By the time I made it down stairs to the dining room, everyone was already in their seats. Mother and Father were at the head of the table. Trevor was sitting next to Father, an empty seat was next to him. As soon as I walked in, I spotted the one that betrayed me.
Trevor stood to his feet. “There’s my beautiful wife. I’ve missed you.”
I held up a hand to stop his approach.
“You backstabbing, self- absorbed, bitch!”
My mother gasped at my language, and my father shot to his feet.
“Watch your mouth, young lady!”
Monroe, on the other hand, looked just like the treacherous bitch that she is. My own sister sold me to that facility.
“Do they know?” I asked Monroe.
She looked around the room as if she didn’t know what I was talking about.
“DO THEY KNOW?” I shouted, and Monroe startled.
“Morgan, I didn’t…….” she tried to say to me, but I didn’t want to hear it.
Crumpled in my fist was the proof. Two days before the night of Trevor’s celebration party, Monroe had already signed me over to Vita Labs. That night was not the first time she had met Benjamin Parks.
“Why?” I asked her. “Of all the people to hurt me, Monroe, what cause did you have?”
“I wanted the money!”
“A hundred-thousand dollars?”
“NO, YOUR MONEY!” she shouted standing to her feet. She sighed and raked her hands through her long hair. “You didn’t deserve it. Everyone knew that I was the child that was going to do great things. I’m the pretty one that could travel the world and actually speak to people. I’m not some awkward, fat girl that’s scared of her own fucking shadow. All you wanted was to teach and have babies. You didn’t need money for that. That money should have been mine. I tried to do it the nice way, I even gave you Trevor.” She pointed to my husband as if she had done some miraculous favor.
The look on my face must have keyed her into how confused I was.
“Oh, come on, Morgan, you don’t actually think someone like Trevor would just approach you in a coffee shop, would you? I did you a favor by sending him to you. You were never going to marry.”
“Morgan, I have no idea what she’s talking about. Baby, I…..” Trevor tried to explain. He reached for me, but I backed away from him.
My head was spinning with all that was being revealed today.
“You told Trevor to date me?”
“I knew that mother wouldn’t approve of him for me, so I told him about you.”
“Shut up, Monroe!” Trevor growled towards my sister.
I’d never seen him angry with her, I guess now I know why. All those subtle touches and kisses weren’t one sided. I assumed that my sister was just oblivious to Trevor’s affection for her, but that bitch knew all along.
“Morgan.” Trevor set his hazel eyes back on me. “Yes, Monroe set us up, but I fell in love with you.”
“You’re a lying piece of shit, Trevor! We were in this together.”
He turned back to Monroe. “I never told you to work with Benjamin Parks! I told you he was into some scary shit. You are the one that went off script.”
“Yeah, because you were taking too damn long. You told me you would have access to the money when you got married.”
I watched the two of them bicker back and forth about how they plotted to use me and betray me. They acted as if I was a stranger to them and not someone they knew. Someone they shared meals, a bed, and time with.
“Morgan,” Trevor called my name, and I focused back on him. “I was a horrible husband to you, I’ll admit, but I’ve learned the error of my ways. I want you, and I want us to raise this baby together.”
I should have been shocked that he knew about the baby, but now that I knew that he was working with my sister, I understood why he’d been avoiding me. She must have told him of my plans for a divorce too.
“How dare you?” Monroe screamed at Trevor. “For the last three years, you’ve been complaining about having to fulfill your husbandly duties while lying in my bed and declaring your love for me.”
“Stop it, you two.” My Mother finally stopped their bickering. She turned towards me with a narrowed eye. “What’s this about a baby?”
Before I could reply, my sister quickly ratted me out.
“Morgan got pregnant by some random guy while she was captured. She’s trying to leave with the baby, and Trevor assumes that because they are married, he can claim the baby and get access to Morgan’s money.”
I once used to look past her whining and need to tell everything, now I saw it for what it was.
