42

ATHENA

The tears streamed down my face as I made my way to the room. None of what I had just heard seemed to make any sense to me. I didn’t know exactly what to make of any of the things which Rafael and his girl had just told me.

Could it really be possible that my dad was all of these things that they were saying? How did I not notice this in the first place? Is it possible that they are lying to me?

Question after question kept on popping into my head and I had no idea how to deal with any of it. Rafael’s face when he spoke to me in the study, his voice and his mannerism kept on playing in my head. He looked genuinely hurt by everything that he was saying and it was obvious that he wouldn’t go through such lengths just to make up a story to tell me. It definitely didn’t make sense.

This was what his mother was talking about back then when she mentioned he had been kidnapped. I had not thought too dearly about it and his reservations to talk about it had struck me at first but after