Bonita

Chapter 40. My Boys and My Truth

N O V A

The mansion felt different after everything.

Or maybe I was the one who had changed.

That was the part nobody wanted to acknowledge.

They kept looking at me like I was the same girl who walked through those gates months ago. The girl who was angry but still hopeful. The girl who wanted to believe that maybe, somehow, this family could become what I had always wanted.

A family.

But that version of me felt so far away now.

Because every time I thought I was finally getting the truth, another secret appeared.

Another lie.

Another reason why I was supposed to understand everyone else while nobody ever bothered to understand me.

The worst part?

I wasn't even surprised anymore.

That was what scared me.

I sat on the edge of my bed, staring at the file sitting inside the locked drawer of my desk. I hadn't opened it again. Not because I wasn't curious because I was. Every part of me wanted to tear through every page and find every answer they had kept from me, but something stopped me.

A feeling I hated admitting.

Fear.

Not fear of what I would find.

Fear of what I would become after finding it.

The name on that file had been burned into my mind.

Trevor Volkovich.

The same man who had haunted my childhood.

The same man who had taken pieces of me that I could never get back.

And somehow...

Somehow, my father knew about him.

That was the part I couldn't let go of.

How?

How did Ricardo Sanchez know about a man who had been a nightmare in my life?

What else did he know?

What else did my brothers know?

I leaned back against my bed and stared at the ceiling.

I should have been surprised.

I should have been shocked.

But honestly?

I was exhausted.

Exhausted from being the only person in the room who didn't have all the information.

The past few days had been nothing but silence.