Ch. 1: Parental Control
Alexis Lancaster always seemed to be in trouble. In second grade, she was written off as a problem child because she had a habit of stealing lunch money from the other children. What the teachers didn't know (or didn't bother to ask) was that there was a reason for it. In the days before she became an "accomplished thief," she was forced to sit at the lunch table and watch the other kids enjoy their food. Only, they didn't enjoy it. They complained about the school food or whined about how their mother had only packed one Fruit Roll-Up instead of two. No one paid attention to the hunched-over girl with wild red hair sitting alone at the end of the table. Her roving eyes stole glances of the food that her stomach hungered for, and she would give anything for a piece of the so-called plastic pizza.
It wasn't like she didn't eat. On the contrary, when she got home, she would raid the refrigerator for anything to fill her growling stomach. The man of the house, Nathan, would conveniently forget to give her lunch money every week. She had known ever since she could remember that he wasn't her father. Hours of television filled her head with celluloid images of what a father was supposed to be. Nathan wasn't it. Television told her that love was the most important thing in a person's life, but she couldn't imagine what it was like. She didn't have any pets. Nathan and Mina certainly weren't her parents. There was no one to show her what love was. All she had were hollow replicas of America's perfectly generic family structure. She didn't fit into their mold. Nathan and Mina told her what to do, but there was no soft side to either of them.
There were no family albums. As far as she knew, Nathan and Mina abandoned their families a long time ago. Sometimes, she would study their faces. Nathan had a prominent square jaw, a straight nose with a narrow bridge, and squinty eyes. His dark brown hair was usually cropped short. His eyes were so deeply brown that they were almost black. He had a tall and stocky build. If she needed any proof of the absence of a genetic connection between them, his cleft chin was enough. She didn't have one.
Mina was a different story. She saw a few similarities between herself and her adopted mother. They were both tall and lean. There were too many differences to ignore. Mina's hair was naturally platinum blonde. Underneath her blue contact lenses, her eyes were just as brown as Nathan's. If she were really Mina's child, she would have been named something far trendier than Alexis. Plus, Mina would never ruin her body by getting pregnant. The woman was absolutely repulsed by the idea.
In her fervent voyeurism at lunch time, she watched kids present their money to the lunch woman in return for food. Everyone but her did this. Nathan and Mina were richer than a lot of parents, but she was the only one who didn't get food at lunch. To fix this inequality, she targeted one of the weaker boys and demanded that he give her his money for lunch. He stuttered and stammered in protest, but she remained firm like Nathan did when she was in trouble. She didn't show any weakness. She walked away from the counter beaming brightly with money in hand. That day, she had lunch with the rest of the kids. She didn't pay any mind to the boy who went without; she had gone for more than one day without lunch. A couple of days wouldn't hurt him.
But apparently, she had been wrong. A week later, she came home to Nathan and Mina's angry faces. The image was quite clear in her memory. Mina had been sprawled out on the plush, ivory couch in the living room. Her dress had been beautifully draped over the white in direct contrast. Silken red splashed over the white and resembled the stain of blood. Her French manicured nails were buried in her hair as one hand supported her head in the posture of sheer boredom. False blues looked at her seven-year-old adopted daughter as nonchalantly as if she were considering a used car or a farm animal. Her lips, covered in a glossy stain, turned ever-so-slightly upward into a smirk. She knew something that Alex didn't.
Nathan was dressed impeccably in a suit and tie. As soon as she entered the room, his hands went to his hips in the classic pose that meant that she was in serious trouble. Judging by the tension in his jaw and hands, he was much angrier than she had thought back then. She could see now what she couldn't in the eyes of a child. Warning signs had never occurred to her before. When he spoke, his powerful voice boomed throughout the empty house. There would be no witnesses. No one would see what happened. No one would care. It was what Nathan was relying on. They were going to an important gala that night. She would be left home alone.
"We got a call from your principal today." It was the sentence that every child dreaded to hear, but she couldn't have guessed Nathan's reaction to the seemingly harmless news. "He informed me that you were stealing from the other children."
She opened her mouth to correct him, but the words never came. At that moment, his anger boiled over and surfaced in the form of a smack. It happened so quickly that she didn't understand it at the time. Now, she played it slowly and saw the signals that he was giving off a second before. His nostrils flared, and his whole body tensed. His right arm was drawn back in a blur, and his open palm came forward with immeasurable strength relative to her body size. When his palm hit her face, the momentum pushed her head so violently to the side that she lost her balance and fell backwards. She didn't have time to turn and soften her fall. The impact of the smooth, hard marble jarred her entire body, but it was the thud of her head against the floor and the jolt that shot through her left arm that hurt the worst.
