With my lost faith and a lost game, I had sulked and stayed back with Rob hoping that his presence might change my moods. Then again, I usually went to him taking all my problems, but, I felt selfish to do that tonight.

I had stayed silent and had gone back home with the same attitude of desolate mess.

But when I reached home, I saw Dan's car driving up our driveway. I slowed down and peered to know what he was up to. Though Dan had no ill intentions, with all the things that I was hearing these days, I knew I had to be extra careful.

I switched off my car lights and drove only after I made sure that he was inside. I had an intuition that he was called by my Dad probably to talk about my upcoming races to know how I was doing, especially when I wasn't giving him any hints or details. But more than those talks, I knew my Dad might bring up morning's topic and fry it over with him.

As I parked, I tiptoed and went near the window which was open. It was covered by the curtains to know it was ajar. I stood there like an outlaw in my own home and tried to eavesdrop on their conversation. After the formal talks, the topics casually drifted on me.

"She's pretty good." Dan said consolingly. "She was a little disturbed today though. Couldn't concentrate. Even that Bert couldn't get to her."

"Oh, Daniel." I heard Dad sigh. I leaned forward and slowly pulled the curtain aside to see what was happening. Dan and Dad sat opposite to each other as Daniel put a hand on Dad's shoulder to convince him. "I think she knows about me. About how horrible I am."

"Edward," Daniel tired his best to pacify Dad's ideas. "You know how Ashley is. She plants ideas and stuffs in the racer's head to dull the game."

"But it's not any race, Danny!" Dad said, pushing his hand away from him. "Ashley knows a little too much about me."

I saw Dan take a step back to see what Dad was saying. He was as confused as I was. Though I wanted to shout inquiries at them, I held my tongue and stepped back. It was not yet time.

"What do you mean she knows about you?" Dan asked. "You guys have hardly met each other. The only time I saw you guys together was when you were drunk that Friday night."

"We share a deep history." Dad confessed and my breath hitched.

That meant I was right all along. Dad had an affair with her and it somehow got mom involved. Dad had managed to kill Mom and then get back with her. Probably things didn't work out the way it was supposed to and hence here I was paying the price for being my mom's kid.

"Shut it, Ed." Dan said standing up. He put his hands on his waist and looked away. "We both know it's not true."

"Oh, it is." Dad said and I couldn't hold it in any longer.

My tears had started already and I barged into the house like a gangster. The door opened and it hit the wall behind it with a loud thud. All were startled and they looked at the door with large eyes. When they saw me, with blood red eyes shooting daggers at them, they took a step back.

Dan was the first one to recover. "Scar! Wow, what happened to you?" He asked, carefully making his way towards me. His hair was disheveled with our family drama and I was sure he was cursing his idea of getting here to check on Dad. "It's okay to lose the race... It's not the end of the world."

I ignored his words and looked at Dad. He had a lot of explaining to do.

"You had a deep history?" I asked, my voice barely audible. My imagination was running wild and if the silence had continued, I was sure I would have become a madwoman, pulling my hair in all directions. "What happened?"

Tears streamed down my face and I didn't know how long I could remain sane. Perhaps, I should have been more patient and stood by the window side, waiting for the worst to come. But I was antsy and eager to know what had happened. This riddle was eating me alive and no matter what others may say, I was the only one who was getting burnt in this ambush.

I had been fed with a lot of information from various people and I had avoided all of them until Ashley came along. Her words had hit the spot and suddenly, I wanted to know more. But the deeper I dug, the more messier it became.

"Scarlet, honey..." Dad started and then he tried to stand up. With the physical therapy he was getting from past one month, I was sure he could handle himself. But like he had said before, he wasn't interested in getting better. He fell back on his seat and put his head in his hands. "I fucked up... I just fucked up."

Dan went to him to help him out. Like always, people went to him to help them out no matter what he had done, ignoring me and my feelings.

