"What the hell is this?" Duncan roared.
For the first time in her life, Allie was afraid of him. "What?"
She had no idea what had triggered his anger but she was certain it was something she'd done.
"This!" He pressed the play button and Allie froze in shock.
"Where did you get that?"
He was avoiding looking directly at it.
It was sex tape of her with one of the female executives who worked for him. Someone must have recorded it without her knowledge because she never would've made a sex tape of herself with another woman, especially because her father was unaware of her sexual orientation.
He stopped playing it, openly expressing his disgust and shame.
"You've been spying on me?" she asked, a little less concerned with his emotions.
"This is what you and Crystal do? This is why you two spend so much time together? She got you into this, didn't she?" He did not even make an attempt to contain his rage.
"Do you know what this could do to me? Do you have any idea what it could do to my business? The scandal it could create?" He approached her as his voice grew louder.
She took a step back, afraid he could physically harm her. After all the time they had spent apart, it was unclear to her what he could or could not do.
"You are not to see that little tramp again!" He ordered.
He was too upset to reason with.
"Get out!" He yelled.
She ran out of his office and headed to her room and started crying. She didn't know who to be upset with; herself or her father.
She'd been looking forward to leaving for school where she could have her freedom back. She'd always known he'd be displeased with her sexuality upon finding out, but his reaction was quite shocking.
She'd always been afraid of what he'd do if he ever found out. And who was she to defy him? He was controlling, yes, but that did not change the fact that he was her father. And he was right, the footage could create a scandal that would negatively affect his reputation.
He was a ruthless businessman. If this ever got out, it would expose him as a mere mortal who had weaknesses that could very well be exploited.
After thinking it all through, she realized she had made a mistake. Her guilt made her feel shame. It made her believe her father did indeed have a right to be mad at her.
She was still so naïve. At twenty years old, she had thought her yearnings and her little adventures with Crystal were a phase and with time, they would pass but they hadn't.
She'd known once she went back home, she'd have to get her act together and smother that part of herself. She had wanted to deny its existence from the very beginning but Crystal had been such a great friend to her.
She had taught her how to live without shame or fear. She had taught her how to allow herself to be happy. And Allie had come to accept it as part of who she was.
Now, being confronted with what she was by her passionately disproving father only took her back to that dark hole. She resented herself again. But what was she supposed to do now? What was going to happen? What was her father going to do?
He was her only family and she was his. He had told her that they would always stick together. Did this truth change that? More importantly, did it make him love her any less? Whatever the answers were to those questions, she was going to find out when he calmed down. But until then, she was going to cry her eyes out.
A couple of days later, after having been locked up in the house without permission to see or speak to anyone from the outside world, Allie quietly ate her dinner across her father in their large dining room.
She had lost her appetite and was forcing herself to eat because her father had told her to join him after exiling her to her room for those two days. He could barely look at her, which made her feel even worse. He was not a religious man but he saw what she was as an abomination.
"You are going to get married to Shawn as soon as possible."
She dropped her cutlery in shock. "Married to Shawn?" She could have sworn she heard him wrong.
"I have made my decision. You're no longer a child. You're a woman and it's time I accepted that. I trust him with you," he said in an intimidating tone of voice that told her she could not talk him out of his decision.
"He is thirty years older than me," she said in disgust, recalling how much she resented the very sight of the man.
"He is mature and will instill in you the manners you lack." The revulsion in his voice was evident.
"Dad, please don't do this to me. I hate him. You cannot ask me to spend the rest of my life with him," she said with tears in her eyes now.
"I'm not asking you, Allison. I'm telling you." He got up and walked away.
She sat there in shock as tears streamed down her face. What was she going to do? What could she do? Her father had made a firm decision and she knew once he put his foot down, there was no changing his mind.
Was this his way of punishing her? Self-resentment accumulated within her. She knew she had no say or choice in the matter. She would soon become Mrs. Allison Dupree.
It may not have been the old age where a father could force a child into marriage, but in her family, Duncan Davidson had the last word. If he said she was going to get married to a man his own age, that was exactly what was going to happen and Allison could not go against his wishes.
*
Mermaid's head was pounding in unrest. She avoided company because she tended to drift off whenever someone was carrying out a conversation with her. It was disturbing having so many memories flood through her mind because she didn't know what to do with them.
If someone had asked her to choose between being Mermaid and Allison, at that moment she would have gladly chosen being Mermaid without a second's hesitation. She disliked who she'd been as Allison. It felt like she'd been an entirely different person.
How was she supposed to tell Holly she was someone else's wife? They had briefly talked about moving in together, which had meant that they would inform every member of the family about their relationship, but now this new information changed everything.
How would Holly take it? They had both been so frightened by the fact that she had started regaining her memory, any more unwelcome knowledge of her past would tip the balance of their relationship.
