"You can't know that! Know something else," she said, her tears creeping into her voice as well as her eyes.

"Madison, please?"

She turned and looked at the man whose name held only dread for her.

He sounded genuinely distressed. What did he have to be upset about?

It was not Madison Sloan who had made his son's life a living hell.

It was not Madison Sloan who showed up twenty years too late. Or maybe it was?

"You've been nice to muh . . . me," Madison stuttered, "but I don't know what you're expecting of me. I'm serious. I'll sign anything you want that says I don't want your money or ——"

“But I WANT you to have it!" Mr. Hannity said, getting down on his knees in front of her.

"Because I don't know what else to give you.

Almost 21 years I've thought you were dead. And no matter what they say, you don't get over losing your child."

"You didn't lose me. Your wife gave . . . she gave me away. She didn't care if I found a good home or a home at all, as long as I was gone. I made my own life and, as pathetic as its been at times, its mine."

“Let me be part of it," William begged.

“Let Morgan and Timothy have their sister back."

"They don't even know I exist," Madison replied, wanting badly to curl up in a ball and disappear.

"They don't ever have to know. Just promise to keep Alvin away from me, and we can all just ——"

"No, we can't just pretend this never happened," Mr. Hannity said, standing up and beginning to pace.

"Not now. You are my blood and my firstborn, and you never should have been taken away. And --" He paused when a ruckus erupted outside in the hallway shortly before Alvin Hannity came barging in, followed in short order by his mother Meghan.

"Dad, you can't --" he started to say, then saw Madison sitting there. They look he gave her . . . oh, that look. Madison began to realize that she had actually underestimated his hatred for her.

“William, please listen to reason. You can't possibly be thinking --"

All other conversation fell by the wayside when Alvin reared his fist back to punch Madison's lights out. Suddenly, Joanna charged into the room as well, her hair mussed, her eye blackened, and her face contorted into an ugly anger that simply did not belong there. She started to pummel the back of Alvin's head, but was sent flying into the wall by a backhand.

William Hannity moved with alarming speed, grabbing his son by the neck and hurling him all the way across the room and into the far wall.

Meghan Hannity was glaring at Madison now with an expression so vile that Madison had no name for it.

“Look at what you've done, you little . . . thing! I should have drowned you instead of This was not the day apparently for completing sentences, as Meghan Hannity was cut off by a swift and powerful kick to the chest by Madison. The young woman then brought a knee up into Mrs. Hannity's stomach, just like Sasha and Heda has shown her, she swung left and right hooks to opposite sides of the woman's head.

“Dad, you can't do this," Alvin groaned from his position on top of Doctor Callous's filing cabinet.