He peers at me, and then his features tighten when he registers Simeon and Sarah says quickly, “It’s okay, honey, they are here for answers, nothing more.”
She explains. “Jason is my husband of twenty years.”
My heart drops.
Three years after she left me.
“Your sons?”
I point to them and her face softens. “Yes, Will, Gus, and Scott.”
I have no words; they are sticking in my throat as I witness Mom’s new life without me.
She carried on.
She lived a happy life with an apparently good man, and they raised a family. All this time when I was persecuted, punished, and living in a nightmare and she tells me it was to keep me safe.
“Boys, this is Alice. Your, um, sister.”
Sarah’s eyes fill with tears, and I have never felt more desolate in my life. I don’t belong here. She moved on and I was the sacrifice, no matter how she dresses it up.
If anything, I feel like an intruder and heave a huge breath, and smile.
“We should go. Thank you for telling us what happened. It helps a lot.”
“But–” She makes to speak, but I didn’t miss the relief on her face when I said we were going.
“I’ll be in touch when the dust settles.”
I smile at Simeon, whose eyes are as dark as a starless sky.
“Ready?”
He nods, standing and gripping my hand as Sarah follows us out, her anxiety apparent as she says urgently, “I did this for you, Alice. I love you, always remember that.”
“I know. It’s fine. We’ll talk later.”
She makes to speak, and Simeon’s glare causes her to falter, and before I catch my breath, he clicks his fingers, and his guards form around us, keeping the world away, and me inside. Yet another locked cage, but this time I’m assured I will always have access to the key.