Shadowed (Team Zero #4) by Rina Kent

“She doesn’t want it.” Mum smiles with sweetness. “You shouldn’t have crushed it, baby, I could’ve put it in the rubbish for you.”

Mum puts everything she doesn’t like in the rubbish, including old photo albums of Daddy with his friends.

I hang my head. Dad has to be a monster or Mum will take him away like she took Mr Chou.

“Why are you crying, Zoe?” Dad inches closer, and Mum’s hold on me tightens.

“Because you were yelling, Jason,” Mum mutters and digs her nails in my arm. “Isn’t it, Zoe?”

I wince but press my lips and nod frantically.

“I want to talk to her alone,” Dad says.

Dad and I rarely have alone time. When he has a few days off, Mum either sends me to a camp or doesn’t leave my side. She makes sure to school me every time that if I say anything out of the ordinary, she’ll punish me.

“Zoe is tired.” She picks me up and carries me to bed. She’s frosty. Her hands. Her expression. Her smiles.

Everything about her is biting cold.

Dad takes me from her arms. Shock seeps through my veins at the difference between him and Mum. His embrace is warm, and I feel protected.

“I’ll put her to bed,” he tells Mum.

“But—”

“Close the door on your way out, Renee.”

Mum meets my gaze. “Be a good girl, Zoe.”

I nod quickly.

After she’s out, I curl into a ball and face away from Dad. I stare at a flower in the wallpaper, hoping he’ll disappear. He has to go or Mum will take him away.

“What’s wrong, petal?”

I hold the sheet to my chin and screw my lids shut. When I asked him why he calls me petal, he said it’s because I’m small and he’ll call me a flower when I’m older. I want to turn around and hug him, but not with Mum here.

He sighs. “I’m so sorry. I know I’m always away and I understand that you don’t want to reply to my letters anymore.”

It’s not that I don’t want to. I don’t get them.

“I placed copies in the time capsule. We’ll open it together when you’re thirty. Daddy will be an old man then, so you’ll take me at that time, deal?”

Tears fall down my cheeks. I swallow the hiccoughs.

“Zoe… I’m sorry your Mum and I fight all the time. Sometimes, adults have to be together and it becomes hard. But you’re my miracle, petal, so I don’t regret any of it. I only regret not being here for you. That will change soon, okay?”

I let go of the sheet and slowly turn around. Daddy is sitting on the edge of the bed, watching me with deep affection in his grey eyes.

“Sweetheart.” He wipes my cheek with the pad of his thumb. “Why are you crying?”

I push him. “Go away, Daddy!”

“Zoe…”

“Go away! Mummy will take you like she took Mr Chou. You’re a monster, Daddy. You have to be a monster!”

He tenses but asks in a cool tone. “Mummy told you that?”

“S-she said n-nothing.” I shake my head violently as tears continue falling down. “I’m Mummy’s good girl.”

Dad wraps his arms around me. “Oh, I’m so sorry, sweetheart. I should’ve known that her instability runs deeper. I should’ve stopped this sooner. I’m so sorry.”

“Daddy…” I sob loud in his warm embrace. “Daddy please take me with you. Please. I don’t want to stay with Mum.”

“You won’t stay another second alone with her. We’ll move out of here.”

I look up at him with blurry eyes. “Really, Daddy?”

He wipes my tears with his knuckles and nods. “I’ll never leave you again. I love you, petal.”

“I love you, too, Daddy.”

The door swings open. Mum appears at the threshold with a relaxed posture, but her green eyes are cold. I shrink into Dad’s embrace and hide my face in his chest.

“No one is leaving,” Mum announces in a cool, haunting voice.

“Watch us.” Dad places a hand on my back and stands with me still hanging onto him. I wrap my arms around his strong neck with all my might. If he leaves me with Mum, I might never see him again.

Dad pushes past my mum and down the stairs. Are we really leaving?

“Jason!” Mum shrieks, running after us.

I hide my face in Daddy’s neck and smell his cologne. I don’t want to look at her, but I can’t stop hearing her shouts or how her footsteps tap harshly against the wooden floor.

When we’re in the lounge area across from the kitchen, Mum clutches Dad’s arm.

This time, he stops. “We’re over, Renee. I didn’t want to take your right to be a mother, but you don’t even deserve that. What type of nonsense have you been telling a child?”

“The truth about how you raped me.”

I peek at Mum and she appears in her dazed state. She must’ve taken her pills.

Dad’s face ashes. “How crazy can you be to tell a small girl that?”

“I’m the mother of your daughter.” Her voice is smooth. Too smooth.

“You’re not worth the word mother.”

“Not like your precious Rachel, huh?” She laughs. “What does she have that I don’t, Jason, what? I gave you a child as she did. I loved you more than she did.”