Page 8 of Remi's War (Four Dark Horsemen 2)

Others hideous.

And some so hurtful you wish you never knew them in the first place.”

Penelope

From Penelope’s Diaries….

My hands are trembling as I write this diary entry, my heart crushed inside my chest. The pain is so strong it envelops my senses and makes it hard to breathe.

Because the truth I just discovered in my father’s study shatters my soul into tiny little pieces, letting them scatter by my bare feet as the harsh wind whooshes through the open balcony door of my room.

I allow the tears to fall on the white paper and smudge the black ink. Devastation slams into me over and over again, the sobs stuck in my throat, while my father continues to bang on the door, rattling the wood.

He says something, but his words are muffled by soundproof walls, and I’m not interested in his explanations either. Nothing can ever justify the illusion he has created about my existence.

The lies I’ve been living all my life.

The man I considered my father… my best friend… the person who always supported my dreams no matter how reckless they were… a man who told me a girl could do anything if she put her mind to it… hid the truth about my birth.

For the birth certificate and letter I have found in the envelope lying inside his desk showed me he was never my father to begin with.

Instead, he’s my uncle who got custody of me when my parents died in a car accident.

It’s like he tried his best to pretend life before the accident didn’t even exist and guarded me fiercely.

All this could have been forgiven though. I could even understand why he decided to shelter me from this painful truth until I was mature enough to handle it properly.

His soul must ache too to lose his only brother Theodore, with whom—based on his earlier stories—he shared a strong bond, and his death devastated him to the point he couldn’t even paint or read his favorite poets.

Although I don’t know that man beyond the stories my dad told me, sadness slips into every crack in my heart, pouring salt over the already bleeding wounds, making me yearn for a man I never got the chance to meet.

The despair slamming into me because of his death feels like a new experience, as I’ve mourned my mother’s death my whole life, since Dad convinced me she died during childbirth.

She has always been just a mirage in my mind, having no face or story, but now… now, clenching their photo in my hand while more tears drop on the paper, the hurt in my chest is almost unbearable, and sobs escape my mouth, my whimpers echoing in the otherwise silent room.

However, it doesn’t even come close to the pain raging in my heart, burning me from inside out, creating an inferno in my soul no water will be able to extinguish at the true betrayal I’ve discovered today.

My parents didn’t give birth to only one girl; they had twin daughters.

Twin daughters were separated by the relatives on both sides. They divided the girls, me and my twin, so my sister went to live with our mom’s sister.

I’m not even sure how it’s possible under any law. Judging by the papers and my father’s wealth, shouldn’t only one have gotten custody of us? How could my parents have failed so much to protect their daughters?

Although now, all Dad’s intentions have become quite clear and why he settled in France, refusing to ever go back to his hometown.

Chicago.

He’s probably afraid I might accidentally stumble upon Amalia—that’s my twin’s name— and my heart squeezes in my chest so hard I gasp.

A twin.

The other half of my soul exists somewhere there, and I know nothing about her but a name.

My family, my father, destiny ripped her away from me, leaving a deep hole in my heart, hollowness that nothing could fix, and maybe that explains how sometimes such strong pain envelops me that I don’t know how to face another day.

They say twins have the ability to feel each other even miles away.

If such sentiment is true, then my twin is hurting so badly somewhere, thinking she is all alone to face the demons crushing her spirit.

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