The True One

Chapter 38

Alek

Collapsing onto the couch, Flora pressed her palms to her face, shutting her mother and me out. "I don't know which one of you to be most upset with," she wailed.

The answer seemed easy enough to me. I might have my faults, but Val had been lying to both her and Verity for the entirety of their lives. It felt like quite the crapshoot determining whether we could trust what Val had to say now, but still, I had to ask.

Val tried to comfort Flora with a motherly pat on the shoulder, but her daughter was not having it. "Get away from me!"

I let a few seconds pass and then played my cards. "You know, Val, maybe Flora would feel better if you explained everything to her."

"I signed an NDA," Val said, as though that excused her deception.

"Pretty sure Norvin asked you in here so you could spill, or he would have found a way to keep you out."

She nodded, her mouth twitching like it had been waiting for her brain to give the go-ahead. All she needed was the excuse I'd given her to come clean.

"Here goes." She sat down next to her daughter, who scooted to the couch's far corner. "Flora, I want you to know that I always did what I believed was right, even if in hindsight, it no longer seems that it was."

Flora snorted but if she had a snarky reply, she kept it to herself.

"How much do you know about Verity's mother?" Val asked.

"We know she was a werewolf, if that's what you mean," Flora said. "We probably know a lot more than what you think we do."

"Well then, I assume you know she's still alive."

"What?" Flora stood up with enough force to make the back of the couch hit the wall. A framed picture of a group of people in old fashioned hunting outfits shook and then fell, landing next to Flora's mom. "How long have you known that?"

Val gave her another look of pity. "Since always. Aurum Venari hired me to come here once a month to check on Cora's health, run tests, and so on."

And so on. I could only imagine what those three little words entailed.

"They've been paying you? How much?"

"How do you think I was able to afford our home, Flora? Why did we always have a steady income even when I was supposedly unemployed?"

"I thought you got money from that settlement for the accident you were in."

"That accident wasn't much worse than a fender bender. I bought a new car with the payout and that's about as far as those dollars stretched. No, Aurum Venari has been our bread and butter." She cocked her head. "I guess I thought maybe you'd figured that out?"

"How the fuck would I have done that?" A plume of dust choked the air as Flora's fist hit the couch's plush arm. "You lied to me. You lied to Verity about her own mother! My god, who even are you?"

"I'm the one who loved you and took care of you. And Verity too. Did I ever treat her as anything less than another daughter?"

"That's a pretty messed up thing to say," I interjected. "Playing Verity's mom while keeping her real mom away from her."

"Yeah, what he said." Flora walked over towards me, an ally once more. "Also, I don't buy it. I think you kept Verity close because you felt guilty. What, besides the money, could possibly make you do this to her?"

"I didn't just do it for her, I did it for the world. Believe it or not, I care about Cora, but she's dangerous. She'll tell you that herself. Werewolves shouldn't be allowed to roam freely."