I looked away, trying to control my emotions. All this time when I wanted to shout at him, scream for making me go through hell, ever since mom left us, I had stayed quiet thinking that he was suffering along with me. But that was never the case.

I had been living a double life and I didn't know myself anymore. I doubted my identity. I doubted my existence. I doubted my life.

How was I tangled in here with him, paying for the terrible things that he had done?

Suddenly, a thought occurred and I was stunned at how fast my mind had travelled. Was I Ashley and Dad's kid?

"Who am I?" I asked pushing Dan away from Dad. "Am I your kid?"

"Oh, God!" Dad howled, as he cried, hitting his chair to control his emotions. "Of course you are! What makes you think otherwise?"

"Is Ashley my mother?"

"No!" Dad was angry now. Furious even. "How could you? Casey... You think the mother love that she gave you was all an act?"

"I think I'll leave now." Dan said silently, obviously feeling like an intruder.

"You are staying right here." Dad and I, both said in unison. We looked at each other. Both of us were crying, yet our egos were holding us back in putting things further.

I looked away first, taking a moment to breath. I was the one who wanted to know things, but when I was at the verge of it, I shook under its weight, not able to do it all alone.

"Edward, how do you know Ashley?" Dan asked, not able to bear the silence. I looked at the guy in question, hoping against hope. It was the answer I wanted to know. "For how long?"

"From twenty to twenty two years." He breathed and I stumbled in my own step. Dan came to my rescue and held me, helping me stand. Dad had settled with his tantrums and had calmed down. My actions at his revelations, didn't harm him in any way. It was as if he had expected it to happen if I knew. "I just hoped I would never see her again."

"You hoped?" I asked, my voice had become a whisper. "You said... you said you hardly knew her." I said, still confused in placing all the facts right. There was confusion and the questions lingered.

"I didn't want you to worry." Dad said and I resisted the urge to shout at him. "You were young back then... and she was very young. I didn't take her seriously."

"What do you mean?" Dan asked, more intrigued than me.

"She... she had sworn that she would... destroy me." Dad said, not looking at me in the eye. He let out a dry laugh. "And she did."

"Why?" I asked him. It was the only question I was scared of.

"Because I messed with her sister." He confessed, too ashamed of his actions now.

"Sister?" Dan asked confused. "Twenty years means, Ashley was as child back then."

"Ashley had a sister." Dad looked at the same window where I was hiding few minutes ago. "Her name was Camilla."

---

Edward

I loved Casey too much to share her with anyone else. 

We had been in love for years before we got married. With a guy who had run away from home at a young age, love was something I valued most and I thought I had seen it in her. I knew she loved me the moment I had met her and when she stuck with me in all my ups and downs, I knew she was the one for me. I hadn't wasted my time to propose her and make her mine.

Things went smooth for a couple of years where both of us raced and competed to fill our thirst of games. She was the queen and I was her king. There was no stopping us from then on. People had come by to break us apart, but we had stood tall and elegant, not letting anyone get near us. Time and again, we had proved that we were indestructible. That unity alone had scared many of the racers who had bet to win against us.

One day, Casey had come to me, her face full of sunshine as she told me that she was pregnant. I was genuinely happy... I really was. I was becoming a Dad myself. I wanted to do justice to that role ever since I knew I was becoming one in another nine months. I had boasted all about nurturing the child with everyone I had met.

Considering how I was treated by my own father, I wanted to change things. I wanted to give good education and put the kid out of trouble in every way possible. After all, wasn't that what Dads were supposed to do?

I had a fair idea of how I was going to be with the kid, but what I hadn't taken into consideration was how Case and I were going to be with each other with a new member in the family, until she came to me with an expression I couldn't read.

"I'm thinking to quit racing." Casey said one fine afternoon when she was fully pregnant of eight months. Racing was her breath of fresh air and quitting that for a kid didn't seem like a right thing to do. I had agreed to her telling her that I would take care of everything from then on to see her smile again.

With Case in the house, I had to double my shifts to make sure that we stayed afloat. The inception of the things that might change with a new baby on board was eating me alive everyday. I didn't even have this of a cold feet even when I was marrying. 

