Amirah Pov
I rushed up the stairs, my heart pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat. Tears still streamed down my face from the confrontation below, but panic had replaced the rage that had fueled my outburst.
"They know, they know, they know," I whispered to myself as I reached the landing, nearly stumbling in my haste to reach my bedroom. "How could I have been so careless?"
My hands trembled as I pushed open the door, immediately scanning the room for Lani. Relief washed over me when I saw her still sleeping on the bed, her small form curled around her stuffed rabbit, oblivious to the storm that had just erupted downstairs.
I closed the door quietly behind me and began to pace, darkness swirling around me in agitated patterns that reflected my internal chaos. This was a disaster. I had never meant to tell them about Lani, had never planned to reveal that I had been pregnant, that I had given birth while on the run. That had been my most closely guarded secret, the one thing I had sworn to keep from them at all costs.
And now they knew. Not just that I had a child, but where that child was—here, in this house, right under their noses. I had compromised Lani's safety with my emotional outburst, with my inability to maintain control when confronted.
"What have I done?" I whispered, running my hands through my hair. "What have I done?"
My phone rang suddenly, startling me. Jackson's name flashed on the screen. I almost declined the call—this was possibly the worst timing imaginable—but some instinct made me answer.
"This is not a good time, Jackson," I said tersely, my voice still raw from screaming. My finger hovered over the end call button.
"Mira, you might want to hear this," he replied, a note of urgency in his voice that made me pause.
I resumed pacing, my nervous energy impossible to contain. "Fine. What is it?"
"From what we found out, you went missing from the hospital for almost a year," he said without preamble, his voice carefully neutral. "And they had brought you back to the hospital months later. They wiped your memories clean from that missing time."
I froze mid-step, his words hitting me like a physical blow. "What?"
"You had only been back at the hospital for about six weeks before the fire," Jackson continued. "There's documentation saying that the gene tube experiment had failed—the darkness rejected it. And then the fire happened."
My free hand went to my stomach unconsciously, my mind racing to process what he was telling me. Six weeks? I had only been back at the hospital for six weeks before the fire? Where had I been for the rest of the time?
"I looked into this Kaison Monroe guy," Jackson added. "He's not connected to the hospital directly, but his cousin Cole is. From what I can determine, there's no record of you two meeting, even though he does have a mansion in Crystal City like he claimed."
The room seemed to tilt around me, my certainties crumbling like sand. If the gene tube had failed, if I had been missing from the hospital for months, if there was a gap in my memory that perfectly aligned with Kaison Monroe's claims...
"Are you sure this is true?" I asked, my voice shaking. "Jackson, if that is true, how did I get pregnant with Lani, huh? Tell me! If it wasn't the gene tube or the guards, then who was it?" I was crying again, my voice rising in pitch as panic consumed me.
"I don't know how that happened," Jackson admitted. "But there are no records, no city cameras showing where you were for almost a year. It's like you vanished completely."
I ended the call without saying goodbye, my phone slipping from my nerveless fingers to the carpet. My entire world was shifting beneath my feet, the narrative I had constructed to make sense of my trauma suddenly full of holes.
Was Kaison telling the truth? Was he the blurred man in my dreams? Was he Lani's father? Had I already been pregnant with Lani before the fire at the hospital?
The implications were staggering. If I had been missing from the hospital for nearly a year, if my memories of that time had been forcibly erased upon my return... what else didn't I know? What other lies had I believed about my own life?
My legs gave way beneath me, and I slid down the wall to the floor, sobs tearing from my throat. "This is too much," I whispered, drawing my knees to my chest. "Too much."
I didn't even realize Lani was awake until she appeared before me, her small face creased with worry and something else—a fierce protectiveness that seemed far too adult for her young features. Her eyes, so like my own, studied me with an intensity that momentarily cut through my despair.
"Did Mama's bad family hurt you?" she asked, her voice small but steady. "And where?"
Looking into my daughter's face—this miracle child whose very existence was now wrapped in mystery—I nodded unknowingly and pointed to my heart.
Lani reached out, her tiny fingers so gentle as she wiped away my tears. "I'll get back at them," she said with such conviction that it momentarily startled me out of my anguish.
"No, treasure," I said quickly, catching her hands in mine. "It's not... it's complicated."
But was it? Was my family truly to blame if I had been missing from the hospital for most of the time I thought I'd been there? If my memories had been tampered with? The certainty of my hatred suddenly felt as unstable as everything else.
"Mama's confused right now," I admitted, pulling Lani into my lap. "I thought I knew what happened to me, but... but now I'm not sure."
Did I? The question resonated through me with unexpected force. If Kaison Monroe was telling the truth, if we had indeed shared a home and a life for nearly a year, if he had been kind to me as he claimed... would that be better or worse than the narrative of violation and experimentation I had constructed?
"I want what's best for you," I said finally. "And right now, I don't know what that is. I need... I need time to figure things out."
Lani nodded solemnly, accepting this as she accepted most of my explanations. She nestled against my chest, her small arms wrapping around me in comfort rather than seeking comfort—my little protector, always trying to shield me from pain.
"The people downstairs know about me now, don't they?" she asked after a moment.
I tensed. "Yes. I didn't mean to tell them, but... yes, they know."
"Are they going to take me away from you?" The fear in her voice sliced through me like a blade.
"No," I said fiercely, tightening my hold on her. "No one will ever take you from me. I promised you that from the day you were born, and that promise hasn't changed."
I couldn't help but smile slightly at the comparison—my sending to a psychiatric hospital where I was tortured and experimented on versus a broken toy rabbit. But in her world, in her understanding, perhaps the principle was the same: hurt, apology, forgiveness.
"It's more complicated than that," I tried to explain. "The things that happened to me—"
"Were very bad," I tensely said. She doesnt need to now about what happened to me.
I stared at my daughter, this tiny creature who somehow possessed wisdom beyond her years, who had just articulated what I had been too afraid to consider—that perhaps confronting my past, rather than running from it, was the path to healing.
"Let's just rest. It's been a long night, and Mama needs to think."
She nodded, allowing me to carry her back to the bed. As I tucked her in, her small hand reached up to touch my cheek. "I love you, Mama. Even when you're sad and scared."
"I love you too, treasure," I whispered, my heart swelling with the fierce, protective love that had sustained me through my darkest moments. "More than anything in this world."
As Lani drifted back to sleep, I sat beside her, my mind reeling with the implications of what Jackson had discovered. If I had been missing from the hospital for nearly a year, if my memories had been tampered with upon my return, if the gene tube had failed...
Then everything I thought I knew about Lani's conception, about my time at Greystone, about my escape and my reasons for running—all of it might be built on false memories, on lies implanted to cover something else.
Something like a year spent with a man named Kaison Monroe in Crystal City.
The uncertainty was terrifying, but also strangely liberating. If I couldn't trust my own memories, then perhaps I needed to consider other narratives—including the one offered by the blue-eyed stranger who claimed to have loved me once.
Tomorrow, I decided, I would call Jackson again. I would ask him to dig deeper, to find everything he could about my missing year, about Kaison Monroe, about what had really happened to me.
And maybe, just maybe, I would consider allowing my family—the people I had spent years hating and fearing—to meet the child who might be their one chance at redemption.
Not for their sake. For Lani's. And perhaps, in some small way, for my own.