MELODY (Book 1) ✓

Epilogue (Declaration)

I used to dream of having a family. A real family. Not a foster one that didn't give a dime about you unless the government paid them to. They could never pay someone to love you.

For years, I had nursed this mental picture in my head: A loving mother who bakes cookies, gives cuddles, and reads bedtime stories. A hardworking father who watches football games and dozes off in front of the TV. Annoying siblings who steal from my stash of candy, and share secrets and clothes with me.

A home.

Then in my teens, I'd realized beggars can't be choosers. Any adopted family would have sufficed. If only there had been one.

Then that gruesome accident happened when I was fourteen. I'd been placed into a group home, suffering from PTSD, and I'd just stopped dreaming.

Running on survival mode since then, life had dragged onward; Psychotherapy, struggling to catch up with school, struggling to graduate high school, aging out of the system. Then I was placed in Hope House Shelter - as ironic as the name might sound - trying to keep a job and maintain my humanity.

In this journey of surviving, the struggles had never waned.

Until I'd met Akram and Asha.

They were the closest I had to a real family. At least in my selfish mind, they were a realistic version of my old dream. A limited version, maybe, but the best one I could get. They made the struggle tolerable. They filled this void in me that had never been filled before. They made me feel... enough.

Now, after that recent revelation of my past, my old dream had become a warped, discolored picture, in which I couldn't recognize what was left.

That was my shameless reality. The leftovers of a dream. A father with a questionable history. A man who had left his wife and daughter to face a dark fate all by themselves.

And now what? He'd returned to stake his claim? As if I would forgive him for the past fifteen years and go running into his arms?

Was he even aware of the damage he had done and still doing? Hell, did he even care how I'd lived all those years?! How I was bullied and traumatized and lost piece after piece of my dignity?

It made me sick to my stomach that I had already met him face-to-face, not knowing who he was. Who knew how long he'd been stalking me? Or what he really wanted?

Nope. I couldn't get myself to believe he only wanted to reunite with his 'daughter'...I couldn't swallow it. Not after so many years. A man like him must have a perverted motive.

"Aren't you happy he's alive?" Akram's quiet voice broke into my brooding silence, his eyebrows furrowed as he knelt down next to my bed in the guest room.

"Happy?" I cringed. "Happy to know my... 'dad' ruined my life? Happy to know I have a criminal father who dumped his family in a foreign country and let them pay for his mistakes? He would've had a pretty good excuse if he'd died."

Akram made a face. "That's a harsh way to put it."

"It's the truth." I sneered, staring at my pale, clenched fists on the blanket. "You heard what your brother said. He was involved in illegal business. He's a bad person."

"But he quit," Akram argued. "Maybe he was forced to do it. Laila said he wanted to protect you."

My head snapped up, glowering at his aggravating innocence. "I can't believe you're defending him. How can you trust people like that? He didn't protect me, Akram. He banished me. He had a family and he put them in danger. What was he thinking when he screwed up and let us face the consequences?"