Reborn In a Murderer’s Embrace

[Phoebe was sick again today. The medicine Damian gave her seems pretty potent, and it's making her react badly. The poor kid's become withdrawn since she started on it.]

[Edward took Phoebe to the orphanage today. When she got back, her clothes were torn, and I was worried that she might have gotten into a scrap with the other kids. I asked Edward about it, but he said that Phoebe was a good girl today, didn't fight or get physical with anyone. She even cried!]

Between the lines, I could tell my mom was thrilled about me crying. I tried to piece together those hazy, unclear memories.

Before I met Colin, I indeed never cried. I didn't cry at birth, which led the doctors to think I was mute, although I ended up speaking earlier than most kids my age. Even later, when they would provoke me or hit me, ver cried.

The day I first cried at the orphanage, as recorded in the diary, I was wearing a red dress. It must have been when those bullies at the orphanage tried to yank it off me. Còntens bel0ngs to Nô(v)elDr/a/ma.Org

As I flipped through the journal, I noticed how meticulously my mom documented my life, missing not a single day. But the entries stopped cold during the days I was sent to the psychiatric hospital. Not a word about Damian's treatment.

[Today Phoebe lost her temper with the neighbors. They were complaining about us keeping a large dog and even tried to drive Howler away.]

...

My mom's journal is filled with the mundane details of my life at home, but what's odd is that there's not a single mention of Colin and Carter, as if on purpose...

I was close with Colin and Carter, and my parents must have known about my romance with Colin. So why is there no mention of it in the diary?

It only noted that Phoebe made a friend at the orphanage who seemed to trust and like her a lot.

And then there's the entry that says I seemed to naturally attract kids with congenital personality defects, that they trusted me and played well together.

As I read through entry after entry, most were just boring daily stuff, but those two sentences sent chills down my spine.

Putting it together with what Robin and Finn said, these didn't seem like journal entries at all, more like notes from an experiment.

I took a deep breath and kept reading.

Why did Dexter say I was purposely forgetting Colin? And that Colin had hurt me?

Sure enough, there was an entry from early in my eighteenth year, noting that Phoebe said she was an adult now and wanted her own independent life. She had started to rebel.

And adolescence, indeed the age of hormonal surge, Phoebe was just like any other teenager, perhaps even more intense.

The next entry.

[Today we took Phoebe to get her blood drawn for tests. Her hormone levels have changed, but her physical and genetic makeup still prevent her from having genetically healthy children.]

[March 27th: Phoebe disappeared. Today is the second day she's been gone.]

[March 28th: Still no clues about Phoebe's whereabouts. That person is clever, hiding her away.]

[March 29th: No leads today either, but Zero has also vanished. I suspect he took Phoebe.]

I furrowed my brow, stopping my scrolling finger, staring at the screen.

Zero? Was it the codename for the person who took me? Who was it that took me away?

[April 8th: At last, we found Phoebe. Zero had locked her in a cellar, her hands shackled with chains, covered in wounds, barely clinging to life.]

My mom had taken a photo of me tied up in the cellar, battered and breathless, hands bound in chains. It was a harrowing sight.

I felt a sense of panic. I had disappeared on March 26th and wasn't found until April 8th. During that time, it seemed my parents didn't even call the police.

And from the photo, it was clear that my mom's first reaction wasn't to rescue me, but to take a photograph.

Even more eerie was that my mom, who in my memory loved me so dearly, wrote the journal entries of those days without any emotion. Her words didn't convey worry or urgency, but seemed like a clinical record of each day.

My fingers trembling, I slowly scrolled through the entries on my phone.

Who was Zero?

[April 9th: Zero was found too. He was brought back home by Ethan who promised to discipline his son and not let him bother Phoebe again.]

My gaze was locked in shock on the screen. The photo from the 9th, taken by my mom, was of Colin.

Zero was Colin.

Was that the codename they gave to Colin? Why?

In the photo, Colin looked desperate, struggling against the Langley family's bodyguards pinning him to the ground, with Ethan also in the picture.

I looked at this man in the photo, supposedly Colin's biological father, and frowned subtly.