Beretta stared awkwardly at the strange men her father had brought home, her firey orange eyes dart away any time they would glance back at her. The dark-skinned girl didn't know why, but she didn't like the way these strangers made her feel.
One of the men was constantly cracking jokes she didn't understand, most of which fell flat anyways. This "Joker" as she nicknamed him was rude, constantly being reprimanded by her mother for his constant cursing and rustling her hair - the hair she spent so long tieing back in a ponytail to look nice for the possible children they could have brought.
The other men were much quieter than this one. In fact the taller and thinner of the two had been completely silent since he got here. Maybe he couldn't talk at all...
The last of the trio was the oldest of the three, somewhere around his late 60s in age. His stare was cold and harsh to everyone, but when it fell on Beretta it seemed especially so.
The eight year old had never been happier to be done dinner in her life. As soon as her plate was cleared she practically jumped from her chair.
"Excuse me, i'm goint to go play in my room now." She blurted out before bolting up the stairs at nigh superhuman speed.
"I think you scared her off Rivers." Joker said with a laugh to his elder.
The silent man smirked as he shot back "Are you sure it wasn't your mouth that did that?"
The party laughed a bit at the motor-mouth's expense, earning an embarrassed glare from the redhead. "Shut up Walter!" A brief moment of near complete silence filled the room before the group started talking again.
"Has anything happened recently?" Walter asked, being careful not to let the girl upstairs overhear.
Beretta's parents looked at each other briefly before her father answered "Yesterday she asked why she didn't look like us..."
"She wanted to know why neither of us had dark skin or freckles like she did!" Her mother added, unaware to her daughter's eavesdropping from her doorway.
"Does she suspect anything?" Mr. Rivers asked bluntly before taking a sip of his tea.
"I don't think so... At the most she probably thinks we adopted her." The group sat in silence for a few moments before Joker broke the ice "Good... I'd hate to put the little monster in lock-up with the other one."
Beretta carefully crept her way back to the back of her room and locked herself in her closet.
As the child sat pondering what she'd heard she choked back a sob. Not only was she not their daughter, she wasn't even adopted!
Where did these people get her from then? Did they steal her from her real parents when she was a baby? Why would they even do that? What exactly did they want from her?! As it stewed in her mind she felt the bile rise in the back of her throat.
'Want my daddy... My REAL daddy.' She cried out in her mind as she curled in a protective ball.
As she sat a while she came to an agreement, she wasn't going to wait for these people to make their move. She was going to find out what they wanted her for and she was going to find out what they'd done with her real family... Or die trying.