“Morgan, is this true? Are you pregnant by another man?”
“Is that really what you’re concerned about right now? Your daughter just admitted to selling me to Vita Labs and plotting against me with my husband, and your only concern is about my pregnancy?”
For a moment, my mother looked as if she might reconsider her question, but in true from, she said, “Look, what Monroe may or may not have done, can be fixed. You are here now, and whatever you went through in your time away has at the least improved your speech. We should all be thankful for that. Now, your father and I will deal with Monroe, but you can’t have this child.”
“Listen to your mother, Morgan. It doesn’t matter how you and Trevor met, you are married now, and it’s not a good look that you show up pregnant after eight months of being away. This is a conservative family. We cannot have a scandal like this this close to elections.”
This was the moment that I realized there was no redeeming my family. I was done. I didn’t need to scream, shout, or fuss. That would require more energy than they deserved. I was just done.
“I was going to leave quietly,” I said, shaking my head. “I had planned to tell you all goodbye tonight and slip away with no issues. I was even going to leave you the house, Trevor, but you don’t deserve that, none of you do, so I guess I will do this the hard way.”
I held up the check I wrote out to Monroe. “One-hundred and thirty-million dollars,” I said the words, and Monroe’s eyes widened. “That was the amount on the check I had written out for you today. All you ever had to do was ask me, and I would have given you everything I had.”
I ripped the check up into tiny pieces and tossed them to the floor. Monroe screamed as she dove for the fallen pieces of paper.
“And you know what, little sister, even after writing that check, it still didn’t even put a dent in my bank account.”
“Morgan, you’re right,” my father said holding up his hands as my sister cried over the scraps of paper on the floor. “Monroe and Trevor have been horrible to you, and they should be punished, but your mother and I have always had your back.”
Wow! It’s hard to believe that the look I’ve so longed to see in my father’s eyes when he looked at me, wasn’t there because he actually cared about me. I could almost see the dollar signs dancing in his eyes.
“Do you know what Grandpa’s last words to me were?” I asked my father. I knew he wouldn’t know because he hardly went by to see him towards the end. “He told me he was leaving everything to me and that his only request was that I continued to put money into three very important accounts and to donate to two special charities, which I have done, but guess what I learned recently?” I smiled as I told him this. “Those three very important accounts are also the biggest contributors to your campaign. In fact, eighty percent of your campaign funds comes from those three private accounts.”
“Now wait a goddamn minute, Morgan.”
“Oh, I’m not done.” I laughed with glee as I told my dad just how screwed he was. “Those charities that I pay into, they donate to you only because of Grandpa’s yearly contributions. I wonder what will happen when they no longer get those expected funds.”
“Morgan, you are being childish!” my mother shouted.
“Oh no, I haven’t even started. This house, the summer home in Maryland and Dad’s two law firms, all mine. When I’m done, all you will have left is your salary, and try using that to pay for those gambling debts.”
I actually found out about the gambling a while back. All those times they mistook my silence for deafness. Without my grandpa’s contribution, my parents couldn’t afford the lifestyle they’d grown accustomed to. Everything they had, was pretty much gifted to them by my grandpa. Even my father’s campaign for governor was funded by Grandpa, and although my grandpa asked me to continue in his tradition, it seems I will have to break this one promise. Somehow, I don’t think he would care.
“Morgan, you can’t do this to us. We are your parents.”
“No, you gave birth to me. That was all you ever contributed to me as parents. I’ll give you all a week to move out of my houses. Oh, and Trevor, if it wasn’t clear by now, I want a divorce.”
I turned to leave them in that dining room. I had nothing else to say to any of these people. My bags were packed, ready to disappear off the face of this earth.
“You stupid, bitch! I’ll never let you go!” Trevor shouted the words before yanking my arm and spinning me around.
He was finally looking like the Trevor I knew. He pulled his arm back in the all too familiar way he used to do before striking me. I lifted my hands to cover my face to block the blow. I might not be able to fight him back, but I wasn’t going to just let him beat me. I waited for that first strike, but it never came. I lowered my hand and opened my eyes.
