Page 140 of Riordan's Revenge

Ma? Cassandra… My mother?

The uncle I’d texted must’ve given her my details. She wasn’t dead?

Reeling, freaked out, and entirely panicked, I pushed past Kenney and left the ward. Outside the doors, Lonnie stood taller but relaxed again when I snapped that I was taking a bathroom break.

A lie.

I couldn’t breathe. I needed fresh air and a second to take it all in. To call back the number of the woman who gave birth to me twenty years ago. Today, I realised. It was my birthday. Fuck. No wonder she’d got in contact.

Outside the hospital’s huge rotating doors, bright dawn lit a chilly autumn morning, and traffic rumbled by. I ambled into the centre of the plaza. Took a breath of mostly cigarette smoke from the cluster of elderly smokers in hospital gowns, some holding rolling IV stands.

The moment slowed.

If only my brain would settle.

I sensed the rush towards me way too late.

Material landed over my head. Someone lifted me, and tyres screeched. I was tossed onto the hard metal bed of a van without seeing who I’d had the displeasure to be kidnapped by.

Chapter 43

Riordan

The cliff’s edge gave way to a sharp drop, the river far beneath me and the wind whipping through the trees overhead. A storm was coming, darkening the afternoon. I’d brought Cassie to this spot just a couple of nights ago. We’d had sex on my bike with no cares but each other. Our world had been a happy place.

Now I was making plans for changing mine entirely.

Music pounded in my ears, ‘Take Me Back to Eden’ by Sleep Token.

The letter in my hands crinkled under my grip.

Dear Marlon,

I hated it.No one ever referred to the mayor by his first name, except presumably those intimate with him like my mother had been. I forced myself to read on and to let it sink in.

You lied to me.You have a wife. A baby. I met them when I came to your house, and had to lie about who I was. Your daughter is beautiful. Your wife deserves better. Do everyone a favour and don’t break their hearts. I’m asking you to forget about me. I’ve met someone else anyway. He’ll raise your child as his own, and we can all carry on in our own separate ways. Thank you for the money, I don’t need it.

I don’t need you anymore.

She’d signedoff with a scribbled signature that spoke of high emotion when she’d penned the letter two and a half decades ago. Did she really hate him that much that she’d called those shots out of anger, or was it an attempt to push him away when she was scared of what he might do to her? I’d never know. All I could be sure of was that he’d offered in some way to support her, and maybe even to be part of my life.

It filled in a gap of information I’d had, even if it posed more questions. I’d wanted to read the fight she’d put up for me. She’d kept me, which would have been hard for any eighteen-year-old, and she’d given me a great life, even if some of it had been a lie. I didn’t blame her for that.

My mind travelled over the broken pieces of my trauma.

I hated the image of her going to the mayor’s house and meeting his wife. I’d gone there and met Everly in the same way, lying about who I was and backing out. History had repeated itself. He’d failed us both.

Mum said the mayor’s family deserved better, but she had, too.

It fucked up my already messed-up brain all the more and brought me back again and again to my own failed relationship.

To Cassie.

Who’d dumped me without a care.

Misery crowded me from all sides, made up of the two women who’d left me.

Distantly, I recognised the trigger that had sent me running. Neither woman had told me themselves that they were going. A cop informed me and Gen about Mum. A fucking note did the job for Cassie.

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