Gemotions

The lawyer’s office smelled of old paper and stale coffee, a scent that only intensified the knot in David's stomach. Across the mahogany desk, the lawyer droned on about legalities and inheritance. None of it mattered. David focused on the picture, a glossy photograph of a young woman with his father’s eyes. A half-sister.

He ran a hand over his close-cropped hair, the physical gesture the only thing grounding him. Every inch of his body pulsed with a strange, unpleasant energy. His father, a man who had never cared, a man who had abandoned them, now left behind this… this *consequence*.

He wanted to scream, to smash something. He gripped the arms of the chair so hard his knuckles turned white. He wanted to go home, to get away from the saccharine platitudes and the polite smiles. He wanted to erase the woman in the photograph from existence, to return everything to the way it had been before this unwelcome revelation.