Page 7

Valencia

The day had dawned and I rose from the bed after not sleeping much yet again.

I did all the normal things. Took a shower, got dressed and waited for Tito.

He had made it a routine to come to my room and escort me to each meal unless we were already together.

I really liked him. He was hot, funny and he seemed to not care about my past or my supposed connection to Deacon.

So after a while, I realized that he simply accepted me for who I was.

The problem was I didn’t even know who I was.

This morning was different though as I felt nervous and I kept pacing in my room.

Last night at dinner, Tito had told me about Deacon looking for me.

He described what had happened at the Metairie.

He told me of poor Petrov getting killed after Deacon sent him to find me.

I did feel upset about that simply because I’d known Petree as I called him, for about four years.

He was our head of security. He wasn’t a bad guy.

I mean I hadn’t ever seen a sign that he was bad.

Then again…I didn’t know the truth about anything, apparently.

I tried to hide the fact from Tito that this news scared and excited me at the same time.

Deacon didn’t seem to care how devastated I’d been when I was told that I had never been a Walker.

He had never been my real brother but he had helped to raise me.

He had been absent a lot when I was a teen as he went to college then became an FBI agent.

The truth was as to the illegal activities I knew about some of what he and O were doing.

But I only knew about the strip clubs, gambling and fight clubs.

In reality, those were business investments as my mother…

Sigh. Ophelia had explained to me. I concluded that at least the people who worked for her in those establishments had done so willingly.

However, I never knew he and Mom—Ophelia had gone beyond those endeavors to participate in human trafficking, running prostitutes, guns, drugs and killing people.

Hell, no. I never even suspected such a preposterous thing.

How could I not know though? I was Deacon’s baby sister and Ophelia’s daughter for all that time.

Yet, I never knew what they were doing? That they were hurting so many people.

So that made me either a liar or extremely stupid.

Since I’d been here I did have a few talks with Della. Once she calmed down and wasn’t so mad at me. She said she felt the same confusion and shame that she also never knew any of the truth that the Walkers had told her. It made me feel a little better.

What I couldn't get past was the big lie. Raising me up to believe I was Ophelia’s daughter.

I still didn’t understand that. Why? All, while Della was a real biological Walker and she was raised like an adopted child.

A fact she never knew either. It made no sense.

When I first found out the day they brought me here, I’d asked Deacon if he knew the truth and if so, why would O do such a thing?

I got no answers from him. He was then released from the custody of the Descalia family.

When he left, the truth of what had happened to me and my identity went with him.

So now…Deacon wanted to talk to me. Or was it for some other reason?

I kept trying to remember the things I saw or heard while I had been with them.

I could see it now though. They were hiding things from me as I remembered many times how O and Deacon would abruptly stop talking about something if I unexpectedly came into the room.

They would also go on secret trips and leave me at one of the hideouts.

Then there were huge windfalls of money that would roll in.

I asked Della about that money at the time since she was their accountant.

She had told me she was unaware of the money I spoke of.

She had explained how she only saw transactions online, at the banks or in the books.

Not actual cash money like I was asking about.

They also lied to me about the Walker family.

I’d been told since I was a teen about their cruelty to Ophelia.

The lie about how they’d all turned their backs on her after Jared Walker raped her and got her pregnant.

When he hadn’t even been in Ramton at that time.

He had moved away and in reality, O had been married to Jared’s brother and she had killed him by drugging him then setting their house on fire.

Then she ran away while not knowing she was pregnant by her real husband.

Glory then told me about the recent crimes Ophelia and Deacon had committed against the Walkers.

That the Walker family had been in hiding for almost two years during the horror spree O and Deacon had perpetrated on them.

She told me of the missiles Deacon sent down to kill them. The attacks on many of the family members. The kidnappings and threats.

The biggest shocker was when Glory explained to me that she had been kidnapped by Deacon in order to force the Walkers to release O after they had finally captured her.

My mouth had popped open in utter astonishment.

I never knew this. I did know about that poor girl Jewel Deacon had taken.

He said he was in love with her and their mother had made him promise to keep the family line going.

So he had taken her to have his kids. I knew it was insane when he had done it, but I also knew he was crazy mad because of our mother’s murder.

I had also been overcome by grief at that time too.

I wanted revenge, all I’d ever been told was how badly they wanted her dead.

Then finally she was dead and it had happened after they captured her.

However, I hadn’t known about the fact that Deacon had two other women in his custody at the same time against their wills. Glory and another woman had been rescued from one of Deacon’s hideouts. I had to sit down and take that in. I'd been so upset that I went to my room for the rest of the day.

So this told me that even after Ophelia had been killed, Deacon had been telling me lie after lie.

He’d twisted everything to make it look as if the Walkers were the bad guys.

They were after him, after us, is what he kept telling me.

They had killed our mother in cold blood.

They would never stop until he was dead as well.

He had cautioned me that they held this grudge and they might try to kill or capture him, so he left instructions with Petrov on what to do if that ever occurred.

Then it did occur. One day, my supposed brother disappeared.

Petrov then informed me that the mafia, of all groups, had him.

I then felt vindicated about what Deacon’s men had pulled off.

Taking Jared into custody, but at the time I hated him for all the sins he had supposedly committed against my family.

Right back to when O had been a young woman, run out of town by a powerful family when Jared had gotten her pregnant after raping her.

How she had been so young and vulnerable.

How he had tried to burn her house down to kill her and that had been how she had gotten those scars on her face.

When, all along, she had burned herself while setting her own house on fire.

The stories O told me about the Walker’s crimes and their burning hatred for her had been horrendous.

She spoke of the cruelty of her parents, how they had beaten her, starved her and neglected her.

She told me about the mean sister she’d grown up with…

Bea, who had stolen the man O loved just to be spiteful.

The way his twin, Jared had taunted her and then took advantage of her.

She had me believing that the entire family was evil to the core.

Then to find these stories were just that, stories of fiction. They were made up in her imagination or they were just outright lies.

Glory had filled me in on the real truth.

Ophelia, or rather, Olivia as was her true name.

She had burned her childhood home down with her parents and a baby sister inside.

She had wanted the man Bea was in love with.

When she couldn’t have him, she married his brother.

Then killed him the same way… by house fire.

Finally, she came back twenty-some years later after becoming wealthy.

She asked Bea’s husband to run away with her.

When he turned on her and refused…she stabbed him in the heart…

Literally. She took a father away from like six kids who needed him.

One of those kids had been her very own too.

She had actually left a son behind. Why?

When she had taken me from my parents all while she had left a son behind in Ramton?

Yes, I had seen the video of when she had committed suicide.

He was on that video. The poor guy had been upset and angry after he too had found out the truth.

She had been the one terrorizing them. The one who’d killed his real father in a house fire, then she had killed the man that raised him like a son by stabbing him.

When things spiraled out of control between her and her son, O had gotten a knife from him and stabbed herself in the heart.

I could barely watch the video as it sickened me to my very core.