“Alpha!”
Standing in all his six-foot-seven glory was the man that owned my heart. His intense eyes were shining back at me with all the love and passion that I’d missed these past few weeks. His five o’clock shadow had thickened just a little, and his hair was a disheveled mess on his head, but I didn’t care. He’s here, in my childhood home, holding my husband by the arm. Trevor was struggling to pull away from him, but I knew that was a lost cause.
“What is going on, who is this man?” my father shouted.
Just then, Beta, Gamma, Sigma, and Omega entered the room. My mother drew closer to my father in fear as they were surrounded by the others.
“I thought you were dead?” Happy tears made a trail down my face. “They told us you were all dead.”
All five of them chuckled at my words.
“I will go nowhere without you, Morgan. Not even into death.”
That was the only answer he gave me, and it was all the answer I needed. Who cares how he survived? All I care about is having him here with me now.
“Let’s get out of here, Alpha. I don’t care where we go, I just want to be with you.”
“Soon!” he said, then he yanked down on Trevor’s arm. The shoulder popped out of place making his arm hang limply at his side. Trevor screamed before falling to the ground.
Alpha turned to face my family, and they took a collective step back. “For the wrongs you have done against Morgan, you will pay to her.” His head swiveled back around, and he looked down at Trevor. “But you, you will pay to me.”
Trevor tried to crawl away from Alpha, but he couldn’t go too far with that dislocated shoulder.
“Monroe, help me. Don’t let them do this to me,” Trevor pleaded for my sister’s help, but from the way Monroe was cowering behind my father, I could tell she wouldn’t be helping him.
“Morgan,” Trevor turned his pleads to me. He grabbed the hem of my dress. “Are you going to let him do this to me? I’m your husband.”
I looked down at the man that I once feared more than anything. I watched his tear stained face as he pleaded for me to save his life.
I snatched my dress from his grip. “You were never my husband.”
I watched in delight as Alpha grabbed Trevor by the back of the neck and stood him to his feet. He spun Trevor around to face him and then punched him in the stomach so hard Trevor vomited all down the front of his shirt. Alpha made sure to hit Trevor the exact same way Trevor used to hit me, always in places people couldn’t see. Trevor dropped to his knees, and Alpha reared back and kicked him in the side. I could hear the sound of his ribs cracking even over Trevor’s high-pitched scream.
“Morgan, stop this right now.” My mother shrieked as Trevor rolled on to his back. He caught another boot to his stomach that had him coughing up blood.
I spun around to look at her. “You have no idea what this man put me through. Days before I was kidnapped, he had me in this exact same position as he kicked me in the stomach. Everything Alpha does to him, he deserves.”
For the first time, I saw true emotion cross my sister’s face. She really had no idea Trevor was abusing me. However, the unfazed look on my mother’s face, let me know that either she knew, or assumed, but she didn’t care.
“Please.” Trevor’s gurgled pleas drew my attention back to him.
For a moment, I feared that my family would go to the police. We really didn’t need them telling anyone what they saw here today. Alpha and I were already running from the government, we didn’t need them to add anything else, but when I looked at the fear in my family’s eyes, I knew I didn’t have anything to worry about.
Alpha raised his leg and stomped down hard on Trevor’s knee. The sound of bones breaking made me flinch. Trevor screamed so loud my ears rang. The smell of urine permeated the air. Alpha must have sensed my mood, because he nodded to Gamma, and Gamma scooped Trevor up off the floor and carried him out of the dining room. Alpha followed him out.
I took one last look at my terrified family. I waited for the moment to hit me, the moment of sympathy or heartache for leaving them this way, but it never came.
“I changed my mind, I want you people out of my house by tomorrow.” Those were the last words I said to them before I allowed Beta, Sigma, and Omega to escort me away from my family for the last time.