Her life had inexplicably changed. For the first time in her life, she feared for her own safety. Disoriented from the blow, it took her a few seconds to gather enough of her wits to look back up at him in stunned silence with gaping eyes. The first thing they teach children in life is not the alphabet. It's not the number line. They teach them to always trust adults. No matter what, adults are safe. Her illusion of trust was completely shattered in two seconds. She never liked Nathan, but she never had a reason not to trust him. Until he struck her. Her left arm buckled underneath her as soon as she tried putting any weight on it, and the pain only got worse.
"My arm hurts," she attempted to mumble, but the words were unintelligible. She had a disgusting taste in her mouth that she now recognized as blood. She had bitten her tongue on the way down to the floor.
"Be quiet." He wasn't yelling, but this tone of voice was more dangerous than a shout. "You will not embarrass me like this again. I will not have you shame this family."
She would have laughed if her throat wasn't so dry. Back on the floor, all the little girl felt was shock and horror. The thought that he wasn't allowed to hit her never entered her mind. She was the bad one. She stole from another child and made them look bad. She was paying for it. Parents only punished their children when they were bad, and she must have done something really terrible to deserve this. Tears ran down her cheeks as her skin flushed red with guilt. She sniffled as quietly as she could, but the loud congestion brought a reaction out of Mina.
"How disgusting. Pathetic little creature." It was only a glance at Mina's face in the midst of her pain, but it was painted clearly in her mind.
The only way to describe the look in Mina's eyes was unadulterated disdain. It was the complete opposite of the look that a mother would give her daughter when the latter was in pain. There was a slight wrinkle in her button nose, which she had paid thousands of dollars to have, and her eyes were shuttered into small slits. Her artificially plump lips pressed together in irritation.
The child's patience had run out. She turned her brilliant emerald eyes on her guardians and enunciated clearly and loudly this time. "My arm hurts!"
There were at least five beats of heavy, thick silence. Even Mina, who was normally empty-headed, understood the gravity of the situation. She was the one who broke the silence, and her voice was as soft as Alex had ever heard it.
"Nathan, we're already late." Her request was summarily denied by the fact that he paid her no attention. For once, he ignored her in favor of looking at the child they had taken under their wing since her birth.
"You ungrateful little bitch." At that point, she couldn't trust her memory anymore. Her child self had demonized Nathan as he swelled to enormous size before her and grabbed her left arm.
She wailed in pain as he squeezed the swollen area with no mercy. He lifted her small frame into the air and hauled her up the stairs and to her room. Once he opened the door, she was thrown inside. Before she could get to the door, she heard a key turn in the lock. She was locked in for the night.
Her memory of that night was just as clear as her memory of the incident itself. She was trapped in her room for hours. It was a good thing that there was a bathroom attached to her room, otherwise the situation would have been worse. The stare that she gave herself in the mirror shouldn't have ever been in a child's eyes. It was haunting.
She cleaned herself up methodically. A cold, wet hand towel was tied around her mangled arm. It was awkward to manage things with her right arm. Another genetic oddity that proved her foreign origins was that she was left-handed. She brought a cup to her lips and swished water in her mouth until the water she spat into the sink stopped running red. The cold felt good on her arm, but it still throbbed. Her forearm was nearly twice the size of her right one. It turned from bright red to light purple and then from light purple to dark. It was nearly black by the end of the night.
She imagined that her memory of things might be distorted by a child's perception, but perhaps it was accurate. Absentmindedly, Alex held the exact spot where her arm had been broken. It was long healed now, but the ache was still there. It was completely psychological, she knew. The scars on her body healed far more easily than those in her mind. There hatred burned more strongly than any other emotion, because the couple whose charge she had been left in had betrayed her so thoroughly.
Her stomach remembered the hunger pangs throughout the night as she waited for Nathan and Mina to come home. She tried shouting at first for someone to let her out but soon realized that this was hopeless. The maid only came once a week on Mondays. It was Friday night.
Her love of television led her to search for something to pick the lock with, but her hair pins and paper clips didn't seem to work on the impenetrable lock. Working with her miserably inept right hand was tedious, and she threw the useless objects across the room in frustration.
