Chapter 101: The Missing Years
Theo couldn’t move for several seconds.
Frank’s last sentence had swallowed all the air.
’Every woman in the cult was nad Helena...
Every woman...’
A cold pulse moved through Theo’s chest.
"My mother’s na..." he began slowly.
Frank nodded before he even finished.
"Helena," he said. "Yes. The sa na."
Theo’s jaw tightened. "But she was not part of any cult. She raised alone before Zack took in. She was a good woman."
Frank lifted a hand as if calming him.
"And she was," he agreed. "Your mother was good. Brighter than most won I ever t. But good won are exactly the ones that cult likes to take. They break them, reshape them, and give them the na Helena. They bury every past identity until the woman is only what the cult wants her to be."
Theo felt his heartbeat trip. His mother...His mother...
Frank seed to read the ss in his face and continued gently.
"She didn’t choose that life, Theo. From what my stepfather learned, she was taken very young. She escaped. She ran like Danielle’s mother did. But she did it alone and not pregnant. That is why Zack found her."
Theo’s eyes hardened. "Zack didn’t find her. He took her."
Frank didn’t deny it.
"Both can be true."
Theo breathed slowly through his nose.
"My mother was never involved in anything dark," he tried to reason with himself but the truth was too unreasonable.
Frank nodded again. "She was not. When she ran, she left the cult behind. But that does not an the cult left her. They do not like losing their won. And they hate more than anything when a woman gives birth to a boy."
Theo stared. "Why?"
"Because boys don’t matter to them," Frank shook his shoulders a little. "A boy is considered a mistake like so defect. They only value girls. Girls born under the conditions they set. Girls who can be shaped into whatever they need. Girls like Danielle...And like your mother might have been if she had never escaped."
Theo looked down, trying to piece together fragnts of mories he was no longer sure belonged to him.
"And Zack?" he asked. "Where does he fit into this?"
Frank’s expression changed to a disappointed understanding.
"Zack was curious," Frank said. "The mont he learned about the cult, he wanted to know more. He thought it was so kind of secret society. Sothing powerful and old. Sothing he could use."
"Sounds like him."
"He saw your mother," Frank continued, "and he was intrigued. A woman who escaped sothing forbidden. A woman who belonged to a world he was desperate to enter. And she was a virgin...."
Theo refused to blink.
Frank took another breath.
"He stayed with the cult for a while. Not as a mber, but as an observer. They wanted him because he was smart. Dangerous. They believed he could bring them influence. And he wanted them because he believed he could gain sothing from them. But he could not stay unless he had a girl to offer."
Theo’s hands curled slowly at his sides.
He understood exactly where this was going.
"But he did not have a girl," Frank said. "Your mother gave birth to you...who was a boy. A useless offering in the cult’s eyes."
"So what did he do?" Theo asked quietly.
"He waited...He played along for years. And when he was ready, he made a deal with the cult master."
Theo felt sothing icy unfurl inside his chest.
"What kind of deal?"
Frank looked right at him.
"To give your mother freedom, so they would stop hunting her and give you to him."
Theo felt his throat close slowly...
"He wanted property," Frank stated with a rough voice. "Not a family or love. He wanted the woman he desired, and the boy that ca with her. Raising you made him look like a respectable and stable man. A man who could build power."
Theo breathed slowly, using all the control he had.
"And what happened to my mother? She’s still in contact with ...what the fuck?"
"When the cult handed her over, she was broken after all the running. She was not the woman she used to be. She had been living in fear for years, waiting for the day they would take her back. And Zack didn’t want a broken woman."
"What did he do to her?"
Frank swallowed.
"He took you. And he threw her out."
Theo’s teeth clenched so hard that pain shot up his jaw... "No...I would rember sothing like that."
Frank stepped closer.
"That is the problem...you do not rember because Zack made sure you would not."
Theo’s breath stopped and Frank continued with his story.
"He hired soone...."
"What?"
"He was a man who worked with chemicals and experintal thods of mory control. They tested it on people who were considered disposable. It allowed specific mories to be blurred or erased."
Theo felt the walls shift around him.
"He used it on ," Theo’s eyes widened.
"My father was there...and he told that you scread for your mother while they held you down. You kept asking where she was. Why was she not coming back? Zack told you she didn’t want you anymore. And then he told that man to take those mories out. To wipe them clean."
Theo’s breath shook.
His earliest mories were always fuzzy, and super blurry.
To him fog over glass of so faces he couldn’t place.
And now he knew why.
"He wanted you to believe he saved you. He wanted you to believe he was your father. And he wanted every trace of your mother erased from your life but he failed."
Theo closed his hands into fists until his knuckles whitened.
"Do you know what happened to her? She never told this...do you?" he asked, though he already braced for the answer.
"No one knows."
Theo was really silent in the corridor as his thoughts spiraled around the single na that now haunted both him and Danielle.
’Helena...’
His mother and Danielle’s mother.
Every woman the cult ever touched.
Frank watched him carefully.
"You were never ant to find this out...Zack buried it deep. But now... with everything happening... the truth was going to co out sooner or later."
Theo drew a slow breath.
Everything he had believed about himself was being rewritten.
Frank placed a hand on his shoulder, grounding him.
"You are not like him, Theo...And that is probably the thing that terrifies him most."
Theo lifted his eyes.
Because now he understood sothing very simple.
His and Danielle’s lives were very similar...only a few years apart...
Reviews
All reviews (0)