I shut my eyes briefly.
Three years old.
I was three years old when they took me from my family because they wanted a child.
Then when they finally had one of their own, they threw me away emotionally because I didn't matter to them anymore.
Something sharp burned painfully in my chest.
Hayes’s voice grew colder.
“But I had no softness left in me to forgive them.”
I looked at him again.
“They caused our mother’s death. She died because she thought she had lost you.”
His voice cracked slightly at that sentence for the first time.
Very slightly.
But I heard it.
“I can’t forgive that.”
My throat tightened painfully.
“So when their company started falling apart…” he continued, “I bought everything.”
His eyes stayed completely emotionless now.
“They took you from us.” A pause. “
