Page 102 of The Lair

The thing about waiting too long to do something—something you know youshoulddo—is that you risk running out of time to do it on your terms. You risk never getting the chance to explain things slowly, properly, allowing the other person to ask questions.

Every time I pictured telling Travis about my parents, my siblings, my kidnapping, and everything else, I imagined us having a private, calm conversation, after which he wouldn’t hate me for having lied for so long.

I never pictured this.

“Allie?” Charlie calls out from outside the office. “Some people came asking for you, and they’re, um, very insistent. I think you should come out.”

There’s a strange edge to his voice I don’t have time to overthink. Travis gestures to the door with his chin. “Go. We’ll talk later.”

“But—”

He closes the distance between us and presses a gentle kiss to my forehead. Heat climbs up my neck as one of his hands places a strand of brown hair behind my ear.

“Later, all right?” he asks softly. “I’ll wait.”

“Allie.” The urgency in Charlie’s voice makes my stomach turn.

With one final look at the man who is willing to give me everything without asking for anything in return, I follow Charlie.

If I had to pinpoint the exact moment my soul dies, it would be the second I step outside Travis’s office.

Standing in the middle of The Lair—a place that has been exactly that, my refuge, for the past sixteen months—a vicious shiver runs through my body and locks it into place.

“Allison.”

No matter how much time passes or how far I run, I will never forget the voice I still hear in my nightmares.

My mother’s voice.

A tremble runs through me, making my voice and my hands shake. “W-What are you doing here?”

I blink, just in case I’ve hit my head and I’m seeing things. But the seconds pass, and my mother is still here, at The Lair. And so is my father behind her and my brother, Johnny.

I can’t look away from him. I haven’t seen him since he was fourteen. Now at twenty, it shouldn’t surprise me that he towers over our father. He looks so much like him, too, with his dark hair and tanned skin, I almost do a double take.

Johnny and I have never been close. He either enjoyed our parents’ social media circus or didn’t care, while I fought to escape it with every fiber of my being. I was always deemed the difficult child, the problematic one, and eventually he started seeing me as such too.

Now, as his dark eyes pierce through mine, emitting nothing but hatred, it hits me that my own brother is a stranger.

“You know why we’re here,” my mother snarls, inching closer to me. “You thought a little hair dye and a change of name could hide you forever?Please.”

“Who’s this, Smith?” Jude’s voice joins in from behind me.

My pulse jumps.

“Smith,” my mother spits out, as if the word disgusted her. “You have these people fooled, don’t you? Don’t worry, sweetie, I’ll let them know exactly who they’re dealing with.”

“What are you doing here?” I ask her again, stepping closer in an attempt to make her forget we’re not alone. I’m not brave enough to look at my co-workers and friends, at the damage behind me. “How… how did you find me?”

It’s my father who says, his voice as cold and detached as I remembered, “We hired a private investigator a while back. You might have hidden from the world, but you can’t hide from your family. We knew where you were all along.”

“W-What?” I stammer. Then, as if stuck by lightning, I count the people in front of me again. Three, not four. “Where’s Cindy?”

“Your sister is at home,” my father says. “We didn’t want her to?—”

Johnny cuts him off. “Stop giving her explanations. She left us and is about to sell us out for dirty money, for fuck’s sake. Let’s just take what we came for and get the hell out of here.”

The fact that my younger brother seems to outright hate my guts doesn’t escape me. But his words are what set off a loud alarm in my head.

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