Promised To The Alpha Twins
Chapter 23

“Your father has come,” echoed Lia’s words in my mind.

I had to process them as if they came from a fantasy tale trying to make me believe it was real.

The word “father” seemed more fantastical to me than “dragon,” “elf,” or “fairy.” I simply couldn’t find it in my repertoire of real, existing things.

“Come on, come down,” Lia insisted, and I sensed a hint of jealousy in her tone of voice.

Jealousy? Why would Lia be jealous?

“You’re saying he’s here?” I asked, not knowing what else to say.

“I don’t know how, but the social worker managed to contact him,” Lia replied before turning away.

I couldn’t find an explanation for the sudden jealousy I had detected in Lia, but it didn’t matter at the moment because my mind was troubled by whatever had arrived home that morning.

I left my room without caring that I was in my pajamas and without even noticing the state of my face, still bearing the signs of the beating Chloe had given me. None of that entered my mind at that moment because I wandered down that hallway that would lead me to see the face of the man I had wondered about so many times, who he was, how he could be, and why he had abandoned me.

In my childhood, I imagined him as some sort of secret agent or international spy, a man who, due to his profession, had been forced to leave me. But as I grew up, I understood that people simply leave, abandon their families, grow tired of the responsibilities and commitments that come with having a group of human beings depending on them, and they prefer to walk away.

That’s how simple it is. There was nothing more to explain.

There were countless nights when I cried for him, when I begged whoever could hear my request for him to come back, to explain himself and give me a reason, to say that he had left to protect me because it was imperative for him to do so, but that he had never stopped loving me, never stopped carrying me in his memories. But all of that unraveled as the days and nights passed without him doing anything, and I finally came to understand that it would never happen.

When I reached the living room, I could see that man whom I had given so many different faces. He turned around when he heard me and I trembled.

“Sussan.”

He was a man with a foreign appearance. Tall, broad-shouldered, and with thick arms. He was dressed in a formal, gray suit. His face was tough, wide, with a thick nose and full lips, broad and bushy eyebrows, well-groomed dark hair. Handsome for his age, and just by looking at him, I recognized the resemblance he had with me. I was a faithful copy of him, and I was pleased with the physical resemblance I had to my father.

A part of me wanted to rush towards him and embrace him, cry against his chest, and acknowledge him, but it was already too late. There was nothing left of the little girl who would have acted that way.

“Who are you?” I asked, unable to control my words, hearing myself as if my voice wasn’t mine, as if it came from several meters away.

“I am your father, Sussan,” said that man who introduced himself as such while stroking his chin with his hand. “My name is Axel.”

“Axel, huh?” I said, crossing my arms over my chest.

I noticed that a conflicted expression formed on his perfect face. His clear eyes momentarily turned dark, perhaps troubled because he expected a better reaction from me, but I wasn’t willing to give him anything warmer than an ice cube.

“What happened to your face, Sussan?” Axel asked, without his face showing a significant change in expression, but his eyes did, shining with some contained anger.

“She didn’t want to tell me,” Lia said before I could say anything, although I didn’t feel rushed to answer, because I wouldn’t tell them anything about it anyway. “I suppose she won’t tell you either.”

In that, Lia was right, but as I turned to look at her, I could see that she was desperate for Axel’s attention, even in the presence of Dub, who watched us from the couch where he always watched TV.

“Sussan, tell me what happened to you.”

An uncontrollable anger swept over me when Axel acted in the same way Lia did; now it turned out that both of them cared about what happened to me and even seemed determined to form the family we had never been, after seventeen years of absence and nights marked by the pain of abandonment, as if nothing had happened and I was going to throw myself into their arms to forgive them in exchange for their affection.

f**k them both!

“I have nothing to tell you,” I replied, clenching my fists.

“Sussan…” Axel said, but I silenced him when I raised my hand.

“You have no right to ask me, Axel,” I said, feeling a great pressure being released from my chest, formed by the anger accumulated in those few seconds.

Despite that brief release, the rage quickly filled my body again. I was furious at Axel’s sudden appearance, right at that moment of my life when I was about to leave that small town to make my own life. His arrival complicated my plans, I didn’t know exactly how, but I knew that his presence made my escape more difficult.

Now, as I saw him speechless, trying to regain my trust, I felt the wall of sanity I had managed to build to silence the strange voice that had started coming to my head since the night of the party crumble, perhaps overwhelmed by the anger that shook every fiber of my being.

“At last,” said that voice inside me.

Upon hearing it again, I identified the origin, or rather, what caused that call within me.

It was none other than Axel.

I approached him, fists clenched, jaw tight, and eyes blazing with fire. I don’t know what I looked like at that moment, but it must not have been pleasant to see because Axel’s gaze transformed, shifting from that of a man trying to earn my trust with soft, honeyed eyes, to the harsh gaze that perhaps accompanies him in his day-to-day life.

I didn’t know how I was going to act or what I was about to do, but the two knocks on the door snapped me out of my uncontrollable anger.

I lifted my gaze to see who had dared to do such a thing.

“Sussan!” shouted Ethan’s harsh and unsympathetic voice. My eyes quickly met his. Liam was by his side.

As I looked at them, the anger that had taken hold of me began to relax, dissolving through my eyes, which then softened as they rested on the twins’ gaze, watching me with a touch of tender unease in their eyes.

I felt that the wall of sanity I had tried to build to silence the inner voice had crumbled, and the culprit was right in front of me, once again observing me with his kind fatherly eyes, and somehow, the swollen eye opened wide, and the pain that affected my face vanished.

I knew that something had happened to me, but I couldn’t identify what it was or why it had occurred.