“How? Your death was major news.”
“And I had all the money in the world to create whatever scenario I wanted to.” She stares at our hands that are clasped together. “I hated leaving when you were only nineteen, but you were a survivor. I knew that. You were starting to make a life for yourself. A life that was not your father’s.”
“I was partying too hard. I was looking for trouble in the worst of ways. I was not starting a life, but hiding who I was.”
“It was a stage, Alex. We all rebel against who we are at one time or another.”
I’m surprised how accepting she is that I was making all the wrong decisions. “Is that what you did?”
“I did what I had to do so one day you could have everything you deserve. The Kingwoods . . .” She looks out her window. “Your father was so dashing in his white tux jacket and black pants. Slicked hair and slicker tongue. I fell for him. For his good looks and charm. I fell for his vision of our future, but it wasn’t me he wanted. He wanted my family’s name, my fortune. His father wanted more.”
“No one hates him more than I do, but one thing I know is he loved you. More than anything. More than me.”
Her head swivels to me. “How is that possible? How is it that he could look at his own flesh and blood and despise you like he did? I didn’t give you life, but I gave you my heart and all my love, my precious boy. He was going to challenge you, to push you to your own demise. So I sacrificed myself. With me out of the way, he would realize the only ally he had was you, his son. He would bring you into the mix, and you would again be in line to inherit the Kingwood fortune.”
Money. It always comes back to dirty money. “I would’ve rather had you.”
Reaching up, she touches my cheek as if she can’t believe I’m real either. “He would’ve never allowed it. I was a prisoner in that manor. I was sold to that man for a dowry worth millions, millions he turned into billions. That’s all yours now.”
“I don’t want it.”
“A ruler doesn’t reject his duties. He just learns to live a life alongside them.”
King. I chuckle to myself. “God, I’ve been so blind. Decisions I thought I was making were made for me years earlier. I was a pawn in a game I didn’t know I was playing.”
“You made some of your own choices and some you were encouraged toward.”
Encouraged toward? My throat feels dry with disgust from the deceitful lies, the life of lies I’ve lived. I push it all down and demand, “What choice did I make on my own?”
“Sara Jane Grayson.”
Three words. One name. Sara Jane Grayson makes up the whole of me, the only part of me that wasn’t controlled like a puppet on a string.
Neely interjects, “You are your own man, Alex. Don’t let this information overwhelm your better senses. You know who you are. You’re not your father or your grandfather. You’re not . . .” She struggles with the next word, but says it despite the pain it conjures, “April.”
My mom rubs my arm. “If I hadn’t left when I did, I wouldn’t be here now. I was suffocating. Every breath I took, he stole. He was obsessed with me and yet, he still slept with other women. I could never please his appetite for more. So it wasn’t only you that wasn’t enough. Nothing was enough for that man. He was just like his father.”
Remembering the papers in the office, I ask, “But he’s not my father, is he?”
Her lips part, but she quickly gathers herself. “What do you mean?”
“You mean, what do I know?” I rub my forehead, trying to ease the heaviness. “I found my birth certificate. My father was my brother. My grandfather was my father.”
“When did you—?”
“The morning I was taken. It all came together.”
The van stops outside a small clapboard house. Neely parks the vehicle in front, and the side door slides open. I almost forgot Cruise was with us. He was so quiet in the back. I don’t blame him. He steps out and stands there, looking around the suburban street. “Where are we?”
Neely responds, “A safe house. Come on. I want to clean you up before I take you to see a friend of mine.”
“A friend?”
“A doctor. You need to be examined. We need to start treating what those sick bastards did to you.”
The three of them head for the front door, but I stand on the lawn and look at the sky. There are no stars to be found. But the air is fresh. The air is free. I inhale deeply because I need it.
Sara Jane.
I need her.
I want to live in her solar system and reunite in her universe with the heavenly stars surrounding us once again.
My mom calls to me, “Alex?”
Looking toward the house, I go. “Coming.” I trudge across the lawn, ignoring the first hunger pangs I’ve been able to acknowledge in weeks, if not longer.
Inside the little house, just beyond a paneled half wall, Cruise is perched on a yellow barstool while Neely takes a cloth to his face. She says, “After your shower, we’ll go. You’ll find clean clothes in the bathroom.”
With my hands on the back of my head, I’m shocked by how we got here. How is my mother alive? How is Neely right in front of me as if she’s been in on this from the beginning?
Cruise comes over, and we don’t bother with our usual handshake. We hug. I hug my brother because I can. He’s alive because he survived, because he fought, fought for me. “I owe you,” I say.
When we part, he says, “Nah, you’d do the same for me.”
I would, too. “That’s what family does for each other.”
He slips down the hall, and I hear a door close. If I reach up, I can touch the popcorn ceiling. I trail the tips of my fingers over the bumps and crevices and then flatten my palms just so I can feel a different kind of pain than the one I’ve lived with for too long. The plaster breaks, the white dust showering down around me and I lower my arms.
My mom walks in from a back room and stops as if she’s walked in on something private. Our eyes meet somewhere in the middle—hers fraught with worry. Mine full of questions and thoughts of betrayal.
The change in her demeanor comes quickly. She’s not the gentle mother I once knew. This woman is fearless and confident. This woman has spent four years becoming a force to be reckoned with. She comes to me, takes my hand, and leads me to the couch. When we sit, she says, “I know this is a lot to take in, but I need you to stay with me. I need you to accept the situation for what it is, or we won’t be able to finish the job.”
“The job?”
“You know who your real father was, but it’s your birth mother that is the most dangerous. I met her at a party once before she had you. She danced all night and had the attention of every man—of every Kingwood—there. She was happy to be the center of attention.” She takes a deep breath, lowering her shoulders that were riding up to her ears in tension prior. “She changed. I want to blame the drugs, but I know different. She thought having you was her acceptance into the empire.”