Angelina’s POV
I wake up with an extremely dry mouth and throat.
I also wake up with a warmth surrounding my back. A human warmth; no doubt about it even if I have my back to it and can’t see it, that no amount of blanket can provide.
I open my eyes to a very shallow, dim light that is only coming from the huge two windows in the room.
It was night time.
It takes me a few moments to understand where the hell I am as I look at my surroundings without moving a muscle.
The room was completely unfamiliar to me.
I start to panic, my heart pounds loudly against my rib cage as I try very discreetly to move without alerting whoever was hugging me from behind in their sleep.
Once I manage that, I look at the person and instantly recognize her. Lucas’s mom.
And then it all comes back with an intensity and speed of a freaking train, causing tears to instantly fall down my face without wasting a second to linger inside my eyelids.
My mom, my kidnapping, Lucas, his family, the lies I had to say to save myself, what that monstrous man that I will never address as my father has done to them, and finally the last thing I remember, my melt down inside that bathroom. My acceptance that everything that happened was very true and the life I had before was long gone.
I was living on borrowed time.
How long will it take before either Lucas learns the whole truth and kills me or does things much worse than death itself to me, or Zade raises hell on him and his family trying to get his hands on me?
Lucas said it would take three to four days to get my fake ID and leave this place. Can I last that long without either of those things happening before that time?
I don’t even know what that bastard wants with me in the first place! Does he expect that I can ever accept him into my life after everything? If he wanted me dead he would have killed me right there with mom, but he wants me alive for some twisted reason I can’t seem to comprehend.
My mouth and throat are bothering me very much, I can’t sit another second without a drop of water or I might die right here.
I look beside me at the nightstand and find it empty, I look to the other one beside Lucas’s mom and I find a thermometer, and a bowl of water with a small, white cloth soaked in it.
The last thing I remember was feeling so dizzy and weak after my sobs almost destroyed my whole body and wrecked me to pieces. I thought I was finally going to die, but apparently I just passed out. And judging from the things on the nightstand, I also had a fever.
They must have come to check on me and when I didn’t respond, they probably broke through the door and found me passed out. I shudder immensely at the thought of Lucas or David finding me naked on the shower floor and seeing me like that.
With the absence of any water in the room, I had no choice but to get out and seek my way to the kitchen. I won’t be waking up Lucas’s mom; whose name I don’t even know or maybe they mentioned it but I wasn’t paying much attention then, and ask her to bring me water. It was enough that she probably stayed by my side the whole time watching my fever and redressing the bandages I soaked under the shower. Even though she didn’t really have to take care of me like that, she still bothered and gave a damn about me, which didn’t pass me by unnoticed as I felt extremely grateful but entirely ashamed because she didn’t know who she was exactly nursing and sleeping next to.
Not that I had any actual hand in what happened to her family, but I was still related to the asshole who tore their lives apart. I still don’t know the reasons for what he did to them, but it doesn’t matter. Not all people will see past the fact that I’m related to him by blood. Especially people who have had their hearts broken in more than one way. I have no idea what kind of people they are exactly, but I didn’t want to take any chances and end up meeting the worst ending that fate could ever have prepared for me.
Barefoot, dressed in a white, tight sweater and white jogger pants, with my hair wild and going in every direction, I quietly descended the stairs into the ground floor.
It was very silent, not a damn sound all around the house.
I met with the front door where I came from.
To my left was the living room I entered the first time I came inside, and to the front was a long corridor that I decided to walk through in the hopes of finding their kitchen.
And sure enough, the corridor ended with an entrance to the kitchen, which was also open with a dining room on the left side.
The freezing cold that wasn’t there until I entered the kitchen alerted me to the open, sliding, glass door, revealing a view of the front yard.
Leaning outside, against the wall beside the open door, and mostly obscured by it, was a man smoking a cigarette.
I couldn’t decide whether it was Lucas, David, or someone else from the small part I could see of him.
I stood frozen there, not sure how to proceed next. Do I make myself known or go back the way I came from as quietly as I can and screw being thirsty as hell?
I don’t know how, and I was pretty sure I didn’t even breathe from the moment I caught sight of someone standing outside; so there is no way that I made any sound to make him aware that there was anyone in the kitchen, but he whipped his head back as if he was expecting me to be there.
How the hell did he know? I have no fucking clue.
He being Lucas, and of course it would be him, because how else can fate screw with me more than it already did without throwing the one man I wanted to avoid for the rest of eternity my way?
His eyes glared at me as if I somehow purposefully ruined his alone time, even though I wanted nothing to do with him.
“What are you doing out of bed at this hour?” he asked in a hard tone.
His mean, rigid domineer both scared the shit out of me and provoked me at the same time.
What the hell did I do or say to him to deserve that asshole treatment almost every time he spoke to me?
Even though I wanted nothing more than to turn around and leave him without uttering a single word, I found myself answering him, except my voice came out all wrong and very hoarse, it was a miracle he understood what came out of my dry mouth “I was thirsty and came to drink some water”
I tried to clear my throat but it wasn’t working, so I gave up and looked around me. Anything to avoid that harsh glare that’s making my heart race and my stomach growl.
Ok, it wasn’t growling because of him, but because I was actually starving too. I can’t remember the last time I ate anything even remotely satisfying. The men I was with barely gave me some granola bars and that’s it.
I heard him come inside and close the door behind him quietly, so I turned around back to face him and watched him warily.
He was wearing grey jogger pants, and a thick black hoodie. His hair was messy as if he was tossing around in bed all night but still very…capturing.
He had a small, metallic ashtray in his hand, which he used to put out his half smoked cigarette with while he blew out the last puff of smoke he must have dragged from it before he squashed it repeatedly against the trey. I noticed there were three other smoked cigarettes in there already.
He was still keeping that glare in place, his eyes never leaving mine.
He put down the ashtray on the middle counter, opened the refrigerator, retrieved a sealed bottle of water and much to my surprise, a casserole of what looked like lasagna inside it.
Was my stomach growling really that loud that he heard it all the way from where he was standing outside?
Without saying anything, he put the bottle for me on the middle counter, then turned around and put the casserole inside the microwave to heat it.
He let the microwave do its magic while he retrieved two plates from inside one of the high cabinets, then he took out two forks from the drawer under the side counter, and walked past me to place them on the dining table.
He placed one plate at the head of the table and the other on the left side of it.
I stood there baffled that he was actually preparing food for the both of us like any normal night. And like we don’t fucking hate each other enough to strangle one another, because that’s exactly what I felt like doing from the moment he spoke to me for the very first time, and I had no doubt; but also no fucking idea why, that he feels the same way about me.
He looked at me from where he was standing by the dining table after he arranged the plates and forks in their places and said coldly “Sit down, hope you like lasagna, because that’s the only thing I can offer you at this late hour”
“I’m not hungry” I said dryly.
Even though I was starving, but I would rather starve then sit down and have a meal with him, all alone, in the dim lights coming from the floor to ceiling windows in that dining room. He didn’t even bother to turn on the lights anywhere. But it worked for him anyway, since his whole purpose in life right now was to keep intimidating me.
And that intimidation reached a whole new level inside me, when he said darkly to me “Are you going to lie about that to my face too, Hope? You should know one thing about me right this second, so you don’t dare to try lying to me one more time and expect me to let those lies pass without retributions. I despise liars, and I love nothing more than to punish them when they do, so they learn never to do it again in my presence”