Page 117 of Poison Vows

Today is my real birthday.

I’m twenty-seven years old.

The fifteenth of October…

As if I’ve been frozen in place, my mind starts replaying all the other years I received gifts, like extremely rare and precious gifts that I’ve cherished since on the fifteenth of October.

One time I received a velvet box with fifteen perfectly arranged pencils, all of different shades, grip, design, and feel. When I googled the brand, I found they were made by a Japanese master craftsman who lived in seclusion.

The following year, I received sketchbooks on different types of paper.

The year we were forced to leave Westbrook Blues was no exception.

I had been so deeply depressed that I felt like dying was better.

Then one day, I started watching Chinese wuxia martial arts dramas. They made me feel so much better. I could rot away for fifty-two episodes at a time without noticing the time.

Soon after, an addiction formed. Then I learned they were based on novels, so I found the author but no matter what I tried, I couldn’t find the paperbacks in English translations.

I was back to being sad again but one day, on the fifteenth of October, I received a beautifully wrapped package full of all the author’s works, the first editions of the original books in Mandarin and the newly translated ones.

In the box, I found a handwritten note from the author dedicated to me, thanking me for the massively generous publishing deal under Pandora House.

Pandora…

There was only one person in the world who knew my obsession with Pandora’s box—so finding out that a publishing house with the same suspicious name translated, distributed, and represented the author I had fixated on…

How could I not fall hard for Emmett Easton?

From then on, every fifteenth of October, I would get meaningful, precious gifts from someone I believed knew me intimately judging by the content.

“Oh my God.”

All these years, he never celebrated the day IthoughtI was born. No gifts. No acknowledgement, and it killed me each time.

At one point, I believed the gifts came in October simple because it was the time he thought of me most.

But each year on the fifteen of October, I always received seemingly random gifts with no name.

But now… Emmett had been celebrating my real date of birth all this time!

“Oh, and that fool of a senator is not your biological father either. Alessio knew that too,” he goes on.

“You’re lying!” I accuse, but even my own voice is weak with disbelief.

“All these years, your brother and that illusive grandson of mine have been doing their best to dissuade you from finding your mother. Why do you think that is?” he questions with an expression that makes me feel so small and stupid, I want to crawl into a ball. “Wasn’t it to protect you from the disappointment that awaited you?”

Another blow.

“I’m also not sure why your mother abandoned you, like she did her first child,” the old man muses as if finding amusement out of the tragedy he’s weaving. “I have theories, but you should confront her yourself, because guess what, Ivy Marie?”

I can only stare, overwhelmed by the soul-shattering pain.

“You’re no longer a child, as we just read from the Holy Book,” he says with a smile. “It’s about time you embrace being an adult and take responsibility like an adult!”

Like a thousand armor piercing arrows have just been shot straight to my heart, I plop in the chair, bleeding and left for dead.

“Why are you telling me this?” I whisper brokenly.

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