Page 110 of Mimic

“I think maybe he should come in here,” I whispered.

“I’ll get him,” Bane said as he left the room.

“I-I need to go,” Aspen whispered. My mother looked at her sister, pain cutting across her face. There was so much she didn’t know. So much she would learn that would hurt her.

“Aspen, do you want me to tell Haizley to come find you?” Gunner asked.

“Please,” she replied, her eyes pleading with Gunner.

“Can we talk later?” my mother asked, reaching out again, but pulling her hand back when Aspen winced.

“Maybe, yeah.” Aspen nodded, and Banshee followed her out as Dr. Dunaway and Bane returned.

With the help of Dr. Dunaway, I told my mother everything. I told her how Thorne and I survived after she was taken, how we got separated. I left out the part where Dakota was the one who had taken him. That was his story to tell. But first I had to get him into the same room as her. I told her about how Val had found me, saved me, and taken me in. I shared the good years we had before Syrena.

When I finally told her about Syrena, my mother cried with me. She blamed herself, as I knew she would.

“Kytten, Johnny called. They won’t be back until tomorrow. If you would rather wait for Mimic to get back, that’s fine. But I need to speak with your mother and Bane.”

I turned to Cash. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Rosie, please stay. I want you to know everything.” She held my hands in hers. Her eyes begged me to stay and listen.

“Okay,” I agreed.

Cash ushered me to his chair, where he sat down and pulled me into his lap. My mother began her story with the day her parents, my grandparents, moved her into her college dorm.

I sat quietly while Bane and my mother told King about George Stone and his DNA database. She told us about her life without my father. Why she’d used Shame’s name on our birth certificate, and what happened the final day when Dakota knocked on our door and took her from us.

Tears fell from my eyes as I listened to everything my mother had endured from that day on. The captivity, the torment from Dakota and his father. And Val. The woman I loved like a mother.

The woman who had betrayed me so brutally, with such evil intent. Not only because of what she had allowed Syrena to do to me, but what she had done to my mother.

She might not have known the woman she hated was my mother, but that did not excuse the fact that she could treat any woman that way. Especially after what she had endured looking for her daughter, all the while knowing she had taken Diana Cooper away from her child, hiding her away, leaving a child lost and alone.

“Kytten, are you okay?” Dr. Dunaway asked.

“No, I’m not okay.” I shook my head. My hands trembled as I held onto Cash. Not even he could keep the monsters quiet after listening to the hell my family had lived through.

I balled up my fist and screamed. Cash held me around my middle as I screamed as loud as I could. My mother’s sobs made me scream louder. I couldn’t stop.

“It’s not fair!” I yelled. I slammed my hand on the table. “I wish Indie hadn’t killed her. We should have torn her apart. Death was too fucking good for her. She should have been locked away the way my mother was. The way Thorne was!”

“Val’s dead?” Bane asked. King nodded, and my mother moved beside me. I crawled into her lap and cried against her chest. “Does Reaper know?”

“Not yet. There’s a lot of shit going on right now.”

“Don’t tell him. Where’s her body?”

“We have it stored. We haven’t burned it yet—”

“Burn it. I’ll take responsibility for it. Reaper has his hands full in Oklahoma at the moment. When it comes time to tell him. I’ll tell him I did it.”

“That won’t be necessary,” King said.

“Who is Indie?” my mother asked.

“Mimic’s old lady,” I answered on a hiccup.