“They all died in a massive earthquake when I was thirteen.”
Ryan reached down for her hand and squeezed it gently.
“For a few days I was overwhelmed with guilt for not being with them when it hit. But then I was thrown into an overcrowded orphanage with a bunch of other new orphans, mostly younger and even more confused and heartbroken than I was, and surprisingly, I was ok.
“I had a purpose. Those kids loved me. They needed me. And I needed them.” Her voice trailed off as if she were just realizing this for the first time.
“And that’s when Bradford stepped in?” Ryan asked, reaching for a box of tissues.
She pulled out a few tissues and nodded her head with a polite smile, too choked up to continue speaking. Ryan sat down next to her on the bed and gently wrapped his arm around her just as her trembling shoulders slumped forward, and she buried her face in her hands.
When the sobs finally stopped, she raised her head and looked at Ryan with red, swollen eyes that were infinitely more endearing than any photo shoot she’d ever done. “Do you know why I got my reputation as a party girl?” she asked
“Uh, are the all the tabloid stories true?” Ryan asked cautiously.
“Yes,” she answered flatly.
“Well…” Ryan started to squirm. His arm around her shoulder suddenly felt awkward, and he wasn’t sure what to do with it.
“I asked, ‘Do you know why I got my reputation?’" she repeated gritting her teeth, silently pleading with him — begging him to get her.
“I was trying to get pregnant!” she finally blurted out. “I wanted to have someone I knew I could trust in my life; someone whose love I never had to question; someone that I could love without worrying about what I might find out about them later on — or what they might find out about me.
“But I guess it wasn’t meant to be.”
She opened up the laptop cover and looked at the girl in the tabloid photo with equal parts shame and sympathy. “Whatever anyone has ever thought about me, I promise you I’ve thought worse. The alcohol is pretty much the only thing that makes it tolerable,” she mused.
“Two days after Bradford left, I got those,” she said, pointing to her sparsely covered chest on the computer screen.
“Wait!” Ryan exclaimed, jumping to his feet. “You got those after Bradford came to the orphanage?”
“Of course!” she gasped. “I was thirteen!”
“No, I mean right after?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you know dates?” Ryan asked.
“I couldn’t forget that day if I tried. It was exactly two weeks before I was adopted. But I don’t even know which hospital I was in — somewhere in Panama City.”
“If that was before you were adopted, then who paid for the surgery? And who gave consent?” Ryan asked, his mind whirring.
“I can only assume the headmaster at the orphanage did,” Annamaria said, shaking her head disgustedly. “He was the one who met with Bradford; he must have made some deal with him. He sent me to the hospital alone — I’d never even been in a hospital before. No one told me what I was there for, and I woke up still all alone, with terrible pains in my chest and my stomach I’ll never forget.”
“Your stomach?” Ryan asked. That didn’t make any sense.
“That’s how they get the implants in without leaving any obvious scars. I’ve got one right here,” she said lifting her shirt a few inches to reveal a tiny scar just inside her belly button. “And two right here,” she added, flipping her waistband down to reveal two more tiny scars, one on each side.”
Ryan’s face went white as a sheet. “That’s not how they put implants in,” he whispered.
“Maybe not in the U.S., but I woke up with those three scars and these,” she said cupping her augmented breasts, “at the same time.”
“Annamaria, I’m so sorry,” Ryan said softly. “But I think I know why you’ve never gotten pregnant.”
CHAPTER 10
“You ok?” Ryan asked after a full minute of silence.
“No,” Annamaria answered tersely, her heartache drowned under a roiling sea of anger.
“It was probably a tubal ligation,” Ryan whispered, proceeding with extreme caution. “Those can usually…”
“You said someone contacted me on your behalf,” Annamaria said, her eyes ablaze. “When we were walking outside. You said it wasn’t your idea to contact me. Whose was it?” she demanded.
Given the opportunity to drag Dillon into this, Ryan didn’t hesitate. “It was this geeky computer guy at MIT. He hacked into Avillage’s system and got the names and contact info of all the orphans. He’s actually one of us.”
“Does he know anything more about me?”
“I’d guess he probably does, but he’s pretty tight with it. I’m not sure why.”
“How far is MIT from here?” Annamaria asked, her speech still pressured.
“Mile and a half?” Ryan guessed.
“Let’s go!” she said, reaching for her hat and glasses.
Dillon’s whole body jerked, startled by the abrupt banging on his door.
Trying to make as little noise as possible, he tiptoed over to the door and peeked into the peephole. Nothing but black. Whoever was out in the hall must’ve been covering it up. “Who is it?” he asked with a low but self-conscious, cracking voice that just screamed computer nerd.
“Open the door,” Ryan demanded, continuing to bang away.
Dillon timidly unlocked the door and cracked it a few inches to find Ryan standing in the hallway with an angry yet disconcertingly satisfied look.
“I tried to call you…” Dillon stammered.
“Hmm, that’s weird. Because I had my walkie-talkie on me all day yesterday and today, and I never heard a thing.” Ryan stared him down, inching progressively closer to the doorway.
“Oh. I was must’ve been on the wrong channel.” He was pretty sure Ryan would never resort to physical violence, but the shred of doubt that remained was enough to shoot his heart rate into the 130s.
Ryan gave him one more glare and then brusquely shoved the door wide open, to reveal a still seething Annamaria standing to his right.
Dillon staggered back a few steps, his eyes like saucers, suddenly feeling light-headed. Annamaria’s face, meanwhile, visibly sank, as if Ryan had just exposed Oz from behind the green curtain. This was their source? He was about five-four, skinnier than Annamaria, and didn’t look a day over fourteen.
Dillon held his gaze on Annamaria just long enough to register her first impression before his eyes darted sheepishly down toward the floor. A deep blush replaced the usual pallor of his cheeks — yet another face-to-face encounter he’d be forced to start in a deep hole. Always the same reaction! It seemed to hurt more each time.
Ryan walked in behind Annamaria and closed the door. “Can we talk here?” he asked, more to appease Dillon than out of any concern of his own. Dillon had been making great money for himself and his shareholders with his steady release of apps for five years now. No one in their right mind would have continued to surveil him that long without coming up with anything.
Dillon reached over and turned up the grinding, manic-depressive music pouring through his computer speakers. “Yeah, we can talk now,” he said nervously, just audible above the music.