Chapter Fifty-Eight-1

Chapter Fifty-Eight One. Two. Three. One. Two. Three. I count my breaths, separating the sequence of rapid breathing through several inhales and exhales. My eyes are wide, as if blinking is a concept that no longer constitutes my living. I have never been in a situation like this. I never have been prepared for a situation like this. No one has. Do I scream? I ask myself, igniting the first real thought into my brain. Someone would hear. Anyone nearby. Then they'd call a doctor or the cops. The rest of the guards? All I know is I need to get out of this situation. Whatever has happened or is happening right now...I need to get out. I begin to reach for my phone, an object I had just so simply passed to my back pocket. "Hands in the air. Both of you. Scream and I shoot," the man orders. His voice is deep and scratchy, the perfect voice cast for a villain. I don't recognize him at all. "Shut the door behind you and slowly walk over here." My eyes search for Madam Jin's. She is visibly shaking, her hands slowly rising in the air as her eyes are stuck on her son's face. I can't even imagine what must be going through her head. Suddenly, as if a wave of reality had crashed into her, Madam Jin's spine straightens along with her poker face. Her glare was firm and angry. "Victor, what the hell do you think you're doing once again with my family?" Victor. As if a chip had connected and downloaded in my head, I recall everything Madam Jin had revealed to me about the supposed truth about my father and my family. Victor was the Vice-President under my father, Nate. Madam Jin had adopted my father in her early years, raised him, and made him a hard worker who earned his humble place. However, many workers were angry that my father would naturally inherit the company though he was adopted and had not been in the company as long as others or had worked up to the position as President. He had tried killing my father several times—carbon monoxide, attempted physical assaults, and a home invasion where a brawl had resulted in my father slashing a scar through Victor's right eye. He couldn't be jailed, not with his wealth and power at the time. I look at the man now, seeing the faint but still visible scar run through his eye. It felt like a childhood movie, the evil character so menacing and so prominently evil in appearance. It sends a chill down my back. My father, never content with risking family for fortune, had talked about running away and sacrificing his position. He staged a car accident and took our family away, taking my mother's name "Flores" instead of "Jin". But Victor was alive, his vengance ignited as pure fuel to make sure he destroyed my father. His reputation and career was tarnished, in his eyes, due to my father's existence. For years, we had slipped under the radar. But my father was beginning to be found out so he really had to make it seem like he was dead to Victor, disappearing from my mother and I's life for years. He was just an empty space in photo frames and an empty seat at the few dinners we sat down at. A part of life was just knowing he was dead. Having my entire life be a lie, having it shattered and re-emerged in front of me, connected in pieces I never could have imagined—I barely have the brain energy or the supposed strong heart to endure it right now. Especially when I am about to lose both parents in the same room if everything that Madam Jin said is completely true. "Shut your mouth, you old hag," the man with the scar, Victor, barks. He presses the gun farther into my father's temple. "I have the silencer on. I already shot two of your prestiged guards. You think I won't shoot your son?" He laughs, an eerie noise. "Try me." Madam Jin sighs, realizing he is right. "What do you want?" Victor's eyes turn to me. He is a tall, built, and looks like he could tackle anyone. His hair has several lines of gray and white along with the hair on his face, his beard aging along with the rest of his face. Hard wrinkles cover his face and almost a permanent line between his eyebrows as he furrows them in anger. "Shut the door—what is it...Ivory?" He smiles. "I finally get to meet you in person, Ivory. Now shut the door. NOW." His voice scares me and I turn and shut it, praying that anyone realizes something's not right. Where is Lee? Where is Madam Jin's personal detail or the medical team? Where is anyone? "You already know what I want," Victor says, his words reminding me of ants running over my body. "I have planned this for far too long to not have it executed perfectly." "You took my family from me for nearly two decades. What more can you take?" Madam Jin asks, her voice pleading for peace. "I haven't taken anything. Not really. Not what I have meant to take," Victor answers. He looks at my father, who has been still the entire time. He must be frozen in shock as well. His wife just died, he saw his daughter up close for the first time in years, and now his life is at risk again. "I haven't really gotten anything, have I, Nate?" He slings an arm around my father's neck, pulling him close to him while choking my father simultaneously. "Isn't that right?" My father refuses to speak. "Well, let's all take a trip down memory lane, it's been so long," Victor announces, his theatrics at an all time high. It worries me. It means he's comfortable enough to be telling stories in leisure while holding a gun to my father. "I had always felt skeptical of Nate being truly dead. But when the guy attends PTO meetings and is so very public, despite looking physically different by a small portion, it's hard to try not to kill him..again. But then he pulled another stunt and truly disappeared. For years, I waited. Then, I saw your daughter in headlines with New York's finest bachelor. I found Brownwood. I observed. I waited. Then, I made a plan. If Nate was still alive, he would surely come out if his daughter was front page news. If his wife was in a car accident and then coma." I think of Lee's birthday bash last year, the height of my popularity in headlines. I had seen him. He had come out, brief as it was, to check up on me. Had he tried talking to me without getting recognized by Mark, someone close to Madam Jin? "However, Helen here went into a coma yet nothing. No signs of Nate. I was truly baffled. But then actually," Victor says as he looks at Madam Jin, "the old hag led me to Nate. I kept tabs on all of her searches and investigations. I still had connections. I found photos, the same ones I'm sure that she found, of Nate. It was enough. It was proof he was alive. "Now, this is where I messed up. I felt bad for Ivory. She barely knew anything. She went through life and the papers and even passed by Lee's interests. I had originally planned to threaten Ivory, at least drawing out Nate and maybe even getting ransom money from Lee Richardson. But you know what? Helen was dying anyway. She was never rude to me. Who I really wanted to get revenge on was Nate. I would just wait until she died and wait as all of you came to me. So, here we are." Just then, the door clicks open. Lee's on the phone with Mark by his side, not looking up. When he does, he freezes and then his eyes run quickly over the dead bodies, me, and the gun.