His face drains of color as his eyes widen. His lips part to say something, but then he presses them together and starts to cry. Strangely, his eyes remain tearless, though.

I remain kneeling on the driveway in front of the house, confused, hurting, the pain crushing me, and I feel as though my world is shattering around me. I can barely see anything through the tears, but I do notice when Frankie Catherlson comes walking out of my house with his men. He doesn’t say a word to my father, just heads for his SUV parked amongst a line of similar ones. As he’s getting inside the passenger seat, he glances over his shoulder at me and gives me this look. It’s not quite a smile, yet it seems like he wants to, and then… he fucking winks at me.

My blood burns. My temper simmers. I start to rise to my feet to… Well, I’m not sure just yet. However, as I start to walk over there, Layton’s arms wrap around me. “Stay here, Lola.”

“I want to punch that grin off his face,” I growl, glaring at the back of the SUV. “He had something to do with this… I want to rip his throat out, Layton.” I’m shocked at my words, so venomous and full of hatred. So unlike me.

“Lola, calm down. It’s going to be okay. I promise. Just calm down, please, and let me take care of you.” He kisses the back of my head as I tremble from head to toe. Layton continues to hold me, saying things I can’t hear through the strange, strangled noise my father is making. I want to sit down by him, yet I can’t bring myself to take my eyes off Frankie’s SUV. I’m not sure what happened, but something tells me he had a hand in it.

After minutes go by, my legs grow weak against the shock settling in my body. I’m about to collapse into Layton’s arms when his father and mother come hurrying out of my house.

“Layton, get over here,” his father, Mr. Everett, barks at him, snapping his fingers. His father has never been a nice man, but he and my father have a decent relationship. Although, as he dismisses my father and dead mother in the driveway, all I see is an enemy.

“I promise I’ll be back in just a second,” Layton whispers in my ear, then his arms leave me and he heads over to his father.

I feel incredibly cold, incredibly weak, incredibly unstable, and I have no choice except to sink to the ground and watch in horror, anger—many different emotions—as Layton’s father orders him to get in the car with Frankie and then climbs in himself. As Layton gives me one last look as he gets in the back, his expression is filled with terror, sorrow, and remorse.

Then the door shuts, and moments later, the SUVs are pulling away. One by one, they leave me in the driveway with my father and dead mother, the sounds of screeching tires and ambulance sirens filling the air.

Seven years later…

My day has been mellow for the most part, a rare but welcomed occasion. Ever since my mother died, good days are far and few between. But today seems so good it’s left me hoping that perhaps it would continue.

I wake up with no hangover, even after partying way too hard the night before. Then I manage to avoid my bodyguards, which is going to get me into trouble when I got home. But I’m in desperate need of some alone time to clear my head, so I sneak out and head to the cemetery to put flowers on my mama’s grave. Then I have a nice, long, one-sided conversation with the engraved stone. It’s something I’ve been meaning to do for a few weeks now, ever since I found the letter.

That goddamn letter that had flipped my already chaotic life upside down even more than it already was. I’d found it hidden in one of my mother’s jacket pockets while I was cleaning out her closet, something that should have been done a long time ago, but I had been holding on to the stuff that belonged to her.

It was written by my mama to a man named Everson Milantes, divulging to him that she thinks I might be his daughter, not the man I thought was my father and who had raised me for the last twenty-one years. The letter was never sent, probably because my mama passed away before she ever got the chance. It was strangely dated the night before she died—the night before I found my father holding her lifeless body in the driveway from what the paramedics declared a heart attack.

The letter changed everything in an instant—myself, my life, my father, my mother—which is exactly what I decide to tell the gravestone.

“I just don’t understand,” I say as I kneel down in the dirt, grasping a bouquet of sunflowers in my hand—my mother’s favorite flower. “Why did you never tell me… I thought you told me everything.” Which always seemed true when I was younger. To me, we’d always had more of a sisterly relationship than a mother/daughter one, which was good in the sense that it made up for me not having any siblings. We so open, without secrets, or at least, that’s what I had thought. But now, well, the letter unfortunately was just a number on an ever-growing list of secrets that I’d been discovering since my mother left this world, her death something that still haunts me to this day.

“I’m starting to wonder what else you didn’t tell me. What other lies I’m going to find out. There’ve been so many… And with the way you died… It’s just so hard to accept that it was a heart attack. I just want some answers to what happened that day.” I shake my head as tears start to sting my eyes. I refuse to go down that road again, a one-way road I was stuck on from the ages of fourteen to sixteen when I wouldn’t let my mother go. I became obsessed with why she died, refusing to believe anything. Even though I still don’t believe the lies, I have moved on because it was killing me inside.

And I think it’s time to do it again, to let go and move on, just in a different way.

I glance around the empty cemetery; the grass covered in headstones, the trees flourishing with leaves. It’s a beautiful, summer day, yet I feel so cold inside—so hollow. Just like this place. I simply want to get away, be somewhere else, and even though it sounds crazy, I swear the wind whispers that it’s okay to go.

Sighing, I set the flowers down in front of her headstone and kiss the tips of my fingers before pressing them to the stone, silently telling her what I think may be my final good-bye. Then I get to my feet and head out of the cemetery; not to my car, but to the park down the street. I need more time to think, to process, to work up the courage to finally do what I’ve wanted to do since I found the letter, maybe even before that. I think part of me has always wanted to do it since the day I suggested it to Layton, to just up and move. To leave everything behind. My life. My friends. My family and all the money and connections that come along with it. To run away.

I’ve been living a life of lies and deceit for too long, and I want to start over and perhaps go find this Everson guy, find out what he knows about the letter; if he knows I may be his daughter. I’m curious what he looks like, who he is, what kind of person he was and is now. Is he like my father, good to his family but his morals and choices perhaps a little twisted and dangerous, or does he simply live a quiet, boring life? I did some searching around for him, however I didn’t find out anything. The only thing I have is the address on the envelope the letter was in, but that was from over six years ago.

After wandering around for about an hour, I finally gather enough strength to go back to my car to go home and pack up my shit. I turn around and cross the grass toward the exit area of the park. Although, right as I’m stepping out of the security of the gated area and onto the sidewalk beside the street, a sleek, black, and very expensive SUV with tinted windows pulls up to the curb.

I know this life well enough to know what’s behind those doors—I’ve been warned by my father since I was five and seen firsthand what kind of people drive around in them. They are the type of men who are the reason I usually have bodyguards with me.