Chapter 9 - The Woman at the Hospital Knew Why I Was Being Hunted
Her name was Rebecca Sloan.
She had worked in the maternity ward fifteen years earlier.
She had handled my birth records.
She had been the nurse present when I was born.
And she was the last person to see my father before he disappeared.
My mother remembered something.
Rebecca had held me the night I was born.
She had whispered:
“They'll come for her.”
My mother had assumed she meant the hospital staff.
She hadn't.
Rebecca had been working for Judge Voss.
But there was a twist.
She hadn't betrayed us willingly.
Voss had threatened her family.
Rebecca had spent fifteen years trying to protect us from inside the system.
The gray sedan had been hers.
She was the one who arranged the surveillance.
But she had never ordered the driver to threaten me.
Someone else had intercepted the operation.
Someone inside Voss's network had changed the instructions.
The stalker had gone rogue.
He had enjoyed frightening me.
Rebecca confessed everything.
She also revealed one final truth.
The original stalking campaign had been designed to locate my father.
They believed that if they found me, Adrian would return.
And he had.
That meant I was never the true target.
I was bait.
I cried when I heard that.
Not because I was afraid.
Because I realized how much my parents had sacrificed.
My mother had spent years working exhaustion into her bones.
My father had lived under false identities.
Vincent had risked his empire.
Gabriel had lived like a ghost.
All because of one little girl.
Me.
I didn't feel powerful.
I felt loved.
Rebecca testified.
The driver testified.
Police officers testified.
Judge Voss was convicted.
The remaining members of her network were exposed.
The city slowly healed.
One year later, Vincent came to my mother's apartment.
He wore a simple suit.
No guards.
No weapons.
He stood at the door holding flowers.
My mother smiled.
“Why are you nervous?”
“Because I'm asking you something.”
“What?”
Vincent looked at her.
Then at me.
“Will you both come to dinner?”
I laughed.
“That sounds serious.”
“It is.”
My mother accepted.
Dinner became weekly.
Weekly dinners became holidays.
Holidays became family trips.
Vincent eventually stopped being just the man who had walked me home.
He became part of our family.
He taught me how to ride a bike.
He attended my school plays.
He sat through piano concerts.
He helped with homework.
He even learned how to bake cookies.
He was terrible at it.
We laughed anyway.
Years later, he admitted:
“The first night you came into Belladonna, I thought you would be the biggest inconvenience of my life.”
I grinned.
“And?”
He smiled.
“You became the best thing in it.”
My father and mother rebuilt their marriage slowly.
There were scars.
There were difficult conversations.
But there was forgiveness.
Gabriel stayed away until enough time had passed.
Eventually, even he returned to family dinners.
The first time all of us sat around the same table, I looked around.
Mother.
Father.
Vincent.
Gabriel.
Rebecca.
The people who had once been divided by fear were finally sitting together.
I realized something.
The gray sedan had once been the symbol of everything I couldn't control.
Now it was just an old car.
A relic.
A story.
A reminder of the little girl who thought she had no one.
May you like
But she had always had someone.
She just hadn't met them yet.
