New Beginnings

Prom Night II

The crushing pressure on her chest as her heart rate sped up make it damn near impossible to fully focus.

Hiram was here in Riverdale. Her absolute worst fear had finally emerged in full force. Everything she had been desperately trying to avoid and evade in the past few weeks, her mistakes and her errors over the past 7 months had finally caught up with her.

Finally releasing a trembling breath she hadn't realised she was holding, she gulped down the mass of air she had inhaled and set her racing thoughts of horror aside to plan her next steps, and she had to be incredibly smart about it.

Hiram's discerning tone still rang fresh in her mind, his signature deadly tone that she was all too familiar with, and if her relationship with him and past experience were anything to go by, he was minutes away from callously snapping Hermione's neck with no remorse.

Her heart was leading her to alerting Fred and FP but her head telling her to handle this herself, but be prepared, and given that no chaperones or students were being prohibited from entering the backstage area, she only had one option, and the longer she remained there, the longer Hermione's life remained in peril.

Taking a fragile Hermione violently by the hair, Hiram mercilessly dragged her back into the living room, ignoring her cries and whimpers of pain and pleas to let her go, before carelessly pushing her into the couch as if she was a rag doll, chuckling smugly as she held her hand onto the forming bruise by her eye. Seeing her in such distress was sickly satisfying him.

"W-what did you mean?" Hermione weakly demanded to know through whimpers as a tear fell down her eye. "When you said, long time no see?!" She added in panic, confused by the inside and familial conversation that occurred between her ex and best friend.

Oh how little she knew, Hiram thought to himself as a self satisfied chuckle escaped from the pit of his stomach.

"You were always so damn clueless." He patronisingly sneered before reaching to brush her cheek, smiling with pride as she responded by recoiling in fear and flinching from his hand before impulsively pushing it away herself.

"You mean, she hasn't told you?" He harshly teased.

"Told me what?!"

"That low rent skank? She used to be my property." He callously announced, watching the colour drain from Hermione's tear filled face as she slowly processed this alarming revelation

"What?!" Hermione tearfully questioned in disbelief.

"Small world right?" He snickered. "She used to work for me, made a good buck off of her too. I gave her everything, really made her into something. And how did she repay my kindness? Robbing me out of $500,000."

"Y-you pimped her out?" Hermione stammered in disgust, her breath hitching in her throat as she swallowed just how truly vile Hiram was. "Of course you did, I don't even know why I'm surprised! She scoffed in contempt. "You'd plan drug deals over the phone while your own daughter sat playing with building blocks right next to you. You know, no bounds!" She concluded in fury.

The very mention of Veronica coming so callously out his ex's mouth sparked an involuntary surge of rage to rip through him. He closed his fist tightly as he averted his gaze towards her, his sharp jaw clenching as he stared her down with those ominous eyes.

"I had no intention of tracking you down, you pathetic, double crossing bitch!" He spat out, watching her tense up under his scorn. "I was just gonna find that whore, snap her scrawny little neck and move along. Once that low life trailer trash dumb hick Brody got their bastard to stupidly give us details of their whereabouts before I put a bullet in his head-"