Victoria Forbes, a young aspiring doctor, trudges through yet another ordinary day-a recurring pattern in her life for the past few monotonous years. However, on this stormy night, the echoes of routine are shattered when an unexpected encounter awa...
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ILIFT MY HAND AND gently stroke Reed's mane. Yesterday was the best day of my life but Christian had to destroy it. We sat on this very horse, I felt just like a princess.
I couldn't sleep the whole night and now at six in the morning, I'm standing in the stables in an oversized hoodie, barefoot. I just wanted some fresh air but found myself here.
"Victoria," a voice calls me from behind, startling me.
"Lorenzo," I turn around.
"He's beautiful, isn't he?"
I go back to stroking him, "Yes. He is."
"Victoria, I am not here to defend my son but I want you to why he behaved like that."
"Lorenzo, I-"
"Trust me, you would want to hear this," he gives me a sad smile. "Something like this happened many many years ago with me but instead of you it was my daughter."
Daughter.
"My beautiful two-year-old daughter who was killed by a rival gang," he reveals. "The situation was the same, my rival told me to give up something very special to me but I thought I could protect my family but I failed. If I had done what I was told to, I'd have my daughter here today with me. Christian was the one who took it the hardest. He found her dead body in her bedroom. They slit her throat and wrote a message on the wall with her blood. Imagine a barely ten-year-old Christian coming across his baby sister's body, after that, something in both of us snapped. I became less of a father and more of a torturer to Christian."
"I made him suffer so much. Our family always felt incomplete. Christian never had time for girls but he came home with you it was like everything fell in place. Our family was complete, again." He gives me a soft smile, "You were perfect, everything I wanted my daughter to be. Karla felt the same way, she got so attached to you and every night we spent together she would always talk about you. And Christian... I've never seen him like that. That traumatic event and with the way I treated him, he was so emotionally closed off that when I saw him with you for the first time I felt he was... not Christian."
"It was like a switch flipped overnight and he was a completely different person. I couldn't remember the last time I saw him smile. You can only imagine what was going through his head when you got kidnapped. He cried when he lost you, he cried when he found you, he cried when he sat next to you on that hospital bed. And one thing I know about my son is that I've never seen him cry. Not even when he found his sister dead. He was always taught that crying is a sign of weakness but with you, he doesn't care about anything as long as he's with you."
