Chapter 3
Pure panic flooded my system.
I lunged forward, grabbing Adam’s sleeve so hard my knuckles turned white.
“Don’t!”
My voice came out as a desperate croak.
“Please don’t look at it… please…”
I knew what would happen. That cursed video had turned everyone against me. Everyone.
Adam looked down at me, confusion written all over his face.
“Babe, it’s okay,” he said, squeezing my hand. “I’ve got you. She can’t hurt you anymore.”
But I couldn’t let go of his sleeve. I just couldn’t risk it.
“Adam, I’m literally begging you. Don’t go over there.”
The more freaked out I got, the more I could see his curiosity growing.
Despite my pleas, he gently pried my fingers from his arm and walked toward my mother.
“Whatever mind game you’re playing,” he said, “I wanna see what the hell kind of video could make anyone okay with beating their kid half to death.”
He took the phone from my mother and started watching.
I stared at his face, clinging to this pathetic little hope that maybe–just maybe–he’d be different. That he’d still love me even after seeing… whatever it was.
I silently pleaded to any god who might be listening, but the universe had ghosted me long ago.
As the video played, Adam’s expression morphed from angry to shocked to something else entirely. His eyes grew wider, his face paler. In less than two minutes, everything about him changed.
He said nothing. Just stared at my mother in stunned silence.
My mother gave him a knowing nod.
When Adam finally looked back at me, the love and concern had vanished from his eyes, replaced by something cold and distant. Something that didn’t recognize me as the same person anymore.
He handed the phone back to my mother and turned to the cops with an apologetic smile.
“Officers, I’m so sorry for wasting your time. This was all just a big misunderstanding. There’s no abuse happening here.”
The officers exchanged skeptical glances, then turned to me.
My heart felt like it was being crushed in a vise. The pain was beyond anything physical my mother had ever inflicted. I looked at Adam–the guy who’d sworn to protect me–knowing that his 180 meant no one would believe me now.
“It was just some roughhousing that got out of hand,” Adam continued smoothly. “Family stuff, you know? We can handle this ourselves.”
In the end, with no witness willing to testify, the police uncuffed my mother and filed out of the room, shooting me concerned but helpless glances.
Adam turned to face me, his expression now as cold as my mother’s–a chill that cut straight to my soul.
12:49
Burnt Beauty, Family Beasts
8.3%
Chapter 3
Then, in a move that shattered everything I thought I knew about him, he dropped to his knees in front of my mother..
“Mrs. Mitchell,” he said, voice trembling with emotion, “I’m so sorry I didn’t understand before. You should have finished what you started.”
“She… she’d be better off dead.”
Tears streamed down my face. “Adam… why? Why are you doing this?”
Adam wouldn’t even look at me. His voice was flat, emotionless.
“You deserve everything coming to you.”
Something inside me died in that moment.
Adam–the same guy who’d found me crying in a campus bathroom three months ago after my mother had “accidentally” pushed me down the stairs–had abandoned me just like everyone else who’d seen that video.
I remembered how he’d gently cleaned the blood from my face that day, promising to protect me no matter what.
“Will you really never give up on me?” I’d asked him, hardly daring to hope.
He’d smiled that dimpled smile I loved so much.
“Of course not. If your family treats you like nothing, then I’ll just have to treat you a hundred times better to make up for it.”
He’d promised to be my knight in shining armor.
Instead, here he was, begging my mother to finish the job.
As I lay there, drowning in despair, a question that had been nagging at the back of my mind suddenly pushed its way to the surface:
What the hell was on that video that could make everyone–absolutely everyone–want me dead?
♡ (0)
0 (0)
回(0)
