Chapter 18: Scapegoats
2.8k 24 75
X
Reading Options
Font Size
A- 15px A+
Width
Reset
X
Table of Contents
Loading... please wait.
Announcement
Pre-chapter note: Valerie and I are discontinuing story updates on Royal Road see: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/24224/songbird-a-kammi-kettu-story/chapter/413700/authors-note-discontinuing-updates-on-royalroad

Arc 3: Bonds That Tie 

Chapter 18: Scapegoats

It had only been three weeks since Yelmorn, but you know how it goes with everything going on in my life, those weeks had felt like months. Like one of those dreams where years go by in a single night and you wake up in the morning wondering how it wasn’t real.

Well I’d been pinching myself everyday wondering if or when I’d wake up.

So? Where do I start? Al? 

Ok, so true to his word, Al had adopted me. I’ve said it before but being rich is a superpower in itself, what you can get done and how fast, is almost frightening. The red tape and bureaucracy never stood a chance, but that kind of influence doesn’t go unnoticed. ‘Penrith Billionaire Adopts an Heir,’ was the headline and even though they couldn’t find out who he’d adopted, the newspapers were full of speculation. 

I mean Al was a local celebrity. The Spencers had been a part of Penrith for as long as there had been a Penrith and disregarding the family international conglomerate that he was the CEO and controlling shareholder for, or the fact that much of the city’s transit infrastructure had been built by his family, there was a real interest in Al’s private life. 

Penrith’s newspapers, the local gossip rags and their readers had followed Al through his marriage, all the scandal of his messy divorce, the flashy affairs he’d put on to hide his sexuality and in recent years. Even when he eventually dropped off the public radar he had continued to be a figure of public interest. It was only a matter of time before the paparazzi learned about me. Can you imagine it? ‘Ex-Villain(?) Wraith Holding Prince of Penrith Hostage?’ 

It would give the media something else to talk about other than Seraph going dark or the coming mayoral elections. I planned to frame it for my wall.

Where was Seraph anyway? Nightbinder had confirmed she had recovered from the Yelmorn incident, but aside from a few minor sightings she had all but disappeared from the public light.

Oh yeah, did I mention I’d been exonerated? Hard for someone to legally adopt you, when you’re a wanted fugitive. In the face of revelations about Yelmorn International and Penrith Centre for the Confinement of Dangerous Emerged and with the drove of lawyers, the OMR and Amnesty International bearing down on them, the state had quietly dropped all charges and issued a statement exonerating me, rather than facing a prolonged and publicised legal battle before the eyes of the voting public. 

Still beforehand, for the first week after Yelmorn, even with the talk of efforts to exonerate her, due to how high profile I had temporarily become I‘d been forced to lay low. Al wouldn’t let me out to go sing at Limbo! Overprotective D—.

Shit he is my dad now! Ok I’m still adjusting to that, don’t expect me to start calling him dad or daddy right away. No, getting adopted hasn’t magically turned me into a daddy’s girl or daddy’s little princess. I wouldn’t say no to a pony though…

After my exoneration went through it was time to say goodbye to the bunker and move into the house proper. The entire time that I had been living here since my rescue, not once I had seen what lay beyond the bunker’s one foot thick steel doors. 

Before leaving, I said farewell to my room down in Al’s luxury bunker. 

It had been home and I would miss it, but in a way it had been an extension of my time in prison. Another windowless box in the ground. Sure, I’d had more freedom, space and I had been able to leave, but only with an escort and only to certain places or with a mask.

And stepping out of the bunker for the first time, I couldn’t believe how big the main house was. The house was clearly pre-Civil War era, but had since been gutted and renovated, the old servant quarters and corridors removed in the process of adding more space. Then through the windows there wasn’t another house in sight, just well maintained gardens, lawn and copses of trees until you reached the lake’s shore. 

This place was certainly a stark contrast to what I grew up with, a reminder of the differences between the haves, have nots and have too much.

As I was shown to my new room on the second floor, I couldn’t help but notice something. The house had been renovated and the rooms furnished, for a family. Little sad reminders of what Al had lost and couldn’t bare to move past. The little protective stoppers on all the electric sockets within child reach, the pink pastel wallpapered room down the hallway with four poster bed and a chest for children's toys, or the pencil markings in one of the doorways where a child once measured their growth against.

Even eighteen years after the fact it was clear the divorce and the lost relationship with his daughter was still an open wound. I guess all things considered, I was grateful he hadn’t given me the pink room. 

The adoption had yet to feel real and being placed in his estranged daughter’s room would’ve sent my imposter syndrome into overdrive, leaving me feeling like a replacement. A substitute daughter. I had been in that position once before, prior to the Andersons. I’d been taken in by a family still grieving a son that had drowned, only to be handed back eight months later when an ultrasound revealed my foster mother was expecting a baby boy.

