“But she’s your flesh and blood!”
“She stopped being mine the moment you gave her to Wayne. Now get out!”
Angie’s brain was in a fuzzy haze as she leaned on her mother and left her uncle’s—her father’s—room.
What had just gone on? She wasn’t her father’s daughter? Her father was her uncle and her uncle was her father? Were her sister and brother her siblings? Or her cousins? Or some twisted hybrid of both?
She didn’t have her father. He was dead. She didn’t have her inheritance. Her uncle—father—was taking it away. She didn’t have a mother anymore. She hated this bitch holding her up. What a liar! She no longer had a fiancé. She’d broken it off with Frank of her own accord. And she didn’t have Rafe. He was married to someone else.
Someone else who wasn’t her.
She had nothing.
Truly nothing.
Heaviness laced her eyelids. Her mother’s brown eyes glared into her own, striking, and then fuzzy, and then striking again. Two Mamas. Then one. Two again. Icy needles pricked at her neck.
The room spun.
A curtain of blackness fell.
* * *
Angie’s eyes fluttered open. Where am I? Her body lay supine on what she thought was a bed. Where am I?
“She’s coming to.”
Whose voice is that?
Masculine. Deep. Oh, so familiar.
Daddy?
“No, sweetheart. Daddy’s gone, remember?”
Had she said that out loud?
Mama?
“Yes, I’m here.”
“Where am I?”
“Back in Jeff’s hotel room. You fainted after we left. Do you remember?”
Fainted. Daddy. Mama. Uncle Jeff. Her birth father.
Yes, Uncle Jeff was her birth father.
Tears flooded her eyes. Her legs itched. Itched and burned. Move. She needed to move. Had to run. Run far away from these two people. They’d lied to her, cheated her out of her inheritance. They were horrible, ugly people.
Only she couldn’t move. Couldn’t make her body respond to her need to escape.
What’s going on?
“Jeff, maybe we should call 9-1-1.”
“Don’t be silly. She’s fine. She just passed out.” His voice got louder. “When’s the last time you ate, Angelina?”