As a result, my racing abilities went down the drain and I was losing each and every one of my races. Sponsors left me and I didn't have an agent anymore. That was when I took up illegal racing to make sure that we had a roof over our head.

When Scarlet was born, the happiness I felt had no words to describe. She was the perfect girl I had ever seen. She made it seem as if the battles that I had gone through were worth it all. But things had changed once they came back home from the hospital. Deprived of my own parental love, I didn't know if the changes were natural in our lives as well.

Casey was hardly noticing me and I stood in the background as the mother daughter bonded over napkins and diapers. There were times when I didn't see Casey at all. Coming in too late and going away for races had pushed me away from them.

I had seen them being happy with only themselves especially when I was out of the picture. It made me think about where I stood in the family. There I was working my ass off to feed for the two while they ignored me when I was around? How fair was it?

In the next years, Casey and I had grown apart too. Our fights which were like a dormant volcano, now erupted like it wanted to consume the world. Small things led to bigger things and I started staying away from home even when I was in town.

We fought because I wanted her attention to me. We fought because I wanted to be a part of my family. We fought because we had terribly learnt to live without each other.

That was when I met Camilla Mathews.

She was an artist that I had found her in one of the races. She had come to sketch portraits of racers with the cars. She was a natural with that and excelled in it too. That day she asked me if I would be okay in posing for her.

"It's not going to take long." She had said to pursue me. "Give me ten minutes."

I had reluctantly agreed to stand, while she pictured me. In those ten minutes, I had all her attention... something that I wanted for a long time. Later I had asked her out for a cup of coffee and then for a race and then for another. 

With the silly fights and unwanted feelings, Camilla felt like a breath of fresh air. It was as if I was living in the moment with her just like I had done with Casey once.

I started to spend more time with her. One thing led to another and soon, I found myself in her house, with her little sister, Ashley. She wasn't a vitiligo kid back then, but if one looked keenly enough, she had small spots all over her hands and legs. But she was very smart. She often left her sister with me while she played outside with her friends.

Meanwhile, I sucked in the races and the money I earned in them weren't enough for all the expenses that lay in my hand with a kid under my roof. Looking at my incapability, Casey had stepped up to race back again and let our small ship float while I fooled around with Camilla.

A few months later, I had found that Camilla had become pregnant with my child. Hearing those words again, with another woman, I was shit scared. The ripple shocks finally settled to the betrayal that I had committed with Casey. The poor woman, didn't even know I had an affair outside our family bubble.

With Camilla being pregnant, I knew I was running around in circles and there was a high probability that I could commit the same mistakes over again. That pregnancy was enough to put my senses back into me. That was when I decided, it was time to break up.

"What about our kid?" Camilla had asked that night when I told her it was over.

"Abort it."

I had never been so ashamed of myself ever before, but that night I felt like I had to die for committing such a sin. I hated myself for being so foolish. When I looked closer, I saw how unfortunate I was to abandon my happy family to satisfy my attentions. I remembered all the things that was right with Casey and I felt horrible for ditching her to fulfill my male ego. I wanted things to go back to normal.

I stayed away from Camilla and ignored all her calls and her attempts to meet me. As the days passed, I got to know that she had indeed kept the baby, hosting it in her belly. But I heard that the kid had died in her during her delivery killing both of them in the process.

I was doomed and the death was indirectly on my hands. I relocated my place and stayed away, but the brutality of my actions never left me.

Slowly, Casey got to know my activities outside race tracks, but she promised to stay for Scarlet's sake. But that night, when she had that race... we had another fight regarding the same thing. Perhaps, she had killed herself in that race fighting with my cruelty over Camilla.

Probably it was best if I was left alone. But I had never thought I would be this alone with no one to turn to.

She had left me that night, leaving me with a six year old Scarlet on my shoulders to harbor my responsibilities to her.

---

A/N: I hope I answered all the questions. What do you think?