Page 218 of My Unhinged Alphas
“What makes you so sure?” Havoc asks.
For the first time since the screen came to life, Andrew is quiet long enough that the silence feels deliberate. Then he says, “Because I am her father.”
No one moves.
I think, for one stupid second, that I have misheard him. That the shock of the last hour, the blood still drying on my hands, the rope marks around my wrists, have made my mind take ordinary words and twist them into something impossible.
But the man on the laptop doesn’t take the words back.
My mouth opens, but nothing comes out.
Father.
The word means almost nothing to me. It has always been an empty space, a line on forms, a question I learned not to ask because no one ever had an answer that belonged to me.
Now a shadow on a screen has claimed it.
I hear myself say, “You’re lying.”
My voice is thin. Not because I believe he is. Because I need him to be.
Andrew’s tone does not change. “No, Helena, I’m not.”
“You don’t get to just say that,” I say, trying to ignore what he just called me. Lena isn’t even my real name?
“No,” he says. “I do not.”
That answer is somehow worse than if he had argued.
Havoc recovers first. “You knew where she was. You knew who took her. You knew enough to find us through systems you claim are compromised.” His voice goes low. “And you waited until now to mention that she’s your daughter?”
“I did not know where she was until recently,” Andrew says.
Knox’s expression hardens. “Convenient.”
“Yes,” Andrew says. “It would be, if it were not true.”
I look at the dark shape on the screen and try to force a face out of it, some resemblance, some proof. There is none. Only the outline of a man who says he is my father and has hidden behind the Brotherhood while I grew up in homes that were never mine.
“I ensured she was hidden.”
“You ensured I grew up alone,” I say, my voice catching at the words. “And unwanted.”
That makes him pause. At least, I think it does. His outline doesn’t move, but the silence after my words feels different.
“I believed it was the only way to keep you alive,” he says.
I laugh then, once, harsh and humorless. “That has gone brilliantly.”
Vale’s hand stays on my shoulder. I don’t know if he means to comfort me or steady himself. Maybe both.
Knox says, “Why now?”
“Because the people who have been searching for her found her first.”
“You mean this guy, Mikhail? And the guy who took her on the date then tried to kill her?”
“Their family served the Order before the fall. And he blamed me for what happened to them.”
