Chapter 145: EPILOGUE
SOFIA
My head swarmed with images and spoken words. They flashed and rang through my mind as I was led away in cuffs.
"I’m sorry, but he never intended to grant you the brand"
Vera’s eyes as she pronounced those words. I could tell she wasn’t lying. She hated me, that was a fact, but she wouldn’t lie about something like that just to spite me.
"Search her, I’m sure she stole it. After all, it’s in her blood..."
I couldn’t even make myself complete that statement or my mind simply couldn’t. Perhaps it still found it hard to believe that the woman I called my stepmother would hate me enough to out me in front of New City’s most influential crowd and even beyond. What did I expect, I had stood up to her for like the very first time since I came to live with her and look where that got me.
The look of rage on her face as she pointed at me when she spoke those words. The hush that fell over the crowd, the stares, the fingers pointing, the disbelief on his face, my own disbelief even though a part of me knew that Alicia wouldn’t dare utter those claims if she wasn’t sure.
"Why do you hate me so much? Am I really that despicable to you?"
That moment of complete vulnerability. He had let all his defenses down. It didn’t help that he had had too much to drink. I just wished his actions afterwards hadn’t put me in such a puzzled state of mind. Like waking up to see him gone, it made me wonder if any of it had been real. If he knew what he was doing when he was doing it, or was it just the alcohol.
"I don’t know, okay!" I had yelled, before finishing in a softer tone "I really don’t know"