If that happened again, after everything else I’ve been through I think… I think it might just d— 

“Hey you okaaay Robin? You’ve gone all spacey again!” Kelly gushed as she drove her elbow into my side from where she was sitting cross legged next to me on my made bed.

Oww…

Blink. Blink.

“Huh, uh umm… Oh! Sorry mind wandered off for a second there, you were saying something?” I apologised, flashing her a guilty smile. 

Kelly sighed with feigned exasperation, “You’re hopeless. You need to spend less time in your own head, even if it is funny to watch.”

“Funny to watch?” I parroted in confusion. 

“Yeah it's easy to tell when you get lost in your thoughts, your gaze sort of fixates on the space in front of you and you get this spacey look, but every so often umm, you go all intense or start showing emotions you usually like lock away. Like just now you were thinking of something sad before I elbowed you. Like normally you sorta coach your face to hide what you’re feeling, I know I sometimes do it around my mum, but you let it slip when you space out,” she explained.

The grin slipped right off Kelly’s face and her eyes turning ice cold as she stared off through the walls.  “Actually thinking about it, it's a lot less funny… Please don’t take this badly but, have you considered talking to Derrick, I mean Dr. Parsons? Like he’s helping me, l mean he’s already helped me so much and we can trust him. Or even just talking with your dad. Just, never mind…”

“I—,” I started, about to tell her I was fine, but she was right. Things might be going right in my life for the first time, but I still had nearly 18 years of emotional baggage weighing me down that I needed to unload. “No. I’ll try to talk to someone.”

Like the Sun coming out from behind grey clouds, Kelly’s face burst into a radiant smile. The same smile that had got me through my time imprisoned. I had never known the bubbly pre-prison Kelly, Kalia had told me about and she was unlikely to ever completely return, but slowly over the last month more and more it had come back. 

“Great! I know you can do it! So what I was asking before Spaceship Robin took a trip out beyond our solar system was; are you excited for your birthday? The 24th is only two more days away and then you’re eighteen,” the redhead enquired, eyes sparkling.

“I guess… Only really ever celebrated a couple of my birthdays and they were both with foster family’s pre-Andersons, but I had been looking forward to eighteen. I was going to move out of the Andersons and start my own life.” 

Before getting kicked out of home and The Emergence I’d had everything planned out. My life’s plans thrown out in a single evening and replaced with something I could never have imagined.

“So you think you have nothing to get excited about?” she replied with a mischievous smirk.

“A— Dad has mentioned my birthday a few times,” my dad, that still sounded weird and I couldn’t help smiling, “but I’m not sure if anything is happening for it. If there was I would know right?”

“Hmmm,” Kelly hummed, the smirk not leaving her face.

“Fine, keep your secrets!”  I humphed, “Obviously you've been spending too much time with Nel and Kalia!” To be fair, that wasn’t entirely a bad thing, to me Nel was already becoming something akin to an older sister figure and while I was still getting to know Kalia, she was pretty cool. For an adult...

“What? Are you implying our friends and I are up to no good? I’m hurt Robin,” Kelly teased, her shit eating grin only growing even wider as she tried not to laugh. 

Sigh. 

As annoying as it is being at the mercy of three shit-stirring girls, iIt was nice seeing her happy given how the case against Yelmorn had stalled. 

In the aftermath of the raid on Yelmorn, with the mountain of damning evidence and televised witness statements from the victims, there had been a lot of public and political support for swift justice. Yelmorn Industries had made a public show of cooperating with the police, as well as conducting their own internal investigation, which ended with three members of their Penrith Leadership team found to have been the ringleaders of an off the books conspiracy unbeknownst to the rest of the company.

I call bullshit!

Three scapegoats who were later found dead in their cells before even the date of the trial had been set only made page three of the news. Page one and two were election spreads, the upcoming election was looking to be the most hotly contested in decades with a lot of private and corporate money being spent on ads or donating to PACs and lobbyists. 

In the meantime Penrith’s Emerged jail had been taken under federal management with Yelmorn consulting, while reconstruction, repairs and upgrades of the facility were undertaken. New management, same shit. I’m not sure what I even expected…

Something warm and wet dragged a wet trail across my cheek. Flinching at the gross sensation, I squealed while spinning around to face my aggressor.

I found her clutching her sides as she rocked back and forth beside me laughing. 

Not willing to let this latest escalation go without retaliation, I prepared to launch a full assault! Still laughing, her sides had been left unprotected and vulnerable.

Commencing tickle attack!

Elsewhere in the house, Al chuckled as girlish squeals rung out across the second floor. 

Announcement
Thank you for reading! Hope you enjoyed the chapter!

Please leave comments/reviews as they fill us writers with joy!

The Kammiverse has it's own discord (new link) where you can talk to other readers and the various authors including myself and QuietValerie.

75