The window had been ruled out early as a possible escape because she was on the second floor of a rather large house, but it looked ever more tempting as the night wore on and as she grew more desperate. Hunger and thirst assaulted her body while the pain in her arm was constantly in her mind. She had nowhere to go. They lived in the suburbs, but the tight-knit community looked increasingly threatening as she thought about it. She would only get herself into more trouble if she tried to escape. Worse still, she could hurt herself further on the way down. She stayed put for the rest of the night.
Nathan and Mina came home at five-thirty in the morning and ignored her distressed cries. As a child, she thought that they didn't hear her. She knew better now. It was two o'clock before Nathan finally unlocked her door and gave her a stern look.
"If you ever do anything like this again, your punishment will be worse than a stay in your room." The words were well-heeded. For a while.
Like any scorned child, she worked to regain her status as something more than a bad seed. She strove for attention from Nathan, any kind of recognition that she was doing well. She maintained good grades, received lunch every day through legal means, and didn't step out of line. The sign of acceptance that she was looking for never came.
At first, she was only mildly discouraged. In sixth grade, Eric Stephenson made fun of her freckles. She held out for a while against his taunts, but she wasn't invulnerable. Weeks went by, and Nathan was still ignoring her. Mina still hated her. Eric still bullied her.
She couldn't remember exactly when it was, though it was undoubtedly recorded in her permanent file somewhere. All she knew was that it had been almost unbearably hot, and Eric's breath suddenly entered her nose. The rank smell made her wrinkle her nose. Her personal space had been invaded. That might have been what set her off.
He called her a shit face. The foul language didn't bother her much, but his next speculation did. He said that when she was born, someone had gone to the bathroom on her face and stained it permanently. Sixth grade boys were supposed to be offensive, but everything seemed to come to a head all at once.
She gripped the pen in her hand like it was her life line. The fury that consumed her was indescribable. She didn't know exactly what brought it on, but she knew that she had the pen in her hand. He called her the name again, only this time, he seemed to separate the two words while he spelled them out an inch in front of her face.
There was a flash of rage, a severance of her control, and suddenly, she drew the pen back. The look on his face was disbelieving, and there was confused humor in his eyes. He never got the chance to laugh.
At the time, she had no plan in her mind of what she was going to do, but her body seemed to take over for her. She stabbed the pen into his cheek with all her might and drew it back again. A squirt of blood sprayed into her face and dotted her lips and porcelain skin. His lips opened to emit a shriek. Before she knew it, her arm did it again. And again. The time interspersed between the first blow and the recess aides pulling her off of Eric seemed to span milliseconds, but it had to have been longer than that. By the time she was done, his face was full of gaping holes that poured blood all over his face.
He wouldn't stop screaming, even when her attack was halted. She felt completely numb, but his screams would haunt her dreams for years to come. The aides were unable to pry the bloody pen from her rigid grip. She was left with the school psychologist while the aides explained the situation to the principal. Nathan was the first one called. They had to have had some kind of arrangement, because the principal was legally obligated to call the injured kid's parents first. She sat in a room separated from the office.
Before she knew it, Mrs. Kane was dabbing a wet cloth on Alex's face to remove the blood. The cold touch was startling. Alex's wide eyes looked up at the woman she had seldom seen before and found pity in her features. Even at eleven years old, she hated being pitied. When the woman reached for the pen, Alex drew it close to her body.
"Okay, I won't take it. But you have to promise me that you won't hurt anyone else." The woman's voice was irritating with its faux soothing quality. Alex begrudgingly nodded.
She didn't want to hurt anyone. It was like some phantom had taken hold of her body and stabbed Eric. She was as pale as a ghost when she heard Nathan's voice some twenty minutes later. It felt like only a moment had passed. There was a glass of water next to her that hadn't been there before.
"Surely we can keep this under wraps, Greg." Nathan's smooth voice was in business mode. He could be persuasive when he wanted to be.
"I can't do anything for you, Nathan. The parents are going to file charges. The boy will be permanently scarred." The principal seemed far more nervous than Nathan was.
"Have they agreed to keep this out of the media?"
"Yes. At least there's that. But it's going on Alex's permanent record. Child services is going to be all over her."
"I can't have that. They can't come into my home and make important people question my reputation."
She didn't even notice Mrs. Kane's attempt to draw her away from overhearing the conversation. She was unnaturally focused.