The worst part was that she couldn't control when or how the memories came, they just crawled up on her.
She didn't want to keep secrets from Holly, but from the way things were going, she felt like she was going to have to. She'd seen Holly's fear and it had scared her. She wasn't about to give their unstable relationship a reason to break.
"Mermaid, you've been so quiet lately, is everything okay?" Michael asked her.
She'd gotten used to sitting on the wooden fence of the shed watching the stars but on that night, the sky was dark with no form of light except the crescent moon almost out of sight.
"Everything is fine, Michael," she reassured him, but it felt more like she was reassuring herself.
"Where is Holly? You two are always together."
"I think she's in the study."
"I'm guessing you haven't told mom and dad about you two," he said as he climbed up to join her.
"No, not yet."
"Do you plan to anytime soon? You know the longer you wait the harder it's going to be."
She couldn't answer his question because she hadn't discussed it with Holly. "To be honest, I don't think we're ready."
He nodded. After a moment, he said, "How do you know that this is who you are? How do you know that when you recover your memory, you won't renounce your relationship with Holly?"
She figured he had reason to be concerned, but the thing was, even before she had known who she was, she had already been in love with Holly. What she remembered just confirmed it so there wasn't any doubt about her feelings for Holly. Her fears were more focused on what she was going to remember next.
"I'm desperately in love with her. That is how I know."
Seeming convinced by her response, he stared into the distance and said, "I was worried about her. She's been through so much. She's still fragile, but when I see her with you, it's like nothing ever happened. She laughs like she used to six years ago before she left. You can see the light in her eyes. I just don't want to watch her get hurt again. I don't want to see that light disappear."
She didn't want to see it disappear either.
"The thing about having you both in the family is being unable to protect you when the inevitable happens."
She couldn't help wonder if by inevitable, he meant breaking up.
"If it was some guy, like Nick, if he hurt her, it'd be easy for me to kick his ass."
She laughed at the image of him kicking Nick's ass.
"But in this case..." He trailed off.
"You couldn't kick a girl's ass?" she asked, knowing how protective he was of Holly.
"No, in this case, I'd be just as worried about you." His sentiment touched her so deeply, it hurt to recall her past.
"You may not be a Mackenzie, but you're just as much a member of this family as I am. That is how we all see you. That is why we trust you with Holly. Because we believe that you would never hurt her."
She wanted to say she'd never hurt her, but the truth about her identity would, whether she wanted it or not. That was one thing she couldn't prevent. She could keep it to herself for as long as she wanted but at some point, it was bound to come out.
*
"I think we should hold it off for a bit longer. I mean, what's the hurry?"
"But you said you didn't want to be a secret. You said you wanted us to move in together."
"I know."
"Has anything changed?"
Yes, a lot of things, Mermaid thought. "I thought I was ready but I was acting on impulse." The way Holly looked at her made her wish she'd thought about the answer long before offering it.
"If that is what you want."
Mermaid could sense her disappointment. "I'm sorry. I'm just afraid of your parents' reaction. I don't want them to hate us. I don't want to take you through the same thing you went through with Lana."
"But things are different now."
"Are they?"
"My parents do not have a problem with who I am. I used to believe they did, but in reality, it was I who had a problem with it. Right now, things are different because you made me accept who I am."
Mermaid wanted to be with Holly, she wanted it more than she desired her next breath, but she needed to figure things out in her head first.
"Back then I cared too much about what the rest of the world thought. Right now, I only care about our happiness."
Me too, Mermaid wanted to say.
"I understand you're going through a tough time right now, so I won't push you. But when you're ready, I want you to know that I'll welcome you with open arms."
Mermaid held back her tears.
*
It was supposed to be a sad day. Sad because one of the most respected businessmen had passed on. He had died from a heart attack and his friends were mourning his death. His friends, Allison thought as she looked outside through the bedroom window.
What she thought was sad was how her father's passing failed to affect her. Well, at least not in the manner the death of a father would affect a child. His death had been unexpected, that much she could admit because he'd been a healthy man in his age. But did it make it any less painful? She failed to answer that question.
Duncan had been her father, her only surviving relative. But after all those years, he was still a stranger to her. She had very few fond memories of him but they had all faded away after he'd forced her to get married to Shawn.
She had loved and respected him. She could even admit she had looked up to him. But a year of misery could do a lot to a person. It could erase all the good and replace them with the bad. It could wipe away all the laughter and replace it with pain and tears.
As she watched Shawn welcoming their guests who had come for the funeral, she felt absolutely nothing for the man who had been her father. Shawn and the guests probably felt more grief over Duncan's passing than she did.
What would her father do if he knew what he had reduced her to? What would he say if he knew that her heart was as dead as his? Would he care? The only thing that had ever mattered to him was his business. It had always come first, and even though it had provided Allison with a privileged life, she both envied and resented it because Duncan had loved it more than he'd probably ever loved her.
