Page 56 of Destiny

“If that’s what you need to tell yourself, Ryan.”

I brace myself. Time to get back on track. “I guess what I want to know, Grandmother, is how you could’ve been involved in such horrific things. Child trafficking. How you could… I mean… Uncle Talon… Dale and Donny…”

“First of all, Ava, I had nothing to do with Dale and Donny. Their father sold them into slavery, for a mere five thousand dollars.”

“I know the whole story, and it makes me want to be sick. But Uncle Talon? When he was just a boy?”

“Oh, Ava, I don’t expect you to understand.” Wendy’s gaze darkens. “Know only that I had no choice at the time.”

“That’s crap,” Dad says.

I look at Dad.Please, let me talk. Let me get the information.I hope he understands my mental message.

“I’m trying to understand, Grandmother. How could you allow a ten-year-old boy to be taken and abused by those three monsters?”

“It wasn’t my fault,” Wendy says. “It was Brad’s. Brad broke a promise to me.”

“What promise?”

Wendy closes her eyes for a moment. “I see, Ryan, that you haven’t told her exactly everything. That’s the story I want to tell you, Ava. About two soul mates who were torn apart.”

I lock eyes with my father. “Dad, what is she talking about?”

Dad’s jaw tightens. “For Christ’s sake, Wendy. You still did it. He broke some stupid promise to you. A promise he never meant. You and I both know it.”

“It was a promise between soul mates.”

Dad turns to me. “Apparently, my father, after I was born, promised Wendy that he would never sleep with Daphne again.”

“But Marjorie…”

“Exactly, Ava,” Wendy says. “Aunt Marjorie. Proof that Brad did not keep his promise to me. When Daphne ended up pregnant, Brad paid for his betrayal.”

“Dad didn’t pay,” my father says. “Not like Talon paid. Talon, and in our own way, Joe and I paid too. And our mother.”

“You were spared that day, Ryan.”

“Joe and I didn’t go through what Talon went through for sure. But we paid in our own way. Joe paid with guilt for not going that day with Talon. For not protecting his brother. And I paid with guilt too. I was spared. Talon saved me.”

“YouthoughtTalon saved you. You know the truth.”

I grab Dad’s arm. “What the hell is she talking about?”

“I was with Uncle Talon that day when the men took him. Uncle Talon told me to run, so I ran. For the first thirty-two years of my life, your uncle was my hero. I thought he had saved me that day. He’s still my hero, Ava. He’s a military hero, and my hero anyway. But it turns out…”

“What, Dad?”

“It turns out I was spared because I was Wendy’s son.”

I swallow.

I don’t know what to say.

And I don’t know if I can handle trying to get this information out of my grandmother any longer.

I rise. “Please excuse me.”

I leave the room as calmly as I can, run all the way down the hallway through the next hallway to my own bedroom, close the door, enter my en suite bathroom, and throw up in the toilet.

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