It All Started With Hate

lock | part 1 (e)

"You wanna know what I've always hated about you, Maggie?" Evil mirrored eyes narrowed at me. "You've always been an ungrateful little bitch. I made you into a woman before the cruelty of the world could, Maggie. I taught you how to cater to a man early, so that you could have a better chance at life—"

"Is that what you call it?" I hissed back, glaring back into his eyes. "Is that what you call being such a sick, twisted fuck that you take a little girl's innocence before she can even sing the fucking alphabet?"

The anger made his eyes go wide, just for a second. He slammed a hand onto the cushion right behind my head, making that exact limb bounce before it settled back into place.

"I needed that money. We needed that money. Me, your brother and mother, you. It was a last choice, something that broke my heart to do to my only baby girl, but I had to. Why can't you see that?" he hissed, baring his teeth like a dog. "It was something I did to make sure that we all survived. You were a solution to everything, and if you would have seen that, if you would have been grateful, then we wouldn't be here, today."

He was already spiraling. He was too close. Just a couple of minutes of being in the same space as him felt like suffocation.

I searched my mind for a solution, but tried my hardest not to let it show. My fingers dug into the sofa until the material burned my skin.

The sofa.

My knives. The night Luke moved me in, he had placed knives in several spots around the house, like I asked. It had been so long ago, though, I wasn't sure if he kept them around. I could only hope.

My father was still spewing bullshit. I had tuned him out in order to save a bit of sanity, but I forced myself to return.

"...And, of course, you went and cried wolf," he sneered at me, a familiar rage in his eyes. It was the one I'd seen before he tried to attack me at court after hearing his sentence. "You sent me to prison for ten years. Ten fucking years, Maggie. Do you have any idea what happened to me in there?"

Slowly, I let my hands relax until my palms were flat against the cushions. I had to make it look neutral.

Despite the fear being so strong, I couldn't show it to the monster any longer. I wouldn't.

"Let me guess." I mirrored his rage to the last detail. "You still didn't manage to become half of a man?"

His scowl shifted to something darker. His hand raised to strike me, and that was all I caught before my body was being against the hard floor.

My vision blurred as I recounted the last seconds, but the sharp, pulse in my jaw did it for me. It followed up with an ache, as well as the taste of blood from his punch.

As soon as I shifted, my father swung, again. This time, his fist smashed into my nose so hard, I thought it broken for a moment. It sent me back to the ground with a splatter of blood to my side. Fuck.

"I won't tolerate disrespect, Maggie, you know that I never have." The echo of his footsteps stopped in front of me. "I'll always get it out of you, one way or another."

The ache had grown from not only my jaw and nose, but my entire face, it seemed. The hits hurt like shit, but I wouldn't cry about it. Not in front of him.

"What?" my dad chuckled at my attempt. "Is there something you wanna say—"

I spat at his feet. The blood mixed in made his shoes go red.

"Is that it? Ten years in prison, and those weak ass punches are the best you can come up with?" I swept a hand under my nose, catching some of the crimson droplets with a finger as I chuckled. "Your crackhead of a wife hit harder than that, bitch."