Page 169 of Sins of the Hidden

"Oakley," Dad said, grief cracking his careful control. "Claudia isn't your biological mother."

A high-pitched ringing split through my skull, drowning everything but my thundering pulse. My body went numb, ice spreading from my fingertips through my veins.

Nausea crashed into me. The world lurched sideways as twenty years of memories reshuffled themselves, countless moments suddenly transformed into lies. Every birthday cake. Every bedtime story. Every time she'd brushed my hair or kissed a scraped knee. Every single time she'd called me her daughter.

All lies.

My vision blurred. The room tilted.

Mom wasn't Mom.

Then who was I?

Colors blurred at the edges, reality dissolving into a smear of confusion. Every truth I'd built myself on was erased by five words.

Her face offered nothing—no echo of mine, no borrowed smile. All those times people had said I had her smile, her laugh—were they just being polite? Perpetuating a fiction everyone knew but me?

A chasm opened inside me, consuming everything I thought I knew. If she wasn't my mother, what parts of me were real? What else had they hidden? The foundation of my existence cracked, hairline fractures spreading until nothing solid remained.

"I always knew I'd have to tell you... but how do you tell your child she was never yours to begin with?" She pressed her fist against her mouth, biting down on her knuckles again until the flesh whitened. Her shoulders shook as tears dropped onto her lap, dark stains blooming on denim. "I raised you. I loved you. I am your mother in every way that matters."

I didn't remember standing. I didn't remember the door slamming open. Only the blind panic—lungs burning, heartbeat thrashing against my ribs, every step a scream for escape. My ears rang with deafening intensity, vision narrowing to pinpricks of light in an expanding void. Each footfall thundered louder than my own heartbeat, the rhythm of flight drowning out thought. My entire life had been a performance I didn't know I was giving.

I didn't know if I was running from them or from myself. I just knew if I stayed another second, I would disintegrate into pieces too small to ever find again.

My body moved. I didn't remember descending. Keys appeared in my hand as I wrenched open my car door, sliding into the passenger's seat before realizing my hands shook too violently to turn the ignition. I stared through the windshield, seeing only the ruins of my identity, panic crawling under my flesh like insects.

V appeared at the driver's door. He opened it and slid in beside me, taking the keys from my trembling fingers without a word. He reached across me, buckling my seatbelt before pressing his mouth to my temple through his mask.

I stared blankly at the dashboard, willing my heartbeat to slow, but it only hammered harder, as if my heart had just realized I was still alive and was trying to escape my chest. The only piece of me that felt real was where his covered lips had touched my temple.

Just hours ago, V had made me feel seen—had worshipped every curve, every mark, every part of me I'd been taught to hate. He'd found beauty in my fractured reflection. Now that reflection seemed like another lie. If I wasn't Oakley Anson, daughter of Trevor and Claudia Anson, then who was I?

He started the engine, and we fled from the apartment that no longer felt like home.

The bakery stood quiet, V walking to the corner with the least amount of damage. Leaning his back against the wall, he slid down, pulling me into his lap. His hand stroked my hair as I settled against him, trying to process that my mom was not my mom. His rough hands felt gentler than they should be. Tears had dried on my face, leaving salt trails I no longer felt. My eyes burned dry, staring blankly as if feeling itself had drained away, leaving only emptiness with each shallow breath.

Is this what V felt all the time? The vacuum inside me mirrored his eyes—an endless abyss screaming silently, like a siren underwater.

"You okay?" His whisper vibrated through his chest, beneath my ear.

"No." The single syllable contained multitudes. It was the most honest word I'd spoken all day.

His arms tightened around me, chin resting on my crown. Safe. Despite everything—the lies unraveling my life, the man whose violence had claimed countless lives—I felt safe. Not because he was good, but because his single-minded obsession with me ensured nothing else would ever hurt me.

We weren't two damaged people anymore. We were just damaged. Two sets of shards so sharp we cut each other every time we tried to fit. We weren't fixing each other—we were sinking together, clinging tighter the deeper we fell.

Everything was a lie. Even the truths they told me were just prettier lies wrapped in brighter paper. How many lies had I swallowed without tasting the poison? What else had they hidden from me? How many other lies wore the faces of my childhood memories?

I thought of the photos on our mantle—family camping trips, birthdays, Christmases—all preserved behind pristine glass. All fiction. Had she looked at those pictures each day knowing they contained a central falsehood? That the daughter in those frames was not truly her daughter?

How could I hold his pain when mine already drowned me? What right did I have to his darkest secrets when my own reality lay in pieces? My chest constricted, everything thinning—terrified I'd drop the one piece of his soul he'd ever given anyone. If I let go, I'd be the last hand to fail him. The final person to teach him trust was a mistake. The thought of failing him—of not being enough to carry the weight of what he'd endured.

"Talk to me," he murmured into my hair, his lips brushing against my scalp with each word. His arms tightened around me, not from empathy but possession—I was the only thing in his existence that mattered. The only thing he would ever protect. The single point in his universe that had value.

I said nothing for a long time. Just breathing. Listening to the rhythm of his heart beneath my ear. Minutes passed, or maybe hours. The quiet stretched between us, not empty but filled with all the words neither of us knew how to say.

The brothers were brought together for a sin so unforgivable, God wouldn't forgive them for it. Knowing everything that V had done, his list would be black at the golden gates. But that was after joining... what about before he joined?

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