Celeste's childhood wasn't something she loved talking about. It was filled with nothing but painful memories. Whether they were the ones from when her father, along with her brothers, left, or the ones from her mother's death and her stepfather's a...
tw: mentions of abuse throughout the chapter. please be careful while reading :)
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— 3rd person pov —
BOTH DANTE AND Marco had disappeared into the distance as soon as they had stepped into the apartment, around thirteen minutes ago.
The silence lingering throughout Armani's apartment sounded deafening to fourteen-year-old Celeste who'd been trying so hard to stop the tears dancing across her eyes from spilling.
She had left the school along with her father and brothers forty-four minutes ago, and she hadn't failed to notice how breathless she had grown ever since.
An unsettling touch constantly crawled across her skin, and an invisible pair of calloused hands crept all around her neck that had started to get coated with a thick layer of sweat, tightly squeezing her throat in an attempt to knock the burning air out of her heaving lungs.
Celeste's own hands remained glued to her sides, shaking tremendously as she buried them underneath her body in an attempt to warm them up.
The blood and the bruises tainting her older brothers' skin served as nothing but a reminder of what had once been normal to her. The violence, and the anger, and the hatred. Celeste could almost hear the chilling yells of her stepfather as he warned her against trying to pry on his business once again, and she could almost hear her pleas for him to let go of her as they muffled with her whimpers and sobs.
Celeste curled further into herself as she sought an escape from the memories that her mind wanted to parry. She swallowed harshly to stop a sob from brushing past her lips, and she glanced at Lorenzo through the corner of her eyes.
The seventeen-year-old kid was seated on a chair, his gaze void as he stared at the floor. Armani's tall figure towered Lorenzo as he carefully dabbed one of the wounds with a wet piece of cloth to clean the dried blood.
Lorenzo barely acknowledged the stinging sensation gnawing at his skin and the concerned glances that Armani shot him every other moment. He didn't even notice that his little sister replaced her father, taking a seat on a chair she had pulled and cupping his cold hands with her shaky ones.
The whole world was a blur to Lorenzo. All faces were no more than a haze, and all sounds were no more than a ringing noise to his ears. The constant ticking of the clock reminded him of the identical one that had pierced his ears minutes before he saw Celeste in the morning: when Jack had pinned him against the wall, his calloused hands wrapping around his own neck as he forced him to answer his sister's call and to ask about her place.
Lorenzo momentarily blinked and suddenly, his surroundings shifted.
It wasn't him but rather Celeste who was pinned against the wall, her skin appearing a light shade of red because of how tight Jack was squeezing her neck. She wheezed, shakily reaching for Jack's hands so that she could pull them away. Her attempt didn't last.
