I’ll ask my dad for help. He’ll keep me right. However, telling him his son wants to put a kid in his daughter doesn’t seem like a conversation for anytime soon.
One day, he’ll see me as Olivia’s partner, or Olivia as mine. Will he choose which one of us remains his child? I couldn’t imagine him not being my father.
I stop outside Molly’s room, knock twice, and push the door open, peeking in to see she’s leaning over a shoebox that’s pierced with holes.
“Oh, hey. She’s been moving around a lot. I think she needs a bigger box.”
Did you feed her?
“Yeah. Please don’t ever make me touch a maggot again.”
I silently laugh as I crouch down to look in the box. I need to get her a tank. Apparently my farmhouse is obliterated. Molly managed to get my pet out before the flames engulfed it.
So, technically, I’m homeless.
Dad said I could stay at his place since Mom is gone. He’s filing for a divorce and said she’s no longer welcome in his life. I hope she gets hit by a bus or contracts a deadly disease.
Molly sighs and sits on her bed, and I tilt my head at her, silently asking her what’s wrong.
“I miss Olivia. I’m worried about her.”
I know, I sign, standing tall. For being close to fifteen, she’s kinda short. Way shorter than Olivia, and she seems sheltered, probably due to the trauma of her life before she came to the Vize family. I wonder how dark her story really is though? Only some people know mine. I don’t like discussing it, but maybe if I tell her what happened to me as a kid, she’d open up and feelcomfortable enough to talk and feel better for having someone close to her, able to understand.
She’ll be fine. She has me.
“Kai,” a voice comes from behind me. “There you are.”
I’m going to kill him.
Base pushes the door open, his hair ruffled at the top, his lip swollen from, I’m guessing, that blonde girl biting him. “My assistant is about to go over everything for tonight. You coming, Kai?”
He’s trying to push my buttons. I might need to push him out of a fucking window, head first.
I groan inwardly. I need to hold myself back from hitting this asshole. He’s been calling me Kai all fucking day, and I might actually kill him.
“His name is Malachi,” Molly snaps. “My dad already told you to stop calling him that.”
Thanks, kiddo. She might be my favorite now.
I crouch down to check on my Cordelia one last time while Molly watches the way I handle her—she watches everything I do. Copies me. I sat with her all morning showing her some signing movements and how to change the box.
She’s not afraid of my pet. If anything, Cordelia’s been keeping Molly busy during all this. Maybe, just fucking maybe, if we get out of this, I’ll let her have sleepovers at me and Olivia’s house.
Teaching her things about Cordelia and even signing makes me feel important, like I have some sort of purpose. And then there’s the way she smiles at me, like I’m the best person in the world. She gets excited to see me like a…
Like a little sister.
She says my name as I go towards the door.
I turn, waiting for her next words, but she lifts her hands and thinks for a long second, making sure she gets the movements correct.
You saved me, she signs perfectly.Now you need to save my sister.
When I get to the meeting room, Dad is there. The blonde girl stuck with Base—who I now know as Luciella—is eating a sandwich while her father glares at her partner from across the table.
Abigail walks in, Adryx behind her, looking pissed off too. Why is everyone moody today?
Barry stands when everyone is seated then lifts a small drone for us to see. “We need this as close to the manor as possible. Preferably their comms room. I can use an electromagnetic radiation blocker to disable their entire system. So far, I can only do that for one hour. But it should be enough time to get Olivia out and back to this building for me to cut out the tracker.”