“Something else?”
Reyes set down another photograph.
This one showed a military warehouse.
“Ammunition reserves. Discrepancies. Unaccounted inventory.”
My breath caught.
“You’re saying he was involved in… theft?”
“We’re saying we don’t know yet.”
She leaned forward.
“Olivia, the question isn’t just why your mother helped him. It’s who else expected him to do this.”
A horrible, cold weight settled into my chest.
“Someone else was involved.”
“We’re investigating that.”
The door opened.
A nurse poked her head in.
“Special Agent Reyes, Commander Grant asked to see you.”
Reyes stood and left with the nurse.
And I was alone with the photographs.
Four identities.
Theft allegations.
Military warehouse discrepancies.
None of this was the Richard I told myself I knew.
I knew the Richard who broke locks and snapped wires.
The Richard who screamed until my ears rang.
The Richard who made my mother pretend we were a perfect family.
But I never knew the Richard who existed beyond our walls.
And that terrified me more than the beating.
I didn’t feel strong.
I didn’t feel brave.
I just felt hollow.
The next time I saw my mother, she looked like a stranger.
They had moved her to a federal interview room inside the NCIS field office.
Gray cement walls. A metal table. One camera blinking red in the corner.
She wore a plain gray jumpsuit.
No makeup.
Her hair hung limp around her face.
When she looked at me, her eyes swam with tears.
“Livie,” she whispered.
Nobody had called me that since I was nine.
“Don’t.”
My voice came out cracked and wrong.
She flinched.
“I know you hate me.”
I laughed once. It wasn’t a happy sound.
“Hate’s not the word. I don’t even know the word yet.”
She looked down at her hands.
“He threatened me.”
I stared at her.
“He always threatens people, Mom. That’s what he does.”
“No—this was different.”
She looked up and something in her eyes made my skin crawl.
“Olivia, he came back five months ago. He knew where I was staying. Knew my address before I even unpacked.”
“You could have gone to the police.”
“He had… evidence.”
“Evidence of what?”
She swallowed.
“Evidence that I helped him hide something. Years ago.”
My stomach dropped.
“What did you help him hide?”
Her voice dropped to a shaking whisper.
“A passport.”
The room seemed to tilt.
“A passport?”
“For his brother.”
I blinked.
“I didn’t know he had a brother.”
“He doesn’t talk about him. But he gave me the passport to keep. He said if I didn’t, he’d take you and disappear.”
That word—take—sent ice down my spine.
“He told you he was going to take me?”
“He said he’d make sure you never saw me again. He promised it.”
“And you believed him?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
My mother’s face crumpled.
“Because he took you before.”
The words struck me like a physical blow.
“What are you talking about?”
Her voice dissolved into a sob.
“When you were seven years old, Livie. For eleven months.”
I felt the world spin under me.
I had no memory of that.
“You’re lying.”
“I wish I was.”
She covered her face.
“He took you in the middle of the night. He told me he’d let me see you again only if I did whatever he asked.”
A cold pit opened inside my chest.
“Why don’t I remember?”
“He gave you something. A sedative. It messed with your memory. The doctors said it might never come back.”
The room blurred.
The wall behind my mother seemed to tilt sideways.
I grabbed the edge of the metal table to steady myself.
“How old was I?”
“Seven.”
“Where did he take me?”
“I don’t know. He never told me. But you came back different.”
She wiped her face with the back of her hand.
“You were silent. You stopped talking for six weeks. You flinched when I touched you.”
I shook my head slowly.
“I don’t remember any of this.”
“You were told it was a car accident. That’s the story we told everyone. The story Richard made me tell.”
Something in my chest cracked open.
“And my father?”
My mother’s face went pale.
“What?”
“Daniel Mercer. My biological father. Did he know about any of this?”
The silence that followed was louder than anything else in the room.
Finally, my mother whispered:
“Daniel is dead, Olivia.”
I stared at her.
The words didn’t fit.
“NCIS said he was in Montana.”
“No—that’s not true.”
“Special Agent Reyes showed me files. Photographs. He’s alive, Mom.”
My mother’s face crumpled in confusion.
“It was fake?”
Or maybe she was lying.
I couldn’t tell anymore.
Everything I believed had become a puzzle with missing pieces.
And the person who held those pieces was sitting in front of me wearing a gray jumpsuit.
An NCIS agent rapped on the window.
“Wrap it up.”
I looked at my mother one last time.
“Did you know he was going to hurt me?”
Her eyes overflowed.
“Livie, I thought he just wanted to talk.”
“He kicked down my door, Mom.”
“Please—”
“He dragged me across the floor. I couldn’t breathe.”
She broke down completely.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t think he would—”
“You knew what he was.”
The words hung in the air between us.
For a long moment, neither of us spoke.