It was then that the psychologist began to suspect something. The straightness in Alex's spine, her grim features, and a ghost of panic in the child's face tipped her off. That plus the violent situation would have been enough to implicate someone in her household of abuse.
"The situation is out of my hands. I really wish I could help you, but we've never had an incident like this before. Alexis has never been violent."
"I'm surprised, too. I can't imagine where she would get such an idea. She watches far too much television; maybe that's where it came from."
Mrs. Kane visibly bristled. This was the moment that she identified Nathan as the abuser.
Alex paid attention to the psychologist for the first time since Nathan's arrival. She was getting too close to the truth. Trepidation made her skin crawl. What would Nathan do to her if she ever found out? Alex couldn't allow her to know.
The two men finally entered the conference room. Nathan looked worse for the wear. Alex was careful not to meet his gaze and pretended that she was daydreaming. It seemed to work for the time being.
"I'll take her home now. She must have had a trying day." Nathan's false concern appeared sympathetic to those who weren't trained to look past it. Alex knew that her punishment would be far worse than a broken arm and a dislodged tooth this time. The arm had healed in three short weeks, and she had seen a dentist for the tooth that had supposedly fallen out on its own.
Mrs. Kane stood and cleared her throat. "Mr. Lancaster, I'm Mrs. Kane, the school psychologist. I was wondering if I could talk to Alex privately before she goes."
The corner of Nathan's mouth dipped downwards in disdain. "I'm afraid that she's had enough stress for today."
He turned his body towards the hallway, and Alex took that as the sign that she was to follow him. While they exited the office, Alex heard a muttered argument between Mrs. Kane and her principal. She only hoped that the woman would mind her own business.
Alex sat through the drive home in a daze. She stared out the window at the passing scenery, but the trees and houses blended together into one big, meaningless blur. She didn't know anyone in their suburban neighborhood. The residents only knew her as the Lancasters' throwaway child who was always lurking where she wasn't supposed to be. She knew from the condescending way they talked to her that they were just like Nathan and Mina.
Nathan's anger rose as the drive continued, and the tension wasn't released when he pulled the BMW into the driveway. Mina's Mercedes was in the drive. It was strange to see her at home when she was usually out shopping. Had she heard about what had happened? What could be so important that it would pull her away from the high-end shops further into the city?
Nathan seemed puzzled as well. He momentarily ignored Alex as he strode into the house to find Mina distraught. It didn't suit her. She rose from the couch immediately, leaving the glass of wine that was within reach on the table beside the couch, and was ensconced in Nathan's arms.
"He's coming tonight." Her declaration was barely a whisper, and Alex strained to hear it. Mina's moist eyes looked up at Nathan in fear, and then he seemed to remember Alex.
"Go to your room," he ordered. She climbed the stairs as quickly as she could and opened her door. After that, she snuck soundlessly to the edge of the hallway just before the wall opened up to the stairs. She couldn't see them, but she could hear them. "What do you mean?"
"Lex Luthor is coming here tonight at eight o'clock." Lex Luthor? The guy from the commercials? A picture of the suave bald man came unbidden to Alex's mind. Lexcorp was the biggest company in the nation. Maybe he was coming here on business, and they had to impress him.
A moment of pressing silence made Alex tense. Her spine tingled with anxiety, and she was suddenly desperate to move. Now would have been the worst time to make a sound, so she held her body still through sheer force of will. The only sign of her panic was the slight trembling of her legs. "That's not possible," Nathan finally said.
"His associate called me himself to tell me that he was coming. His flight lands at 7:15." Alex's mind wandered. She still grasped the pen in her hand. It was unremarkable, really. Who knew that she could do so much damage with it? "He knows what happened at the school."
At this, her mind was brought fully back to the present. Why would a super-rich businessman be interested in what Alex had done at school? Her imagination supplied her with fanciful, dangerous situations. She was going to be tested on by the government. They were going to put her in jail so she couldn't hurt anyone else, and she would become a political prisoner. She would be recruited for a secret league of assassins.
Nathan's voice grew softer. "We can't give him any inkling that anything's wrong." Even Alex knew that there was something wrong with her. They needed to take the ghost that stabbed Eric out of her. The only problem was that it was a part of her, and it had controlled her as easily as she could tie her shoes. The girl gave an involuntary shudder.
