Chapter 3 - The Inheritance of Curses
The shattered ceramic vase lay ignored between us like a physical manifestation of our broken family. Diane was hyperventilating on the sofa, her fingers clawing at the fabric of the cushions as if she were drowning.
“You don’t understand, Hannah,” Diane cried out, tears streaming down her hollow cheeks. “We didn't have a choice! The night you came home with that test, Frank had already received the first package at the factory. A brick through our front window with a photograph of you walking home from your college library. They knew you were pregnant before you even told us!”
My breath caught in my throat. The anger that had sustained me for a decade flickered, replaced by a cold, numbing shock.
“What… what are you saying?” I whispered.
Frank sank back into his armchair, his massive frame trembling like a withered leaf. He looked old—older than his sixty-two years, crushed under the immense weight of a decade’s worth of cowardice and guilt.
“They watched you, Hannah,” Frank muttered, staring blankly at the floor. “The day Leo figured out the factory's chemical waste was leaking into the municipal water supply, he came to me. He said, ‘Frank, your daughter drinks from that tap every day. Half the kids in this neighborhood are getting sick because the board refuses to fix the filtration valves.’ He gave me his private ledger. He told me he was going to the EPA.”
Frank looked up, his eyes swimming with tears. “Twenty-four hours later, his car went off the bridge. And two hours after that, a black sedan pulled up beside me as I walked out of the factory gate. The man inside rolled down the window and dropped a white envelope onto my boots. Inside was a Polaroid of you studying at the campus diner, and twenty thousand dollars in cash.”
The room spun. All those years I thought my father had thrown me out because of old-fashioned morality, because of shame, because he couldn't bear the scandal of an unwed pregnant teenager.
The truth was infinitely more agonizing: he had thrown me out to save my life.
“If you had stayed in this house,” Frank whispered, his voice cracking, “they would have known we were connected to Leo. They would have targeted you. They would have targeted the baby. I acted like a monster so you would run as far away from Albany as humanly possible.”
I stood frozen, the yellow folder heavy in my hand. The hatred I had nurtured like a shield for ten years suddenly dissolved into a hollow, aching void.
“Why didn't you tell me?” I choked out, a sob finally breaking through my defenses. “Why let me think you hated me?”
“Because secrets keep you alive in a town run by monsters,” a cold, unfamiliar voice echoed from the hallway.
We all snapped our heads toward the front entryway.
Standing in the doorway, casually tossing a set of keys between his fingers, was a man in an expensive charcoal suit. Behind him, two burly men in dark overcoats blocked the open front door, cutting off our only exit.
Frank went entirely gray. He scrambled up from his chair, stepping in front of me and Owen as if his frail body could still act as a shield.
“You…” Frank gasped. “How did you find us?”
The man in the suit smiled, a cold, predatory expression that didn't reach his eyes. He stepped inside, closing the door firmly behind him.
“Mr. Miller, please,” the man said smoothly. “Did you really think the Sterling Corporation loses track of its loose ends just because ten years have passed? When your daughter’s federal prosecutor filed paperwork for an exhumation order in Washington this morning, our automated alarms went off before the ink was even dry.”
May you like
He looked past Frank, his gaze locking directly onto me, and then down at the ten-year-old boy standing beside me.
“And look at that,” the man murmured, stepping closer. “He has Leo’s eyes. Exactly like his father before him. Stubborn, intelligent, and entirely too curious for his own good.”
