I feel the physical sensation of the pain, but barely. I am numb to them now. My apathy scares me more than they do as I look back to her blankly, unmoved by the punch. It only eggs her on. She delivers another swift blow to my gut.
“You had enough yet?” she growls into my ear. “You ready to talk?”
“Talk about what?” I shoot back, defiantly spitting the blood from my lips in her direction.
Her palm strikes my cheek, the sting echoing into my eardrums.
She steps back with a half-hearted smirk and looks me up and down, nodding to Trey and Vincent to let me down. I collapse to the floor, but quickly pull myself back up. Ready to stand and take more of a beating if that’s what she insists on. I’m over backing down to them.
“Well?” Vivian snaps expectantly.
I don’t know what she wants from me, but I’m positive I wouldn’t give it to her even if I could.
“What!?” I cry back in frustration. “What is it you want from me?”
“You know damn well what we want,” she sneers, pacing in front of me. “Don’t play dumb.”
I consider telling her what Emmett and I did in here the day before, and again before that in the hospital room. My eyes glint toward him at the prospect, but he still refuses to look in my direction. His hands are in his pockets shamefully, looking down to the floor as if he has nothing to do with any of this. But I know, no matter how sorry he may be, that’s not entirely true.
And anyway, telling her about those moments will only ensure they never happen again. However fucked up it may be, it’s not a bridge I’m willing to burn just yet.
“I don’t know what you want!” I bark back at her, clutching the ache in my gut. “I haven’t known what you’ve wanted this whole time! You’re all fucking crazy! Ganging up on me for no reason!”
“Is that what you think?” she smiles arrogantly. “That we don’t have better things to do with our time than chase you around? Get over yourself. We’d be happy to just forget you ever existed like the meaningless nothing you are. But we have to protect ourselves. So here we are.”
“Protect yourselves!?” I scoff in disbelief, my voice betraying me with too high of a pitch. “What the hell do you need to be protected from? I’m the one that’s being treated like some kind of prey. You’ve gone after me relentlessly from day one!”
“I’m not an idiot,” she growls back. “You know more than you’re letting on.” She nods back to Vincent and Trey who promptly scoop me back up
against the wall, my stomach muscles still clenching in pain from the time before.
I grit my teeth to bear another round of blows to my face and stomach, punctuated with a crippling kick to my shin. The sting sends me into a panic.
“Stop!” I scream in anguish. I can take a beating anywhere at this point, but not my legs. I have lost enough time on the track because of these assholes. I won’t lose any more. “Not my legs! Please! I don’t know what you want from me…but whatever it is, I’ll try. Just please not my legs.”
Vivian’s lips curl. She’s pleased that she struck a nerve. Found a weak spot. She steps forward, her foot rearing back again, but Emmett grabs her.
“Vivian, no,” he commands, shaking her by the shoulder between his hands. “She said she’d talk.”
Her eyes burn into him, giving me the feeling that he’d pay for that later. But for now, she complies and turns her attention back to me.
“You’re gonna have to do more than try,” she grunts. “When’s the last time you talked to him? I want to know everything he has said recently. About us.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I sob in exasperation, feeling completely clueless. Like they have the wrong girl. I’m being framed. I have to be. I don’t know whatever it is they think I know.
“Give it up already, Ophelia! Your fucking dad!!” She barks back, my heart stopping as the words roll from her tongue.
My fucking dad, indeed. I should have known this entire vendetta against me had something to do with him from the moment I found out he was once an Elite. I suddenly wish I had kept digging. That I knew more by now. But I was too distracted with the exile they placed me under.
I can feel my blood boiling beneath my skin. Of course this man who my mom considers to be the scum of the earth…who has been completely absent from my entire life…is now somehow responsible for all the torture I’ve been enduring.
12
Chapter Twelve
My brain sparks, rapidly trying to connect everything enough to make some sense of her ranting. Wrapping my head around my dad being an Elite in the first place was hard enough. But that was in the past…and he seems to be long gone now. But Vivian is acting like he’s still around…playing all of their games. I’m screaming inside, wishing I could escape being involved at all.
My eyebrows gather with a heavy sigh as my mind drifts to all the places I’d rather be. Anywhere but here. Running. Laying in my bed. Eating in the cafeteria.