Page 145 of Lost
“Pretending to be someone else is terrible,” she says.
“Being told you’re someone else your entire life is too,” I reply.
There are more things I want to say, but I press my lips together to hold it back. Trauma dumping isn’t something I want to do. I’ve heard too many stories of people being locked up for it, and that’s the last thing I want. Caleb pushes adoration at me, feeling my anxiety.
I don’t want to end up in an institution.
What?Tyde asks through the bond.Baby, that won’t happen. I’d never ever let that happen. Your sister would slit the nice little doctor’s throat and call it a day. She’d also never have endorsed this therapist if that was the case.
Okay. I’m freaking out, Tyde. It’s like there are waves of anxiety and I can’t keep my head above it.
“So who are you?” Dr. Alys asks, watching me closely. I don’t think she knows I’ve been having a conversation with a little voice in my head.
Snorting at my ridiculous thoughts, I shrug. “I apparently was kidnapped from my bassinet at two weeks old. My life was stolen from me. Who I am is kind of a muddy question.”
She nods, leaning forward with her arms on her thighs. It’s not very ladylike, yet it reinforces the fact that she’s a lot more down to earth than I originally thought.
“How much of a hurry are you to figure it out?” she asks.
“Honestly? I’m willing to let it ride and see. I’m a midwife, omega, sister, friend, and mate. Every day, I learn something new about myself,” I admit. “The semantics aren’t important, but a part of me is mourning what could have been. Maybe even angry as fuck that my life had to be this hard up to this point too.”
“Tell me about your kidnappers?” Dr. Alys asks.
“I recently found out that they worked under a recently deceased mob boss. Mr. Domino wanted to hurt my biological parents and the mafia community, so he did it by having me kidnapped,” I explain. “The people who kidnapped me pretended to be my parents, broke my bones when I wasn’t perfect, abused me, and then tried to sell me to Mr. Domino.”
My doctor sits quietly as she processes what I said. “Do you think your life would have been happier with your biological parents?”
“And my twin sister,” I add absently. “Life isn’t roses and happiness for everyone all the time. I know that. Hollis left home at eighteen to get away from her parents so she could escape an arranged marriage. I left so?—”
“Why did you leave?” Dr. Alys asks so softly I almost don’t hear her.
“So the man I thought was my father would stop raping me,” I gasp. “I just couldn’t stay another day, where no one cared that I’d rather die than take another fucking breath.”
“Parents are supposed to protect you, and they failed at that, right? Who would break your fingers? Let’s start there, at a point that may not be so raw,” she says, glancing at the forgotten water in my hand.
It’s cold, which is an outside source I can use to center myself, so I take a sip. The burn of the freezing water as it travels down my throat is welcome as I take small breaths. Too much will throw me into a panic attack. It’s a balancing act, and one I wish I didn’t have to play.
“Louise, the woman I thought was my mother, would break my fingers when she got angry with me. It was a way to control me. If she broke too many, then I couldn’t practice the piano, or paint, or whatever thing I was supposed to learn in order to make her look good,” I murmur. “John, her husband, would break bones when I wasn’t quiet enough, but it was usually my ribs. He had issues with control, so Louise would keep him from beating me too badly by saying that she’d deal with me.”
“Who did you have to impress for them?” she asks. I have a feeling she’s trying to get into a flow of conversation, but every word I utter reminds me of how awful my past is.
I simply accepted it as the standard of my childhood because I had nothing else to compare it to.
“Mr. Domino and his associates. I had no idea they were all in the mafia until just a few weeks ago. I never put it together. My father used to alpha bark me into things, and they all thought it was amusing,” I say. “John liked to brag about his only daughter, but instead of nodding and moving on, Mr. Domino would demand that I show him what I could do. That’s when John would freak out about exposing himself as a liar.”
“Maybe he shouldn’t have run his mouth,” Dr. Alys says.
“He never learned, and I never had a moment’s peace. Even when I left home, I was on the run. He couldn’t alpha bark me through the phone because I trained myself to break through it.”
“That’s typically a response to excessive use of one,” she muses.
“Alpha barks scare the shit out of me,” I say, shuddering. “The feeling of losing my ability to control my own actions? No thank you.”
“It’s an abuse of power in many people’s eyes,” she says softly. “Has anyone else ever done that to you?”
“Lars,” I rasp. “He and Caleb had a gut feeling that I might be someone else.”
“How?” she asks.
