Chapter 7 - MY FATHER
They kept them beneath a private rehabilitation facility outside Chicago.
My father had aged twenty years in eleven.
His hair was white.
His body thin.
But I knew his eyes.
“Mara?”
One word destroyed me.
I ran to him.
I hit him before I hugged him.
“You left us!”
“I know.”
“You let us think you abandoned us!”
“I know.”
Then I collapsed against him.
He held me.
“I was trying to keep you alive.”
I hated those words.
Everyone used protection to explain lies.
“I needed a father.”
“I know.”
Owen was in the next room.
Alive.
Weak.
Adrian's team extracted both during a coordinated federal raid.
Because Adrian had done something nobody expected.
He went to the FBI.
Not to bargain for immunity.
To surrender evidence.
All of it.
Including evidence against himself.
Charles Whitmore and Samuel Pierce were arrested.
Thomas agreed to testify.
Owen returned to treatment.
Vanessa testified against her own father.
May you like
And Adrian Cross lost everything.
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