"She stabbed another student. Like a common ethnic child. I know it's a public school, but this kind of brutality is unacceptable." It wasn't unacceptable for Alex to be so disturbed that she stabbed someone. It was unacceptable that Mina's reputation had to suffer for her child being a criminal.
"She's always watching those violent movies. We're not to blame for her behavior. It's not as if we've done anything to her except support her and shelter her." Nathan's self-delusion was an amazing force. Even through the eyes of an eleven-year-old, she could see right through him. The problem was that Lex Luthor would, too. Was that a good thing or a bad thing? Nathan and Mina were nervous, so in general, it was a bad thing.
"I knew this was a terrible idea. She's always been off. Now she's turning into a psychopath." Mina sounded a little hysterical. The sound of flesh hitting flesh was familiar. Nathan had slapped Mina.
"We need to be perfect tonight. As much of a burden as the child has been, Luthor's money is the only thing keeping you in designer clothing." She felt dizzy. The information was too much, and it was hitting her all at once.
With no more answers than she had started with, Alex slipped into her room and closed the door quietly behind her.
She fell into a restless sleep for a while, but when the anticipated time neared, she was fully awake. The withdrawn girl gazed out the open window and waited for any sound to alert her to the stranger's arrival. Her window faced the back of the property, but she would still be able to hear the sounds of a car pulling up into the driveway.
It seemed like an eternity. Waiting was only making her more anxious. Her skin prickled, and she tapped her fingers gently on the windowsill. The door to her room was securely locked, so she had taken the liberty of removing the screen from her window. The nearby tree branches would support her weight when she climbed out, but she was still afraid of falling the entire two stories to the ground.
Her heart pounded at the thought. Her breath caught in her throat as she peered down at the grass. She felt her fear of heights grip her stomach with a nauseating wave. She struggled to bring her gaze back up and took a deep breath.
A second after she had regained herself, she saw a flash of headlights come around the side of the house and shine into the trees for a brief moment. The sound of the tires rolling smoothly along the concrete and the light squeal of the brakes reached her hypersensitive ears. The momentary interruption in her heart's fast beat now ended as it fluttered quicker than it had before.
She heard a car door shut, and she knew that the time to get out was now. She didn't want to miss anything. She knew that the kitchen window was open, and that would allow her to at least hear some of their conversation. Her lithe body allowed her to crawl into the window frame. It was a tight fit, but she only needed to stay there temporarily. Her hand reached out for the nearest branch. The thinnest part barely scraped past her outstretched fingers.
The doorbell made her entire body twitch. She held her grip firmly on the window as she started to extend her legs and push her body out the window. Her hand grasped the rough bark that was just thick enough to fit her hand around it and have her fingers touch. She needed to get further than that.
A shaky breath made her pause. Three-fourths of her body was out the window. She had to give up her grip on the window. Slowly and carefully, she shifted her balance so that she could grip the thickest part of the branch. A small pull confirmed that it was strong enough to support her body weight. She took a deep breath and grabbed it with her other hand.
Her change in placement made her stomach churn. All of a sudden, the two stories above ground felt like an insurmountable distance. Her heart seemed to pound right next to her eardrums, and then she took a chance. She swung from the window to the tree. Her left foot scraped nothing but bark. She was afraid she was going to fall for a terrifying moment before her right foot found purchase on the stump of a branch below.
Getting down was easier than getting out of her room. She had to circle the tree a little to find footholds, but she took her time instead of feeling the time crunch. When her feet finally touched solid ground, she ran to the kitchen window. It was about three feet above her height level, and she heard nothing but murmured voices. Her lips twisted into a scowl. She snuck around to the front. The curtains were closed, but the windows were open. She could finally hear what was being said. She crouched down so that she could see through half an inch of the bottom of the screen where the curtains didn't reach.
"—n't raise her to be a violent child. She sneaks around us like a common criminal. Half the time, we don't know what the hell she's up to." Nathan's deep voice was in business-mode again. It might not have been the smartest thing to admit that they were being neglectful, but Nathan painted the picture as if she were the one at fault. Maybe she was. If it was her fault that Nathan and Mina didn't pay attention to her, then what did she do that was so terrible to warrant their neglect?
"You should be watching her more closely." A voice that she didn't recognize almost barked at Nathan. When she adjusted her angle, she could see the speaker's face. He had dirty blonde hair and a goatee that covered the area around his mouth. His lips were drawn tightly together, and his eyes were a cold, icy blue. He wore a black suit with a white shirt underneath. She saw a lump in his jacket near the back of his hip where she imagined a gun would rest in its holster.
