WE'RE JUST FRIENDS {C + EDITING}

Chapter 34

"You bitch," I spat,  and my mother recoiled as though I'd slapped her across the face.

She looked down at my phone, at the three dots indicating that Carson had read my text, and was replying. Her eyes, the same eyes I have, shot up to meet mine. "This is for your own good,"

I struggled against the electric band wrapped around my wrist.  I probably would've been fascinated, had it not been slapped around my own wrists. "Oh yeah?" I blew a piece of hair out of my face. "Was having me go through life without parents part of your plan too?"

She leaned forward onto her elbows. "You have parents, I'm right here, and your father," A little wink of something twitched in her eye. "He's around here somewhere,"

I leaned against the chair, my back straight as a pole. "You were dead to me the moment you sent that text to him."

My mom, the familiar face, the only face that I had left, besides my friends. My only family, unless I got my dad out. She had explained it all to me, but it still didn't make sense. It made sense why she fought so hard to get me to believe he was dead, but not that she would turn him in, lie to him, and then purposely skip my grandma's meds.

She leaned back in her seat at that. "Dead to you? Over a boy you met merely months ago?"

I nodded, and leaned forward, "Do you not hear yourself? You turned your husband in to the people you were on the run from, let everyone, including your daughter, believe he was dead, and then you killed your own mother." I paused, as everything hit me. "That was why you moved me here, why you made sure I was always hanging out with the boys, why you left me with Carson. Every single thing that's happened has just been a part of this master plan of yours?"

Silvia said nothing, just read off the text that had buzzed in the middle of my speech, "From: Bastard. What's the word?"

As soon as the words left my moms dark red lips, I sank back in relief. Clever little shit-head isn't he? He knew I wouldn't call myself Princess, no matter how many people they sent after us, no matter how many, I knew there was no way they heard every single conversations. They sure as hell hadn't heard the ones where we laid in my bed in the darkness talking about a million things that could go wrong.

We had a safe word, and unless I gave that word, Carson would know not to listen to them. My mother hit her hand against the desk. "Amelia!"

I squeaked as my mom used my real name. It had been so long, and I never wrote it down, in school, when I had registered, I hadn't even been bothered to write it down, solely because I didn't want teachers to call it out on role.

I had gone by Amelia for most of my life, but my dad had always called me Mia, so after he disappeared, I only went by Mia.

Not disappeared; turned in, I reminded myself.

"Mia, just give me the damn word you and your boyfriend use,"

I leaned back in my seat, smug. I was a little shaken by my mom being in charge of whatever is going on at the moment, but it was time to snap out of it. Yeah Mia, just snap yourself out of the fact that your entire life was a lie.

"If you knew a damn thing about me, you could probably guess the word," I paused. "But wait, didn't someone decide to check out for a good month? Meaning everything that I've come to like or hate could've changed. Too bad, Mother."

She looked at the guards behind me, then to Lucy. "Take her to her cell, until Steven comes and tells us what to do with her,"