“They were failures. There are always failures. It’s a flaw in the design. The way some babies are born blind. You can’t function as a family unit if you’re lying and betraying one another, breaking rules right and left. That’s how my own family fell apart. I swore I wouldn’t let that happen. These children needed to understand rules were imposed for a reason. To restore order. The ones we discarded, they could not, or would not, change. They would always be flawed. It is very rare for a baby born blind to ever see.”

It was all such garbage, a woman’s twisted psychology. Becca thought about the hundreds of times she sat across from the mentally ill and how easy it was to distance herself. This time it was personal. Flawed. Failures. Discarded. These were children, kids who’d been abused and neglected. Kids like Ash.

“And your own kid, Maureen? What about him? What about Aidan?”

Mo shrugged as though Aidan were inconsequential. “My greatest failure. I didn’t let it break me. I endured. I reinvented. Love isn’t biological, as you know,” Mo said.

He was your child, Becca wanted to scream. Mo kept blathering on. “The Tribe made me whole again, and in turn I made them whole.” Mo hands trembled from the weight of the blade. Raya whimpered again. Becca wanted to reach out and hug her. Hang on just a little longer, she thought.

“It was all fine, everything was fine until that bitch showed up,” Mo said. The knife hovered closer to Raya, the blade pointed downward. “We’d have continued living our lives. On our terms.”

“Enough,” Nate screamed. Becca didn’t even have time to look at him when she heard the unmistakable sound of a bullet exploding from the gun’s chamber. She instinctively ducked, the noise deafening in the cramped space. The bullet soared past Becca, bypassing Raya and Mo and exploding into the wall behind them.

Mo’s smile faded as her survival instincts finally kicked in. She dropped the knife, and raised her hands in surrender. “Don’t hurt me. Please don’t hurt me,” she begged, the smile fading at last.

Becca turned to see Nate pointing the gun at them, his fury unleashed. “Nobody say another fucking word, or I’ll fucking kill you both.”

BECCA

BECCA

Nate gripped the gun, his stance strong and assured, daring anyone to challenge him. The only sounds were Raya’s pained whimpers as she tried to free herself. He aimed the gun at Mo, who was still crouching in the corner. “Get up and sit over there,” he barked, gesturing to a chair shoved into another corner.

“Nathaniel, I can see you’re confused and need counsel,” Mo said, taking a few steps forward.