Chapter 114 The Price of Blood
The static on the line was a jagged edge, cutting through the three a.m. silence of my bathroom. I held the phone so tightly my knuckles felt like they were going to burst through the skin. I waited for a name, a plea, some kind of explanation for the nightmare they’d left in their wake. The air in the small room felt stale and heavy, as if the oxygen was being sucked out through the receiver.
"Mila? You there?"
The voice hit me like a physical blow, knocking the breath right out of my lungs. It was my father. He didn't sound like a man who had spent weeks in a state of fatherly concern; he sounded like a man who had just run a marathon and was looking for the nearest exit. There was a frantic, oily quality to his tone that I recognized from a lifetime of being second to his vices.
"Dad?" I whispered, my voice cracking under the weight of a dozen different emotions. "Where are you? Where have you been? Do you have any idea what’s been happening? The girls—"
"Listen to me, Mila, we don’t have much time on this thing," he interrupted, his voice hushed and hurried. In the background, I could hear the muffled, rhythmic thud of a heater and the distant, tinny sound of a television. "We had to leave. Things got... complicated. We're in hiding. We’re safe, for now, but it’s a delicate situation."
"Complicated?" I stood up, my legs shaking so violently I had to lean against the cold porcelain of the sink for support. The tile was freezing against my skin, but it was nothing compared to the ice in my chest. "You vanished! You took every cent we had left. You emptied the accounts—money the Salvatores gave us to survive—and you left Zoe and Grace in an apartment with no food and no heat! It was twenty degrees out, Dad! I had to pull them out of there while they were shivering in their beds, crying for you! They thought you were dead!"
"Look, we’re sorry about that, okay? It’s a half-apology, I know, but we were boxed in," my mother’s voice suddenly cut in, sharp and high-pitched. She sounded like she was hovering right over the receiver, her voice lacking even a shred of the maternal comfort I had spent my childhood craving. "We had people looking for us. We had to take what we could and go. We knew you’d figure it out. You’re the smart one, Mila. You always find a way to fix the things we can’t."
I closed my eyes, a wave of nausea rolling over me so intense I thought I might actually throw up. My own mother was justifying leaving two children to freeze because I was "the smart one." They hadn't left because they were scared for us; they had left because we were dead weight in a getaway car.
"You stole their future," I said, my voice dropping to a terrifying, flat register. "You took the only safety net we ever had and gambled it away. Who is looking for you? What did you do to make people hunt you across state lines?"
"That doesn't matter now," my father snapped, the "terrified" edge of his voice sharpening into something uglier—something purely transactional. "What matters is what you’re doing. We know you’re still with that Salvatore boy. Nate."
I froze, my heart stopping in my chest. "How do you even know about him?"
"It’s all over the city, Mila. A Salvatore heir doesn't chase a girl like you without people in certain circles noticing," my father hissed, and I could practically see the greedy glint in his eyes through the phone. "And thank God he is. As long as you’re with him, as long as people think the Stones have Salvatore protection, we’re safe. The people we owe... they’re afraid of that name. They won't touch us if they think Nate Salvatore is backing this family. His reputation is the only thing keeping them from kicking in our door."
The air left my lungs as if I’d been punched. There was no "I love you." There was no "Are the girls safe?" or "Are they eating?" There was only the cold, calculated demand of two people using their eldest daughter as a human shield against the consequences of their own choices. They were treating me like a security policy they hadn't even paid the premium on.
"You need to keep him happy," my mother added, her voice cold and devoid of any maternal warmth. "Whatever he wants, whatever it takes—you stay in his life. You make sure he keeps looking after you. If that protection disappears, if they think he’s done with you, they’ll find us. And then they'll come for the girls to get to us. You understand? This isn't just about us anymore. It’s about everyone."
The realization hit me with the force of a tidal wave, drowning the last remnants of the girl I used to be. They hadn't just fled; they had left Grace and Zoe as collateral. They had left two little girls in a house with no protection, hoping the Salvatore name would act like a magical ward while they ran to save their own skins. They had gambled with my sisters' lives, betting that Nate’s interest in me would be enough to keep the wolves at bay.
I didn't cry. Tears felt too small, too weak for the sheer, incandescent horror rising in my throat. I didn't feel like a girl anymore; I felt like a storm.
"Do not call me again," I said, the words vibrating with a lethal, crystalline clarity that felt like it could shatter glass.
"Mila, don't be stupid—"
"I am done!" I screamed, the sound tearing out of me, echoing off the bathroom tiles and likely waking every girl on the floor. I didn't care. I wanted the world to hear the sound of my family finally breaking. "You are not my parents! You are predators! You left your children to freeze so you could save yourselves! You used us! If you call this phone again, if you even think about coming near my sisters, I will be the one who hands you to the police. Do you hear me?"
I slammed the "end call" button and threw the phone across the room with every ounce of strength I had left. It hit the far wall with a plastic crack and skittered across the floor, the screen shattering into a spiderweb of light.
I stood in the center of the dark bathroom, my chest heaving, the scream still vibrating in my teeth. I was truly, utterly alone. The people who were supposed to protect me had just told me I was a commodity—a bribe to keep their ghosts at bay. I was a bargaining chip they’d thrown on the table without a second thought.
And for the first time, through the haze of my rage, I realized that the man I had run from—the man I had accused of trying to buy me—was the only person in the world who had actually tried to value me.