Page 10 of Down Knot Out (Pack Alphas of Misty Pines #3)
The receptionist’s head turns in our direction before her attention returns to her computer screen. The waiting room seems smaller, the antiseptic smell stronger, choking me.
“He almost?—”
“But he didn’t.” She cuts me off, her manicured finger jabbing toward me without making contact. “And now I’m left to fix things. Another of the Santaro brothers will be taking over the pack. He’s willing to overlook the role you played in Louie’s death as long as?—”
“I’m not going to marry into the Santaro pack!” I stand, unwilling to be near her a second more. “ You marry him if you’re so desperate.”
“Sit back down.” She grabs my wrist, yanking me back into my chair. “It has to be you.”
“Why?” I shake my head, exhausted by all of this. “Because I’m a Sinclair?”
Vivian’s expression flickers with surprise, followed by quick calculation. “You did a DNA test.”
“Of course I did. I’m being courted by the Misty Pines Alphas now.” I yank my wrist from her grasp. “Why have you lied to me my entire life? Does Dad know?— ”
“That man is not your father.” Vivian sneers. “He wasn’t Alpha enough to breed a child.”
“Then who?” I demand, the same question I’ve been asking since I was sixteen. “Is it Leopold?”
Considering the size of the bargaining chip my mother has made me out to be, and how much the Santaro pack wants me, my first cousin is a good guess. Since my father never had more children, the head of the pack would default to my great-uncle’s line.
“I would never touch that sniveling Beta,” she scoffs.
Okay, she has a point. If she planned to cheat on my father, she would have chosen someone powerful. My stomach sours at the thought of her and my great-uncle together. He was old even when I was a child.
“Were you ever going to tell me?” Tears sting my eyes at the betrayal. “That I’m really a Sinclair?”
She glares around the waiting room at our audience. “Keep your voice down.”
“Why? Are you afraid someone might hear the truth?” Heat rises to my face. “That you’ve spent years lying about who I really am?”
Vivian’s hand shoots out, gripping my wrist with surprising strength. Her nails dig into my skin, five points of sharp warning. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
I pull free, the movement jerky and leaving welts on my skin. “Then explain it to me. Explain why you hid who I am. Why you falsified my DNA when I was supposed to start my courtship with Dominic. Why you let us live in squalor and took on huge gambling debts instead of just… just…”
The memories of cold apartments and empty refrigerators flood in. The constant worry that she wouldn’t come home. That when she did finally appear, her pink eyes would be glazed with alcohol and her face covered with bruises from debt collectors.
“I did what I had to do.” Her voice drops lower. “Your father—your real father—rejected me when I got pregnant with you. He’s spineless and deserves everything that’s coming to him.”
The floor tilts beneath my feet. “My real father?” His identity has been the empty space in my life, a blank Vivian refused to fill no matter how many times I asked. “You said you didn’t remember who he was.”
“I said a lot of things.” Loathing fills the look she pins on me. “He threw you away before you were a bump in my belly. I’m the only one who has ever stood by you and tried to reclaim what we deserve. I protected you.”
“Protected me?” The words taste like acid. “You’ve never protected me from anything. Not even yourself.”
Her head snaps up. “You ungrateful little?—”
She catches herself, breathing deeply through her nose. The pregnant Beta openly watches us now, one hand over her belly in a protective gesture.
She lowers her voice to a hiss. “I kept you fed. I kept a roof over your head.”
“When it was convenient.” The words rip from all the pain built up over the years. So many times, I ranted at her in my mind, but never to her face, too afraid to lose the only family I had left. But I have my Alphas, now. “You were always chasing the next jackpot or crawling into a bottle.”
Vivian leans closer, her floral pheromones so much like mine, but bitter with hate. “I did my best to put us back on top.”
“Your best?” The laugh that bursts from me sounds nothing like my own. “Your best was leaving me with neighbors for days or alone with nothing to eat? Your best was forgetting to pay the electric bill because you were on a winning streak at the casino? ”
Her lips press into a thin line, pink lipstick creasing at the corners. “I came back, didn’t I? I always came back.”
The simple truth of this statement hits harder than her anger.
She did always come back, disheveled, often drunk, sometimes with gifts bought with winnings, sometimes with nothing but excuses.
But she returned when others might have disappeared.
Because I still held value in what she could get from me. But not out of love. Never out of love.
I turn my head away. “If all you did was come here to convince me to join your scheme, you should leave. I want nothing to do with whatever hate-filled vendetta you have against my real father. I refuse to be your pawn.”
“You owe me,” she snarls. “With the Santaro pack cutting me off, I’m going to need a bigger allowance from you.”
“No.” Disappointment burns in me for everything she should have been. “I’m done giving you anything.”
“Chloe Richardson?” A nurse calls from the doorway. When I stand, she turns to me. “You’re here with Dominic Sterling?”
“Yes.” I pause to give my mother a final warning, “If you’re still here when we come out, I’ll call the police and report you for breaking the restraining order. You won’t need money in prison.”
Striding toward the nurse, I refuse to look back. I’m done with my mother. I refuse to allow her to have power over me again.