Shot in Love and Crime (DNF)

Chapter 43: Mother

George POV.

Ever since those people had broken into the mansion and harassed me the other day I’ve noticed Dream has been avoiding me. I didn’t mind it of course, dealing with one less of my captors was definitely a plus in my books, but it seemed strange. Every time that I did see him though he seemed to be constantly glancing at me under his mask, making me feel awkward.

Karl and Bad had been spending more time with me though, often standing around near me when I do whatever cleaning or maintenance of whatever that I was assigned to do and they’d chat with me. If the work seemed to be taking ages they might even help me, and I always appreciated everything that they both did.

Another thing that I noticed was that almost every day I would hear long torturous screams coming out of the basement. Whenever I brought this up to literally anyone they’d tell me to ignore it because it wasn’t any of my business, so I did as they told me.

Believe me, it was difficult to ignore, almost every day I heard screams of pain for hours on end, so I just got into the habit of sneaking out into the garden and reading. Several people did notice and would keep an eye on me, but none of them ever tried to stop me, not even Dream when he watched me walking out with a book tucked under my arm in front of him.

Today though, I was lucky. Karl had invited me to his room to play some video games. We were sitting on the bed each with a controller, surrounded by junk food, and chatting to each other about nothing in particular. Every so often we’d fall into silence as we began concentrating on whatever we were doing.

“So you moved back here after living in the UK for a couple of years, right?” Karl asked curiously, and I just glanced over at him before nodding. I had found that in a lot of our conversations Karl didn’t share too much information about himself, something about it being confidential. Sometimes it even felt like we were having the same conversations about me over and over again.

“Yeah, right after I graduated we moved, actually. Our flight was the day after my graduation ceremony” I answered, wondering if I'd told him this before. “I had been wanting to move back for ages.”
His grey eyes looked over every detail of my face, all the while I concentrated on beating the level in front of me. “Why did you want to move back after leaving?” He asked.

“Well… to be honest…” I hesitated to tell him, worrying about the fact that he might relay this information to Dream and use it as blackmail. But I knew that Karl wasn’t the type of person to do that. I trusted him, at least a little.

So I told him. “I left a lot of friends in L’manburg, I cut off contact with them all to make it easier for me to move. One of them was Clay, my boyfriend. I loved him more than anything, but didn’t think a long distance relationship would work and so I broke up with him.” Tears pricked at the corners of my eyes as I said that, lowering my controller down slightly as I did.

The brunette was still examining me, but then his face brightened up with a caring smile. “That’s cute George. But it’s been seven years, hasn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I nodded. “I know that he’s probably moved on with his life; gotten a stable job, been married, started a family. I just want to be able to see him again. I miss him.”

My last few words were a quiet whisper and for a moment I thought that he hadn’t heard it. But Karl responded in a cheery tone. “Maybe I could help you find him!” My eyes widened at the suggestion, feeling surprised that I even heard it, but when I glanced over at him for confirmation it was clear he had said it.

“We have tons of people who are great with technology!” He beamed proudly as he explained it to me. “All that they need is his name and they could find his phone number, his bank account, his address, anything!”
“That could work.” I responded. “But would Dream let me do that?”

“Dream doesn’t need to know.” Karl smiled mischievously, his eyes glimmering with delight as he said. “Tonight I could talk to a member of our tech team and ask them.”
“Thank you Karl.” I breathed out, pulling him into a hug without even thinking, but then I pulled away just as quickly once I realised what was happening.

“But the question still remains.” The brunette began. “If you missed Clay for all of these years then why didn’t you move sooner?”
“I didn’t have any money. Anything that my parents had they spent moving us there.” I began, averting my attention to my hands as I spoke.

After taking a moment to slowly exhale I continued. “When I finally did make enough money I was planning on moving, but then my dad got into a car accident, and I couldn’t leave my mother alone right after that.”
“So you stayed longer?” Karl guessed, and I just nodded in response.

He responded with a quick hum, saying ‘That is sweet of you George,’ but then he hesitated before continuing. “Why didn’t your mother move back with you then? Why did you come on your own?”

“I don’t know,” I sighed. Thinking about her properly for the first time in a while. “I guess she must have known about my father owing money to the mafia.” As I said that out loud I came to a realisation. My mother knew about the mafia, but didn’t think to tell me. If she had told me about the mafia then I would have never moved, and I would have never been kidnapped.

“George?... George?... George!”
“What?” I responded with a harsh sounding growl, my gaze snapping up from my hands to see Karl had moved closer, now having his hand holding my shoulder.
“You zoned out.” He responded in a quieter tone, making me instantly feel bad for yelling.

“Are you feeling okay?” He continued, once again examining me with his eyes to see if anything in my face gave away how I was feeling. “Do you feel sick?”
“No,” I responded, maybe a little too quickly. So I paused for a moment as I stood up and took a deep breath. “I am just feeling tired. I’m going to go to my room.”

“Oh,” Karl said in a sad voice. “Okay then.” I glanced over my shoulder as he turned the game we were playing off, followed by turning the TV off. “Have a nice sleep George.” Without a word I walked out of the room and shut the door behind me, not even lifting my gaze once as I walked to my bedroom.

Nobody was around, leaving me with my thoughts of my mother. I was so upset that she knew about what my father had gotten into and didn’t tell me. Even when she knew that I was going to the place where the mafia was she didn’t explain anything. I couldn’t believe she’d rather keep it a secret so my dad stays seeming like a good person instead of telling me the truth.

These thoughts flooded through my brain as I continued through the hallway. But the moment I got to my room I collapsed on the bed and began pathetically sobbing.
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