Page 61 of Splitting Secrets
“What?” I ask.
No one speaks, though. They’re waiting for me to notice the other two figures seated beside Quinn.
When I finally turn, my knees nearly give out.
Two people who look like my parents are perched on the edge of the couch, their backs ramrod straight and their eyes narrowed in on me.
For a moment, my mind scrambles to correct the sight. Shock has me stuck to my spot while I mentally roll through all the different possible alternatives, crossing each one out as I simply stare at the two strangers sitting before me.
My parents are dead. I buried them myself.
There’s no possible way this is them.
And yet...here they sit. Two people who look strikingly similar to the ones who raised me. With more lines creasing through their features and strands of gray swimming in their hair. My mother’s cheeks appear hollower than I remember, and my father has dark circles beneath his eyes that resemble endless pits.
But it’s them. Somehow, I know it’s them.
“Sonny,” the woman sobs my name when enough time has passed, as if she can’t stand being still for one more second. Bringing her hands up to cover her mouth, tears pool over in her dark eyes. Her voice sounds like every dream I don’t want to wake up from.
The man appears to still be frozen in his spot, his muscles eerily still as I slide my feet across the carpet toward them.
“Who...” I start to say, glancing toward Quinn with pure venom in my stare. “Who is this?” I ask her.
No, Idemand. Because what the hell kind of game is she playing with me right now? I thought we could trust each other. What about all that bullshit about an olive branch? This is far from a compromise.
This is an ambush.
“Sonny, you know who we are,” the woman cries out. When I refuse to take my eyes off Quinn, she leans over into the plump woman to get within my frame of sight.
“Where is Raze?” I direct the question to Quinn again, who appears frazzled for the first time since I’ve met her. When shedoesn’t reply, I repeat myself, only this time my voice is a roar that bounces off every curve of the room.
He must be behind this stunt. Probably projecting these images into my mind, so I believe they’re real.
“He-he’s busy,” she replies, leaning back in her seat as if I’m about to hit her.
Busy?Busy?!I’m going to shove my foot up his cowardly ass when I see him. If this isn’t him doing this, there’s no possibility he wasn’t aware of it, and he chose to be conveniently absent when they decide to drop this massive bomb on me?
I’ve quickly pivoted from denial to pure, unadulterated rage. Fuck him and all his empty promises. He can take his useless words and choke on them. If he wants my forgiveness after this, he’s out of his damn mind.
My eyes cut to the two people impersonating my parents, then back to the traitor beside them. “I won’t be speaking to any of you until he gets here,” I inform them all in an eerily even tone.
My feet close the distance to the stairs in three long strides, then I take each stair two at a time and jog down the hallway, slamming my door behind me for good measure.
I would have gone outside just to put more distance between myself and whatever the hell is happening back there, but I have no idea how to get through the doors of this stone prison.
Pacing the room, I consider the alternative that those people down there were real and are somehow related to me. Rage fills me again almost instantly.
My parents? Myfucking parentshave been alive and well this entire time while I’ve been alone in the world, mourning them and suffering beneath Divina’s thumb?
I kick my foot out, accidentally colliding with the foot of my bed. The wooden pole splinters into a million tiny pieces as the mattress falls off the slats and bounces off the floor. I bend overto look at my foot, expecting to find blood spilling out from crooked toes. Maybe the adrenaline has blocked out my pain receptors again, because that should have hurt.
But my foot is fine. My toes are all perfectly in line, and there’s no evidence of injury at all.
“What the hell is this?” I hiss to myself, pushing each toe around to test the bones. They’re all in perfect shape.
Another new gift. I want to kick my foot out and smash the other side of the bed frame when I realize I’ve just proven Quinn right again.
What bloodline could give me mega strength?
