*In regards to the comments in the previous chapter, I would just like to say ᶜᵃᶫᵐ ʸᵒᵘʳ ᶰᶦᵖᵖᶫᵉˢ it is not that serious, my friends. We are all just lil breadcrumbs walking the endless sea of possibilities. Rude comments will be deleted. Let's be mature about this. Florence's choices are part of a bigger plot line and I wanted to make it realistic. Or, well, as realistic as a story could get. Don't use cursies or bad wordies ᵒʳ ᴵ ʷᶦᶫᶫ ᶠᶦᵍʰᵗ ʸᵒᵘ ᵃᵍᵃᶦᶰ (ง'̀-'́)ง
The next morning passed in a flurry of activity. I woke up with the flu. My head ached and my throat was sore. The last thing I felt like doing was answering questions, but I couldn't avoid it. My parents and Clancy were too upset to give me a proper conversation. They stared at me with big eyes and my mother occasionally broke down into tears. Clancy was not talking to me either. We didn't get much time to discuss anything because at the crack of dawn, an officer came by to pick us up for another round of grilling questions.
Detective Rossen didn't stop pressing me until four hours later. By that point, I was ready to fall over. Taking an unexpected swim in the freezing Atlantic was the worst thing that possibly could have happened. Question after question, he stared me down with those brown eyes and kept on scribbling things down on a stupid yellow notepad. I answered every question numbly but honestly. Well, as honest as I thought it needed to be. There were certain things I kept from the detective when he pried, such as the whole kissing situation and the Ade thing. And when he asked for a description of Brice, I made sure to leave out that he had an awesome beard.
In other words, I didn't lie. I just withheld information, that's all. The FBI didn't need to know everything. I told Detective Rossen just enough that it only took a moment to ask the next question. But not enough that I believed it was strong enough to actually help capture Wolfe. After all, if he was caught, then I was as good as dead, too. I'd be forced to testify against them in court. The media would eat me up as the doe-eyed innocent teenage girl just trying to protect her parents. They were crime lords. No one would hesitate to give them the death sentence. And if it was under my name that Wolfe Sterling finally passed, then I had absolutely no doubt that some other member of the Crowns would kill me to avenge his death.
Also, I just didn't want to ruin their lives. If it was a Monday, then maybe I would have. But Saturdays was for Netflix (no chill) and FBI investigations, not dismantling infamous American mafias.
The news and the media sources hadn't put out any information about me or the Crowns just yet. Since it was a pending FBI investigation, things were kept very hush hush. They didn't want any hushes to get out until they were absolutely sure Wolfe Sterling and his reign of terror had been put to an end. Also, I think that they understood how panicked people would get once the news had gotten out.
By the time the interrogation was over, it was noon.
My parents and I drove back to Brooklyn in complete silence but as soon as we walked through the front doors of the apartment complex, the phrase 'all hell broke loose' seemed too pathetically trivial to describe the argument that ensued.
"Honestly, Florence!" Mom glared at me as she shed her coat. Her face was pale and her eyes were red around the edges. "I leave you alone for one hour. One hour! And this is what you get yourself into? Are you trying to get yourself killed? What is wrong with you, Florence? We raised you better than this-"
"I never want to pick up the phone and hear that my daughter has been arrested again!" Dad fumed. He had a lot more to say than my mother did. "Is that clear, Florence? This is madness! What have you gotten yourself into? You are 18! You have your entire life ahead of you. You can't just go around completely screwing it all up like your actions won't have consequences. Do you understand how much trouble you're in? Do you have any idea what your mother and I went through the past few days? Goddammit, Florence. You're better than this. You know better than this. We taught you better than this-"
"I know, and I'm sorry. I don't know what more I can say. I messed up, alright? I messed up and I take full responsibility for what happened. Ground me. No, seriously. Tell me I'm grounded until I move out, Dad. You need to punish me, please. I deserve it. I'll gladly take out whatever consequence you have."
"Fine. You're grounded until you move out."
"Dad!"
"What? Florence, you told me to say that-"
"The Atlantic Ocean!" My mother clutched her chest like a little old lady who was startled. "Well, I never! What excuse could you possibly have to justify this, Flo? We have a business to run, we have lives to live. The coffee shop is damn near bankrupt, your father and I have enough things to stress about without you adding on to it. Simon, tell her how disappointed we are. I'm going to lose my temper if I do it."
Dad looked at her. "Fiona...maybe we made a mistake."
"What do you mean?" Mom's eyebrows furrowed. She did that when she was getting annoyed. My dad and I both took a step back.
"Well...." He started off slowly. "Don't you think we had a part in this too?"
"Yes." I answered for him, nodding eagerly. "You totally did."
Mom glared at me. "Florence, be quiet. I still don't understand what you're inferring, Simon."
"Well!" Dad repeated. "If we're going to be honest here, then let's go all the way. Florence deserves a punishment, I agree, but we do too, Fiona. After all, if I had never signed the contract, we never would have been in this situation to begin with. It was our responsibility to protect our daughter, not the other way around. We should have gone to the authorities. Let's face it, we messed up too. We failed as parents and we're have just as much fault as Florence does."
I pointed my finger at my father and grinned. "Now I like the sound of that. I guess we're all grounded until we move out-"
"Be quiet, Florence!" Mom said. She turned to my father. "You do have a point..."
Dad looked at me. "Florence, everyone makes mistakes. We do, too. And your mother and I forgive you for what you did. I mean, you were with Wolfe Sterling, after all and I suppose most of what happened was caused by his reckless actions rather than yours. We'll all figure this out, okay? I love you both."
"We love you too, Simon." Mom answered, giving me a weak smile this time. "Oh, and Florence..."
