President's Daughter's Bodyguard-Chapter 101: The Missing Years…

Chapter 101: The Missing Years

Theo couldn’t move for several seconds.

Frank’s last sentence had swallowed all the air.

’Every woman in the cult was named Helena...

Every woman...’

A cold pulse moved through Theo’s chest.

"My mother’s name..." he began slowly.

Frank nodded before he even finished.

"Helena," he said. "Yes. The same name."

Theo’s jaw tightened. "But she was not part of any cult. She raised me alone before Zack took me in. She was a good woman."

Frank lifted a hand as if calming him.

"And she was," he agreed. "Your mother was good. Brighter than most women I ever met. But good women are exactly the ones that cult likes to take. They break them, reshape them, and give them the name Helena. They bury every past identity until the woman is only what the cult wants her to be."

Theo felt his heartbeat trip. His mother...His mother...

Frank seemed to read the mess in his face and continued gently.

"She didn’t choose that life, Theo. From what my stepfather learned, she was taken very young. She escaped. She ran like Danielle’s mother did. But she did it alone and not pregnant. That is why Zack found her."

Theo’s eyes hardened. "Zack didn’t find her. He took her."

Frank didn’t deny it.

"Both can be true."

Theo breathed slowly through his nose.

"My mother was never involved in anything dark," he tried to reason with himself but the truth was too unreasonable.

Frank nodded again. "She was not. When she ran, she left the cult behind. But that does not mean the cult left her. They do not like losing their women. And they hate more than anything when a woman gives birth to a boy."

Theo stared. "Why?"

"Because boys don’t matter to them," Frank shook his shoulders a little. "A boy is considered a mistake like some defect. They only value girls. Girls born under the conditions they set. Girls who can be shaped into whatever they need. Girls like Danielle...And like your mother might have been if she had never escaped."

Theo looked down, trying to piece together fragments of memories he was no longer sure belonged to him.

"And Zack?" he asked. "Where does he fit into this?"

Frank’s expression changed to a disappointed understanding.

"Zack was curious," Frank said. "The moment he learned about the cult, he wanted to know more. He thought it was some kind of secret society. Something powerful and old. Something he could use."

"Sounds like him."

"He saw your mother," Frank continued, "and he was intrigued. A woman who escaped something forbidden. A woman who belonged to a world he was desperate to enter. And she was a virgin...."

Theo refused to blink.

Frank took another breath.

"He stayed with the cult for a while. Not as a member, but as an observer. They wanted him because he was smart. Dangerous. They believed he could bring them influence. And he wanted them because he believed he could gain something from them. But he could not stay unless he had a girl to offer."

Theo’s hands curled slowly at his sides.

He understood exactly where this was going.

"But he did not have a girl," Frank said. "Your mother gave birth to you...who was a boy. A useless offering in the cult’s eyes."

"So what did he do?" Theo asked quietly.

"He waited...He played along for years. And when he was ready, he made a deal with the cult master."

Theo felt something icy unfurl inside his chest.

"What kind of deal?"

Frank looked right at him.

"To give your mother freedom, so they would stop hunting her and give you to him."

Theo felt his throat close slowly...

"He wanted property," Frank stated with a rough voice. "Not a family or love. He wanted the woman he desired, and the boy that came with her. Raising you made him look like a respectable and stable man. A man who could build power."

Theo breathed slowly, using all the control he had.

"And what happened to my mother? She’s still in contact with me...what the fuck?"

"When the cult handed her over, she was broken after all the running. She was not the woman she used to be. She had been living in fear for years, waiting for the day they would take her back. And Zack didn’t want a broken woman."

"What did he do to her?"

Frank swallowed.

"He took you. And he threw her out."

Theo’s teeth clenched so hard that pain shot up his jaw... "No...I would remember something like that."

Frank stepped closer.

"That is the problem...you do not remember because Zack made sure you would not."

Theo’s breath stopped and Frank continued with his story.

"He hired someone...."

"What?"

"He was a man who worked with chemicals and experimental methods of memory control. They tested it on people who were considered disposable. It allowed specific memories to be blurred or erased."

Theo felt the walls shift around him.

"He used it on me," Theo’s eyes widened.

"My father was there...and he told me that you screamed for your mother while they held you down. You kept asking where she was. Why was she not coming back? Zack told you she didn’t want you anymore. And then he told that man to take those memories out. To wipe them clean."

Theo’s breath shook.

His earliest memories were always fuzzy, and super blurry.

To him fog over glass of some faces he couldn’t place.

And now he knew why.

"He wanted you to believe he saved you. He wanted you to believe he was your father. And he wanted every trace of your mother erased from your life but he failed."

Theo closed his hands into fists until his knuckles whitened.

"Do you know what happened to her? She never told me this...do you?" he asked, though he already braced for the answer.

"No one knows."

Theo was really silent in the corridor as his thoughts spiraled around the single name that now haunted both him and Danielle.

’Helena...’

His mother and Danielle’s mother.

Every woman the cult ever touched.

Frank watched him carefully.

"You were never meant to find this out...Zack buried it deep. But now... with everything happening... the truth was going to come out sooner or later."

Theo drew a slow breath.

Everything he had believed about himself was being rewritten.

Frank placed a hand on his shoulder, grounding him.

"You are not like him, Theo...And that is probably the thing that terrifies him most."

Theo lifted his eyes.

Because now he understood something very simple. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

His and Danielle’s lives were very similar...only a few years apart...