"Mr. Garcia has a valid point. Has her behavior changed recently?" She felt a chill run through her blood unbidden. This man was a little shorter than Mr. Garcia but made up for it in stature. His posture was intimidating, and so was his voice. By comparison, Nathan's voice could have been that of a worthless subordinate. He had creamy, pale skin and a completely bald scalp. Next to the color of his skin, his eyes were shockingly green. The color made her think of the jewels embedded in the marble around their pool.
Her next thought had more impact than being punched by Nathan. They were the same color as her eyes when she stared at them in the mirror. Her breath sped up when she noticed that the bridge of his nose was the same as hers, the slightest bit crooked. They didn't have the same lips. His were thinner, and the top one had a scar running through it. The creamy skin that she admired was the same shade as her own. No matter how much she swam in the sun, it never darkened. She was too far away to determine whether he had freckles.
For the first time in her life, she thought, this might be my father. This obviously important man dressed impeccably in an all-black suit and a knee-length trench coat might be her biological father. Upon closer inspection, she saw that his eyebrows, nearly invisible against his skin, were reddish in color. She searched for anything to disprove her theory, but she couldn't think straight when she was awestruck.
"No, she's always been like this. Quiet, reserved, but always planning something or another. She won't accept us as her parents, as much as we try to love her." Bullshit. Her present mind contributed the word to her furious eleven-year-old counterpart. Nathan was no hero, but this was the first time that she had seen him blatantly lie about something that was so important to her. It was she who had tried to be a good daughter. She was trying. He was ignoring her. Like he always did.
The fury in her heart was all over Mr. Garcia's face. Where his fire burned in his eyes, the bald man remained coolly indifferent. Mr. Garcia said nothing. It was then that she got the sense that Mr. Garcia worked for the bald man, and that was why he didn't state his obvious opinion. She saw his fists clench by his sides in anger.
"I've never been a real father, Mr. Lancaster," the bald man said calmly, "but I know something about child behavior. Deviant behavior stems from the environment. While violent television may have produced the idea of hurting another child, her mind would have lacked a motive." He deliberately paused at that point. She saw Mina shift uncomfortably, but Nathan remained as unchanged as a statue except for the tightening of his jaw.
Mr. Garcia stepped in to relieve the confusion of her young, premature mind. "What Mr. Luthor is saying is that she couldn't have conceptualized severe abuse without experiencing it herself." The bald man was Mr. Luthor. She didn't recognize him from the commercials at first, but now she could see the resemblance. He looked younger in person.
The temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees. "You're implying that I abused her?" Nathan's incredulous voice sickened her. Several things were realized at that point. Mr. Luthor and Mr. Garcia were on the right track. Nathan's hitting her was considered abuse. It was his fault that she had this demon inside of her. Nathan was a monster, and he might get away with it. Mr. Luthor's steely gaze was met with a scoff. "I've taken her in and raised her as if she were my own. You come around once in her life, unaware of the situation, and decide that I'm not doing my job right?" She shrank back from the window as much as she could while still being able to see. Morbid curiosity kept her there. The edge in Nathan's voice was dangerous, she knew. It was a risk to speak that way to the man who was so blatantly in charge.
"Nathan," Mina quietly admonished. Translation: shut the hell up. Alex stared wide-eyed at the scene and wondered if there would be a fight between the two men. Would Nathan break Mr. Luthor's arm like he broke hers? She reminded herself that if she was right about the gun behind Mr. Garcia's jacket, he would never get the chance. Silently, she was glad that she had someone out there looking out for her, and she only wanted to return the favor. It was an unfortunate fact that she could do absolutely nothing.
Mr. Luthor's voice was the most powerful force she had ever heard. She was transfixed by the smooth nonchalance of the threat that it issued. "I'm implying that if you ever touch her in a way that I deem inappropriate, you'll lose everything. Every cent you have will disappear. You'll find yourself caught up in the criminal justice system and convicted of child abuse and molestation. You know, that's the lowest rank in the prison system, right next to infant homicide. I wouldn't be surprised if your status granted you extensive privileges with the general population."
She barely breathed during the drawn-out warning. Menace coated his tone. She may not have understood it then, but his voice conveyed a familiar threat. She wondered now as she did then what Mr. Luthor would do if he knew everything that Nathan had already done to her by that point in time. Already, she held a large amount of respect and fear for Mr. Luthor. He seemed to be far more dangerous than Nathan, but he was using his power to try and protect her.
