Chapter 78

Chapter 78
Never in my entire life did I expect to find my parents tied to a steel chair in the center of a desolate white room.

My heart dropped seeing them in this situation and my hands felt clammy from sweat. 

Kiera Roth, mom, looked nothing like the woman who slapped and dragged me across the dining hall a few hours ago. The proud and snarky air she carried before was gone, her hair was disheveled, face pale as a ghost, her eyes looked blank.

I shifted my gaze and landed on my dad, Ben. Just as restrained as my mom with steel bars binding their wrists on the chair’s armrest. His usual quiet demeanor was replaced with something I had only seen for the first time from him.

Fear. Actual fear. 

I stood by the entrance, frozen. Scared that if I take a step forward then there won’t be a chance to turn around and pretend this is all just a bad dream.

Then my mother saw me.

“Kerri!” she called in desperation. “Oh, thank God you’re here! Quick! Untie us!” relief cracked in her panicked voice.

My feet moved before I could process anything else, and I stepped inside the white room. I was thinking how could I possibly untie them when they weren’t bound by ropes but literal steel that looked like it had emerged from the chair itself. 

“They’re insane! Everyone here is insane!” Mom continued, screaming while tears streamed from her paranoid eyes, darting from one side to another. “Dragging us here like criminals! Your husband… your husband is—”

I couldn’t hear her anymore when the sound of my drumming heartbeat was louder, in sync with my footsteps, and as my hands reached for their restraints, a cold voice stopped me halfway, sending electrifying charges through my body.

“Don’t.”

The voice came from behind me.

I was quick to spin around and found myself face to face with Arlo.

I should have noticed sooner how the air in the room shifted the moment he appeared, but my confusion and fear was so overwhelming that I hadn’t sensed him earlier.

“Step away from them,” he demanded, leaving no room for argument. 

From the corner of my eyes, I could see Pierce snatch Lucien’s phone and drag him out of the room. Leaving only me, Arlo and my parents inside the room.

“No,” I still stood my ground, balling my fists. Arlo’s thirst for violence should be fixed sooner before he starts killing people for fun. “What are you doing, Arlo? This is illegal detention.”

“They did the same to you, darling,” he breathed out.

“What?” 

I froze, thinking what the hell is he talking about?

But the look on Arlo’s face was deathly serious.

“They did the same thing to you,” he repeated, stepping closer to me. “You just don’t remember.”

“What are you talking about?” I glanced over my shoulder and saw how my mother abruptly averted eye contact as if she was guilty, and it made my heart drop for a second time.

“I tried to understand why you couldn’t remember me,”

Arlo’s voice pulled my gaze away from them and back to him, tears already welling in my eyes.

“Even after a year of being together, you still have no recollection of me.” 

He was already in front of my face, towering over me. Up close, I could see his jaw tightening that an odd uneasiness crept into my chest.

“So I had it investigated, did you know what I found out?” His gaze shifted past me and landed on my parents for a brief second, his eyes darkened as if he could kill them with just a glare, but when he looked back at me, the intensity in his eyes vanished.

“And from your reaction, I’m guessing they didn’t tell you.” Arlo holds both my shoulders and spun me around, so I was facing my parents.

“Tell her,” Arlo’s command was aimed at them.

“There was an incident,” mom was quick to answer in a shivering voice, as if stalling would make things worse.

“What incident?” I mumbled, studying their faces.

They couldn’t even look me in the eye.

“Tell me.” I spoke again, this time with a heavy voice. 

But once again, they refused to answer, making me ball my fist. They wouldn’t even give me the answer, they’d rather face my husband’s wrath than admit it.

“A few years ago,” Arlo took it upon himself to speak after realizing that my parents had no plans on speaking any further. 

He lowered his head until his lips were grazing my ears as he whispered. “You were outside your house, neighbors heard it, a sound.” The warmth in his voice made me shiver, that, or I was slowly connecting fragments in my mind.

My chest tightened painfully from hearing my own voice inside my head, screaming for help.

There was a flash, a sound, just like Arlo said, there was a sound. A crack. My head throbbed even though nothing happened.

“What…” I stammered, eyes going wide from seeing things I thought were long buried.

Arlo moved his head to whisper to my other ear, “Your mother hit you with a bat, you were left on the pavement bleeding.”

As he said those words that shattered me, I could see it clearly now. That memory.

There was another flash in my mind.

It was raining that night, and I was gasping for air while mom and dad loomed over me as I lay on the rough concrete floor. The cold pitter-patter of the rain kept me conscious just enough to see their faces.

They were scared, they looked scared, and I believed at the time that it was because they thought I was going to die, but no. 

Knowing them, they were probably afraid to go to prison.

So they did what they had to do.

Instead of sending me to the hospital, they dragged me back inside, locked me in my room and treated my injury on their own.

I gasped, bringing me back to the present and my hands instinctively went to grab my head.

“They detained you when you needed help, for months.” Arlo continued, his deep voice interrupting the chaos in my mind. “And when you awoke, they gaslit you, altered your memory so you won’t report them to the authorities.”

I could see it.

Those painful months, the walls in my room constantly spinning, always tilting. 

“They didn’t want anyone knowing,” 

My legs weakened, but Arlo was already holding my arms supporting my weight so that I didn’t fall to the floor.

More fragments appeared in my head. Darkness, pain, a rotting stench, my own voice saying: “Mom?” Then a snarky voice answered, “You fell, you’re so clumsy.”

Arlo stepped back, leaving space for me and my parents to be in the center of the room. And as he settled at the closed doorway, he spoke again.

“What they did was too much for your mind to keep, but now… I know you remember them.”

He was right.

I remember it.

Slowly slithering, painfully so.

The feeling that something in my childhood didn’t make sense, it all came rushing back. I spent half a year, locked inside a moldy room, recovering from an injury inflicted by my own family.

When my gaze landed back on Kiera and Ben, I heard something within me breaking.

All my life, I was left wondering why they treated me so cruelly. I used to tell myself that maybe they were going through something.

My family, Liam, the people in the showbiz industry. That they treat me like trash because they were going through something… but then I realized I was too, and I never treated anyone that way.

“Darling, I can see what you’re thinking,” Arlo laughed from behind me, a low, humorless laugh. “You’re trying to understand why your very own mother and father did this to you.”

“Yes, I am.” I answered blankly, keeping my eyes on their faces.

I heard him huff out a sharp breath before speaking, “You must keep in mind that it is a blessing how you can’t understand why certain people do the things that they do to you. You could spend days asking yourself why, but you will never be able to figure it out because you’d never do that to someone else. You shouldn’t go through life assuming everyone has the same heart as you.”

Arlo was saying that I am different from the rest, that I am a person carrying kindness in my heart. 

But I think he’s mistaken.

My voice came out steady, as if I was just ordering a cup of coffee, something similarly to Arlo.

“Break their limbs,” I said.