Turning away from the window, she walked over to her dresser. Shawn had said she had to look like a grieving daughter. He could be very persuasive and the methods he employed to get his point across were painfully effective.
After having been married to him for a year and some months, she had quickly grown from a carefree young adult to a woman. Shawn had hired a socialite to educate her on the manner to behave while around other prominent people.
They had attended dinners together as man and wife and she'd been taught how to act in public, how to smile, how to talk, how to be Mrs. Dupree. Allison Davidson was gone. She didn't even belong to herself. She belonged to Shawn Dupree.
She was not just his wife or his plaything, she was his property. He had branded her. He owned her. When her father had been alive, he'd done nothing to save her. As a matter of fact, he had turned his cheek to her pleas of misery.
Now she was supposed to go down there and cry. She was supposed to accept condolences from a bunch of strangers. She was supposed to stand by her husband's side and act sad and grief-stricken. What a charade.
Had he even known the real Shawn before he'd forced her into marrying him? He must have had an idea. After all, she'd come to learn it was Shawn who had been spying on her and it had been his idea to marry her. How her father had seen that as a solution was beyond her.
She had always thought of pain as a secondary emotion. But she had come to learn first hand, what real pain was at Shawn's mercy. He might have worn elegant suits and behaved in a polished or rather superior manner, but he was an animal, a perverted excuse of a human being.
She had always resented him but on their wedding night, his savagery had completely robbed her off her innocence. He might have been a man in his fifties, but his strength was beyond his appearance.
He had told her that he'd not force her to be his and she'd almost believed him, until he had tied her hands to the post of the bed and continuously forced himself on her.
Being married to him was one painful experience after another. That was why her father's death did not affect her, because he'd done nothing. He'd seen her pain, and he'd done nothing.
Where had he been when Shawn had slapped her across the face for the very first time? She'd disrespected him and he'd put her in her place, reminding her she was not in her father's house anymore.
After that, it had been one thing after another. Shawn had repeatedly forced himself on her, he had humiliated her time and time again by hiring women to have sex with her while he watched. Where had her father been? He'd been supposed to protect her, but instead, he'd thrown her into the lion's den.
Shawn had burnt her with a cigar, whipped her with a leather belt, forced her to go hungry because he wanted her to lose weight she didn't even have, he'd undressed her, chained her and sat back to watch me as though it had turned him on to torture me.
And where had her father been? Where had he been when her fear for her husband had surpassed her physical and emotional pain?
One would think within the timeframe she'd been married to Shawn and through everything she'd endured, she'd have been a little less afraid of him when she heard his footsteps, but it didn't.
Though her heart had grown hard, his innovative and creative ways of torturing her never lost their effect.
"Are you prepared?" he asked her now when he entered their bedroom.
"Yes," she said, resenting how the short dark dress made her feel.
"You look beautiful, my love."
There was a time when she'd felt beautiful, but after all the degrading things Shawn had forced her to do, his use of very word disgusted her.
"I'm sorry for your loss," he said mockingly.
She'd not shed a single tear for her father. The words had no effect on her.
"You need to express a little more remorse," he said softly as he walked over to her.
She took a step back, wishing she could summon grief so that he'd leave her alone.
"Your father is dead," he said, moving closer to her. "The only blood relative you had."
She knew what he was doing. He wanted her to appear genuinely sorrowful so that when they went downstairs, their guests would feel sorry for her. She tried to summon her tears because she knew if she didn't, he'd make her, but nothing happened.
"You have to try a little harder than that," he whispered as he moved behind her, placing his hands over her beautifully accentuated slender waist. "Look at you, flawless." He turned her to face the mirror while he stood behind her. "My most highly prized possession," he whispered over her ear.
Lowering his hands slightly below her ribcage along the curve of her waist, he applied a little pressure and she tightened her jaw.
"I valued your father's friendship. He was a good man."
Allison gritted her teeth when he continued to increase pressure on her, making it hard for her to breathe. "Shawn, please don't do this today," she said.
If he had respected her father, then he wouldn't choose that particular day to inflict pain on her.
"I want you to come down looking like the bereaved daughter you are," he said and then at once, crushed her waist with his bare hands and she could have sworn she heard the bones of the lower part of her ribcage crack.
The pain caused by his powerful grip instantly brought tears to her eyes. When he released her, she tried to hold herself steady while he admired her. After a moment, he walked out.
She took a painful breath as tears streamed down her cheeks and reached for her ribs. She wished she could trade places with her father.
She didn't have to pull up her dress to see the damage Shawn had caused. Any movement applied pressure to her ribs and made her want to scream out loud in pain. Wiping away her tears, she retouched her make up and slowly and painfully walked out of the bedroom, crying like the bereaved daughter she was.
*