As much as she hated to admit it, Nathan did have a point. Why had Mr. Luthor shown up now? Why hadn't he come sooner? If he or Mr. Garcia came to check up on her regularly, surely they would have realized that something was wrong by now. In that instance, she felt a keen sense of betrayal. If he was her real father, why was she living with Nathan and Mina? More importantly, if she was so dear to him, why would he entrust someone like Nathan with her care? Dozens of similar questions went by unanswered.
Rage and hurt swelled in her chest. She was looking for a hero to rescue her from Nathan, but she had found none. Just as she had seen past Nathan's veneer of polite persuasion, she turned that critical eye onto Mr. Luthor. Perhaps he was using his powerful exterior to cover up the fact that he felt inadequate on the inside. He relied on the threat to regulate Nathan's behavior. Her present situation testified to the fact that the threat wouldn't work for long.
And Mr. Garcia? He was a servant, but a willing one. He sensed the reality behind the pretty pictures that Nathan painted, but he did nothing but insinuate. He seemed to be an emotional firecracker. As emotional as he was, he restrained that part of himself. In this memory, he had wrongfully done so in her eyes. He should've argued more. He should have convinced Mr. Luthor to look further into the matter.
But he didn't. Nathan took the threat in silence. Mr. Garcia and Mr. Luthor's departure came soon after that. Less-than-polite farewells were exchanged. She barely got out of the front of the house in time. As soon as she swung herself around the corner to the side of the house, she heard the door open. Footsteps clicked on the concrete. She should've flung herself out there and revealed herself as a victim.
Instead, she remained quiet. As much as she was bursting at the seams, she stayed in Nathan's control. Maybe it was her fault for making the choice. Maybe it was Nathan's for brainwashing her so well. She peeked just barely around the corner to obtain one last look at the two mysterious men. Mr. Garcia was already in the car, starting it up, but Mr. Luthor was just getting into the vehicle. He had his hand on top of the luxurious black Sedan. He seemed to pause in the middle of what he was doing.
To her surprise, his eyes went straight to her. Had she moved or given away her presence? Her heart pounded in her chest, and her lungs seemed unwilling to draw in air while those cutting, green eyes were focused on her. As a child, she was terrified of being discovered, but she detected no anger in his eyes. The only thing she could make out was possible curiosity. He held her gaze for an eternity before Mr. Garcia spoke to him. He got into the car, and she ran to the back of the house. She wouldn't see them again for years.
"Everything's going to be okay. You know that, right?" Sunny's voice brought her back to the present and out of her memories. It was easy to get lost in them, to dissociate from her body and think about things that weren't as bad as they were now. To ground herself in the current, she took an inventory of everything around her. The cigarette in her hand was mostly ash. She flicked the ash to the concrete sidewalk and brought her shaking hand to her mouth to take another drag.
Her hands had been shaking for hours. "I don't get it." Her voice was more agitated than she wanted it to be. "They called me in here this morning, but I've had to wait here all day. What the fuck are they waiting for?" They were sitting on an uncomfortable black bench in front of the police station. It was made of metal. How were people supposed to sit on this thing for hours on end? Her body ached from it. They had more comfortable seats inside the station, but she didn't want to risk talking to anyone before they officially started her interview.
She felt lightheaded from not eating anything all day. Her diet was one of caffeine and nicotine. She couldn't stomach anything else. Her nerves were so bad that she would surely vomit once something solid hit her stomach. Her skin was even more pallid than usual. The dark circles under her eyes stood out in harsh light. Under the dimmed sky of sunset, Alex was certain that she only looked more pathetic.
Sunny was the opposite. His tanned skin and spiked blonde hair seemed to glow under the orange light of the sun, which just made his blue eyes stand out even more. They reminded her of the color of the ocean, but brighter. Even in his concerned state, he looked miles better than she did. He had been with her for the past four hours after she called him on a payphone. She wasn't important enough to own a cell phone.
Her deep red curls had been thrown back haphazardly into a ponytail. Despite the warm temperature, she wore a hooded sweatshirt over her tank top. Her jeans were ripped at the knees. Her sneakers were in worse shape, ripped and dirty. When the police had called this morning and told her to come right away, she was expecting to be questioned almost immediately. It had been eleven hours since they called her, and they just told her to wait.
