Page 100 of Mimic

Everything I had been feeling came to the surface. Every doubt I’d had about Val since the moment Magyk confided in me was proven true when a man I hadn’t seen in a decade tapped on my window with a gun in his hand.

DakotafuckingStone.

He opened my door and pulled me out.

“Well, well, well,” he said as he shoved me forward. “My fucking father knew what he was doing when he hid you from me.”

I walked into the warehouse, Dakota’s gun at my back, to find Valhalla, the president of the Nyght Nymphs, an all-female MC that made their name helping women and children get away from abusive homes, the woman who raised me, sneering at me.

“You little bitch. You should have told me who you were.”

“You should never have let Syrena touch me,” I sneered back.

She shrugged. “Probably. But knowing who you are now, I’d do it all again and then some. Had I known who you were then, I would have let that man have you. I should have let him fucking kill you.”

She fucking knew! She knew what was happening, and she did nothing to stop it. All my shame, my guilt, the pain I endured from years of self-harm—it was all her fault.

“Did you help him?” I pointed at Dakota. “Are you the reason my mother disappeared?”

I knew the moment I saw Dakota there was more going on. Cash was going to kill me when he found out. If I survived long enough to tell him.

“I did help him. She didn’t fucking deserve him. HE WAS MINE!” she screamed before she backhanded me. My face twisted from the force; I felt the sting of the slap down to my toes.

“What the fuck are you talking about? You had Bane.”

“I am talking about August, you little cunt,” she snarled, then she began to laugh. “You don’t know.”

She turned to look at Dakota. “They don’t know? He never told them?”

“I assumed she would have told them,” Dakota said, watching me.

“Told me what?”

“Who your parents are,” Val answered.

“I know who my parents are. Justin Peterson and Vivian Greenbush. Nav found our birth certificates.”

“She fucking lied! She’s a goddamn lying whore!” Val screamed.

She was unhinged; it was the only answer. How could I have missed it all these years? I knew she was obsessed with Bane, but I thought she loved him. I’d always assumed it was just unrequited love. She’d told us the story about how they’d been caught making love and ripped apart, only to have her daughter ripped from her arms right after she gave birth.

But this was insanity. This was a woman possessed. She wasn’t making sense. August Lansing had nothing to do with my mother.

“Your mother was a whore. She worked at the Gentleman’s Club, and she seduced August away from me. She trapped him by getting pregnant with you.”

What she was saying didn’t make sense. My mother wasn’t a whore. She was perfect. She was a warrior. She was a goddess.

“She even lied about her name. She wasn’t Vivian Greenbush. She was Diana Cooper.”

“What?”

“The missing daughter of the Gods of Mayhem. Irene’s older sister,” Val said, her voice singing like a child, as I tried to piece together her ramblings.

“Aspen?” I whispered.

Val laughed hysterically. If what Val said was true—that my mother was Diana Cooper—that meant Aspen was my aunt? I shook my head. “You’re lying. What game are you playing, Val?”

“No more games. I won!” She threw her arms in the air and spun around. “All those years she was locked away. All those years she lost. She thinks she can just come in and take what’s mine because that asshole Sinclair found her and took her?”