3 Hours

Chapter 9

“We still have over two hours, Rory. We’re not going home right now.”

“I don’t like it! What did you just agree to?!”

“To kill the man formerly known as your father.”

“Why?”

“Because he's a tyrant. You saw that with your own two eyes, right?”

“Well, okay,” I admit. “But he’s our father. Family before blood.”
She laughs.

“What does that even mean? Family before blood? Family, true family, is blood.”

“That’s what father-”

“He’s not our father!” She yells, the noise echoing down the bricks of the concrete jungle around us. “Our fathers are dead. Our mothers are in prison.”

Lucia never yells. Sure, she says things with enthusiasm, but she never, ever yells at us. I don’t even have time to let that sink in before she’s moved on completely.

“Do you want to see your mother again?”

“What?”

“Your mother. Do you want to see her again?”

“I mean...yeah.”

“Let’s go then.”

She steers me in a totally new direction, down another of the seemingly endless alleyways towards what I can only hope is my mother.