Bitter Kisses (It's Just High School #3) - Thandiwe Mpofu Page 0,85
and the realization of the truth being spoken.
“What?” Nathan blows up, but Mia quickly speaks up.
“Yes, he… my own father… he wanted to s-sell me,” she stutters, crying and trembling some more. “But he was beating them. I tried to stop him, but he only turned on me and…” she falls silent, and then she snaps her head up, looking at Nicky as if something just occurred to her. “Is that why I’m here now? Did he do this to me?”
I’m gripping the arm of the wheelchair so tight that when the leather cushion rips apart loudly, Mia jumps and then finally, she looks at me, but I hate what I see displayed on her face for all the world to see.
I have no idea what she sees on my face but the misery and anguish in her eyes, made worse by the state she’s in… a growl makes its way out of me before I can stop it.
A hand clamps down on my shoulder. I don’t have to look to know who it is.
“I didn’t do any of that!” Nathan seethes, then he points at me. “He did it! Look at him, sitting there like a predator, taking advantage of my poor daughter’s impaired mind.”
But Mia refuses to be silenced.
“Where is my mom?” she demands looking around the room. “What did you do to her? Did he kill her?”
Holy shit.
“Oh, Mia…” Nicky whispers.
“Did he sell me?” Mia croaks. No one moves for a second. A minute. A fucking hour, I don’t know, I just watch her, realizing two things as Nicky opens her mouth to respond.
One, Nathan has attempted to fucking sell Mia before. And two…
“Mia, that was years ago, but sweetheart, two weeks ago…”
“What? What happened to me?” Mia questions. At Nicky’s silence, Mia looks around the room. Rage flows into my system like nothing else. When her eyes slowly meet mine, I can almost see the gears shifting as the realization is in her grasp. “I was beaten up. This is definitely a gunshot wound and my body aches so bad… it already happened, didn’t it? He sold me to the people who came in the middle of the night, demanding for the money that Da—Nathan—owed money to.”
Two… this is the day of fucking reckoning.
“Who were…”
“The fucking Matthews’s family!” I snap, getting on my feet. “I already told you.”
All hell breaks loose.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Julian
“In light of everything that has happened, we have new questions to ask you, Mr. Fitzgerald.”
Everyone is still reeling from what just happened in Mia’s room. Fucking Nathan has been detained. More cops were called in and now, like before, I’m being interrogated over what happened two weeks ago.
Though she hit the nail on the head with everything she said about Nathan, Mia’s amnesia changes everything, but it also makes justice fucking illusive.
Mia is being treated like a child with half a life missing.
I overhead one the cops saying Nicky might just be lying since no report of domestic abuse was ever filed by Nancy Montague when she was alive. And that set off Dad on a vengeance spree.
As for me, it’s my word against… well, a fucking child abuser!
“We’ve been over this before, Detective. My son told you everything,” Dad snaps, pacing. He hasn’t been doing well since Mia revealed that Nathan hurt Nancy, his dead lover.
“Yes, but we have new questions.” I sigh and then wave a hand for them to continue. “In your initial statement.”
“My only statement.”
“Yes, well, you told us that Sean and Shane Matthews abducted Mia and took her to the abandoned warehouse that you then set fire to in an attempt to rescue Miss Montague.”
“Yes.”
“Did you see Sean and Shane Matthews in the warehouse?”
“Yes.”
“When did you set fire to the place? Was it before or after you went in?”
“Before.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to flush them out. I was sure that if those bastards saw the fire, then they’d come out where I was waiting and knew the fucking police and fire trucks were on their way.”
He writes something down, but I know he’s just fucking scribbling. After a tense second, he looks at me. “What did you use for the fire?”
“Gasoline and a freaking matchstick.”
“Julian, language,” Dad mutters. I ignore him.
“And then what happened?” the cop questions.
It’s like reliving a fucking horror moving but what else can I do? What else do I have when Mia doesn’t even remember me?