"I'm still grounded until I move out, right?"
"Absolutely."
I smiled this time, feeling a lot better. "Thanks, Mom."
"That means no more adventures, okay?" Dad asked sternly. "I mean it, Florence. The only places you are allowed to go is the coffee shop, home, and to school. Just those three destinations and nothing else. No hanging out with Ade, either."
As if. My parents still had no clue what transpired between Ade and I, but the thought of him brought back some of that ache I felt before.
"What about Clancy's house?"
"No. Speaking of Clancy..." Mom rose one perfectly arched eyebrow.
My stomach sank. "Oh no."
"You can deal with her." Dad nodded. "She was more upset about this than we were. And honestly, I think that the conversation you're going to have with Clancy is a worse punishment than any grounding sentence could be."
"Go do something productive, Florence." Mom began heading towards the kitchen. "Your father and I need to discuss some things. The attorney arrived in Manhattan this morning and we want to speak with her privately before getting your take on what happened. But no more adventures, remember? Don't even think about leaving the apartment, Florence. We'll find out and you'll be in so much more trouble..." She turned on the coffee machine and began to fill up the pot with water.
"We'll discuss this more at dinner time." Dad nodded again. "Go help Samantha in the coffee shop. Don't even think about wandering off somewhere else. The police department was nice enough to send over several officers to be stationed outside the shop and the apartment complex. You're going to be under surveillance all times, okay? So lying is basically useless. Oh, and one more thing...Fiona?"
"Detective Rossen asked us to give you this." Mom put the pot of water on the base of the coffee machine and shuffled through her purse. She pulled out a black burner phone and handed it to my father, who handed it to me. "It's equipped with a GPS system so the FBI can keep track of you. The only thing the phone allows to go through are phone calls within the state, all monitored by the government. Just a precaution, so no one can contact you with unsolicited messages. If Wolfe Sterling tries to contact you, they can pick out his location as long as the method of contact lasts for at least one minute. Give me your other phone, Florence."
"Mom..." I frowned at the burner phone distastefully.
"Florence." Dad said in his no-nonsense voice. "You're a guest of the state now, which means one single piece of incriminating info can land you a very long time in a delinquency facility. This is just a precaution, like your mother said. We're protecting you, Florence. Are you really going to sacrifice your safety for little green text messages and Instantgram and whatever stupid social media website you kids are into?"
"Instantgram? Did you just say Instantgram?"
"The point your father is trying to make," Mom held out her hand as I clutched my real phone for dear life. "Is that nothing is more important than making sure you are safe. Whatever it takes to achieve that, we will not hesitate to do. The fact at hand is that you are in danger, Flo. They landed us in very hot water. We made enough mistakes and your father and I would rather not make them again."
"If we had just tied them all up in neat little bundles and threw them off a cliff like I initially opposed, we wouldn't be in this situation, either. Murder is the perfect family activity-"
"Don't start." Dad shook his head and also held out his hand. "You can't talk yourself out of this one."
Disgruntled, I handed him my real phone and pocketed the burner one.
"One more thing." Mom went back to fixing up two cups of coffee. "Detective Rossen also asked us to allow a federal agent to accompany you until the capture of Wolfe Sterling and his friends have been officialized. He would be present for 24 hours a day, of course, except for bathroom breaks which still would be overseen." After a moment, she continued. "We agreed-"
"Mom!" My mouth dropped open. They were treating me more like a criminal than a victim. I was neither one of those things. A federal agent as my new best friend? Some overprotective stranger watching my every move? Busting in through the bathroom door if I took one second too long and catching me mid-pee? Would he have to accompany me to the grocery store to buy tampons and Twizzlers? What if he offered to go to the store and buy the tampons and Twizzlers for me? As much as I appreciated free tampons and Twizzlers, the cons outweighed the pros. They were so overprotective. Wolfe wasn't going to show up and murder me in cold blood, although I wanted to do that to him.
"For your safety, Florence." Dad said sternly. "The Feds don't mess around. They see you as a vital source of information. Your testimony in court is the only thing they care about, but we care about you. After three years, the government finally has a lead. They're not going to let you go that easily. Think about it. You could be the girl who put away the most dangerous criminal organization in the country, if not the world. And we have no idea what the Crowns are capable of. They will come after you because you are a witness. We are good people, we're not criminals, Florence. We are not like them. End of discussion."
I took a deep breath. "You know what the funniest bug in the world is, in my opinion?" Without waiting for a response, I continued. "I think it's the roly poly. It's such a funny little bug. The name rhymes, too. Roly poly. A poly that's roly. A pole that roles. They're so tiny and curl up in an even tinier ball. I think that's very cute. They're so funny. I love roly polys. I accidentally ate one with I was five, though, because it got attached to my oatmeal cookie and I wasn't looking. I felt very bad about it afterwards and I thought about giving it a little poly funeral, but I forgot. Poly funerals aren't very much fun for a five year old, especially when Sesame Street comes on at eight and you ate said roly poly at 7: 59 on a Friday night. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I can take care of myself and I don't need some hoity-toity bodyguard to protect me-"
"Did you just say hoity-toity?" Dad questioned.
"Go to your room." Mom ignored us both and ran a hand through her brown curls. "Officer Preston will be here at 8 tonight. And he will be your warden for however long it takes to put those boys behind bars, whether it takes two days, a week, a month, or five years."
"He's not dangerous." The words slipped out of my mouth before I could think about it. Even as I said it, I knew it wasn't true. Well, kind of. Wolfe was dangerous, but it wasn't the kind of dangerous my parents were thinking.
Before they could lose their temper again, I tucked the jar of Twizzlers sitting beside the coffee machine under my armpit like a football and made a hasty exit to my room.