Battle To Be Free (z.m) ✔️

Chapter 33

 Alanna's POV 

Demetri got up and began to disappear into the darkness, presumably assuming that I would follow him.

I did.

The first thing that should have sprung to mind when I found out who Dean is was how, why and what the fuck? But, none of those things did. I think it was because I was still caught up in the moment or maybe it was the shock of finding out that your foster brother had killed more people than you could count with both hands.

Despite all of that I still should have asked for answers, but then again who would I have asked?   It’s not like Daniel would tell me and Aria was too delusional to answer even the simplest of things so Demetri was my only option.

I followed him through the backstreets which spiralled of the road leading up to the mental home. I would ask where we were going but he didn’t seem like a very talkative person right now, as he wasn’t talking to me like he had been a few minutes ago. He used to be a chatter box but it seemed like all this had sucked all life out of him but who was I to judge? I bet I was a completely different person when he first knew me. Hell, I bet he was probably thinking the exact same thing about me as I was about him.

He stopped abruptly which caused me to collide with his back. I groaned and rubbed my head, that being the major sore spot, and reprimanded myself for not looking where I was going.

Demetri just scowled. “Don’t do that again.”

I just nodded meekly not finding much use for words.

He started walking again; his strides were long and fast making it almost impossible for me to keep up with him. I started moving in a jog and moved as fast as my little legs could carry me. I glanced around and realised that we were at a park of some sorts. To be honest it was more like a field with a slide in it.

Demetri had stopped once again and the dim light from the lampposts highlighted his features and I noticed for the first time how haunted his eyes were. Any fool would only be able to guess what he’d been through and I wasn’t entirely sure if I wanted to know, but I knew I had to find out.

He sat down on a nearby bench and I followed even though his eyes didn’t stray to mine just yet. We sat there in a tense silence for a few moments.

“After you left things got complicated.” Demetri started to say his voice a dead monotone.

“Father,” He chuckled darkly at the name. “Or Adrian as I now like to call him, didn’t like it. He hated that your mother had taken you back, he couldn’t stand that someone had taken you away from him. Some one that he said didn’t deserve you. Daniel and I were happy that you were gone because even though you didn’t understand it quite yet we knew what the sick fucker was doing was wrong-,” His voice broke a tiny bit.

“Demetri-,” I started.

He shook his head and continued. “Anyway the abuse started to get worse. Not that kind of abuse but it was getting more physical like knives to the skin, more punches that kind of thing. So when I was ten we all made a plan to get out of there. It was a stupid plan really,” He smiled from the memory. “We just literally made a plan to get out of the house not what we were going to do when we got out there, where we were going to get shelter, food, clothes. . .”

He trailed off and his expression hardened. “But we were young and naïve and off into the night we went. We managed to escape Adrian without a problem but he was going to be the least of our worries. After we began waking we soon become cold, tired and hungry and at that point Daniel had become almost like our team leader so when he suggested that we lay down for the night we did just that. The oldest of us was Eli and he was only 12 at the time so how were we supposed to know what type of people go prowling the streets at night?”