She hated waiting. If this was some kind of new torturing technique, it was working. All of her other encounters with the police had been short and sweet. Even when they caught her with possession of drugs, she had always remained confident and arrogant. It was nothing compared to this.
"Are you coming down from something?" The serious question in Sunny's soft voice brought out a rush of anger in her chest. The fact that he implied that she was dependent on drugs was something that they argued about almost constantly. Her body seemed to tremble more at the insinuation. She wanted to calm down, but it wasn't happening. It was almost exhausting to be in a state of hyperawareness for so long, but the same state prevented her from relaxing in any way.
"No," she said in an annoyed tone. "I had a joint three days ago. That's it." What she wouldn't do for something right now. Vicodin, Percocet, even fucking Xanax, for Christ's sake. Her heart kept up its fast, weakly fluttering beat. She could tell that Sunny was getting annoyed. His lips always twisted downward to reveal the dimple in his left cheek.
"I know you're not this upset over Nathan." She flinched in response to his statement. A chill went down her spine, and it tingled unpleasantly. She felt the same way she felt last night. Utterly and thoroughly violated. "Alex," he pleaded, his voice softer, "just tell me what's going on. What happened to you?" She struggled with her state of mind. As a result, the shaking only got worse. Now her lips were quivering, and moisture stung in her eyes. She wouldn't cry.
He'd been as gentle as he possibly could about the subject for four hours. His frustration was something that she could understand. But she didn't want to remember. If she remembered it, if she spoke it aloud, it would all become real. She couldn't allow that to happen. "Nothing." Her voice was hoarse and dry. She dropped the butt of her cigarette and put it out with her shoe before she threw it into the trash can next to the bench.
From the corner of her eye, she saw Sunny's face change expressions. When she turned to look at him more closely, he pushed the neckline of her sweatshirt away from her neck. His hands were swift and very nearly rough as he examined the bruise on her neck with a furrowed brow. "Nothing? Goddamnit, I can't believe that bastard." Her hand smacked his aside, and she pulled the fabric back over her neck to cover the wound.
"It was my fault. I should know better than to open my mouth." Her mouth got her into trouble the most. Sarcastic remarks jumped to her lips far too easily. She didn't think before she spoke, and she paid for it. Even Sunny's light touch seemed to elicit pain from the dark, too-noticeable bruise. Nathan had been especially touchy when his company began to fail a year ago. Now that it was getting down to the nasty bits, he had been drinking to self-medicate. It didn't improve his mood.
"It's not your fault," he said with a scoff. She drew her knees up to her chest and placed her feet on the seat of the bench to steady herself. Her pack of cigarettes summarily was drawn out of her pocket again, and she gingerly took one out with her treacherous fingers. Her lighter came out next, but her thumb was shaking too badly to light it. "Here." Sunny took the lighter from her and lit it easily. She held the tip of her cigarette to the flame so that it would ignite and then took a long drag when it did. Then, "How many packs have you had today?"
"Sunny—" she warned in an irritated tone.
"Sorry." His immediate apology cut her off. She turned away from him and gave an aggravated sigh. If she needed a mother, she would go to an adoption agency. Inside, he was just concerned about her, but on the surface, it appeared that he was smothering her.
The next few minutes of silence were suddenly broken by the roaring engine of a midnight blue Lamborghini. Sunny gave an impressed whistle, but Alex's heart nearly stopped when she saw the faces inside. Both were wearing sunglasses, but there was no mistaking it. Mr. Luthor was still bald, and he looked exactly the same as when she saw him five years ago.
Mr. Garcia appeared worn. The wrinkles next to his eyes were more prominent. When they pulled into the police station's parking lot, she leaned her head back against the hard bench. "Holy shit, that was a nice car." The inner turmoil was too much to bear. She sprang to her feet with the intention of leaving, but at that precise moment, the door to the station opened.
"We're ready for you, Alexis." She cursed inwardly. Her mouth was drawn into a tight smile that she didn't mean as Sunny accompanied her inside.
Author's Note: This is a re-write of a story that I wrote a while ago and have updated until recently. I decided to take the original down because I wanted to change some of the content. Much of the story will be the same, but it will be told in a different light.
Please leave a comment to let me know what you think. Needs improvement? Leave some constructive criticism. Thanks to all readers who have been patiently waiting on me to produce something. Writer's block has been terrible lately. I'm hoping this will be a new start to a better story with better content.
