Lost And Found

Chapter 15

Angela's POV

Suddenly she woke with a start, her body drenched in a cold sweat. The sound of their laughter echoed in her ears, getting louder and louder until it was deafening. Her throat ached, the ghost of his grip still lingering, making it hard to breathe. She felt like she was suffocating again, her every breath coming in ragged, desperate gasps, her heart racing in her chest, pounding hard against her bruised and broken ribs.

Angela's hands trembled as she gripped the blanket in a desperate attempt to ground herself, to remind herself she was no longer in that hellhole. Her throat was raw, and she found herself instinctively rubbing at the tender skin, as if trying to erase the phantom sensation of his hands around her neck.

The room was dark and unfamiliar, and for a moment, she panicked, unsure of where she was. But then, a faint beam of moonlight filtered through the curtains, casting a soft glow across the room, and she remembered.

She wasn't there. She wasn't with him. She was safe.

But it was so hard to shake the fear. Her whole body was trembling, her hands shaking uncontrollably. She tried to calm herself, to slow her breathing, but the memory was too vivid, too raw. She could still feel them. She could still hear them.

Pressing her palms to her eyes, she willed the tears back. She didn't want to cry. Crying wouldn't change anything; it wouldn't make the memories go away, wouldn't take away the pain. It would just remind her of how powerless she had been, how powerless she still felt.

The darkness pressed in around her, suffocating, and she felt an overwhelming urge to run, to escape. But where would she go? There was nowhere she could run to, nowhere she could hide from her own mind, her own memories.

She took a deep breath, then another, trying to push away the nightmare that still clung to her every pore. She glanced at the clock on her bedside table—it was still the middle of the night. The house was silent, the only sound the faint ticking of the clock. She wanted to scream, to break the silence, to shatter it into a million pieces just so she didn't feel so alone. But she didn't. She couldn't. She didn't want to wake anyone, didn't want to bring attention to herself.

So with each breath, she counted, "One... two... three... four..." and kept going, counting to ten, and then starting over again. It was something she'd learned to do to survive—to focus on the numbers, to drown out everything else. Slowly, as she counted, her breathing began to steady, the tightness in her chest easing just a little.

She didn't move for what felt like hours, her thoughts swirling, her mind unable to find peace. She thought about her brothers, about how kind they had been to her earlier, how they had tried to make her feel welcome, to make her feel like she belonged. She wanted to believe them, to believe that she could find a place here, that she could be part of this family. But she was so afraid—afraid letting her guard down and getting hurt again.

She thought about Antonio, about the way he had looked at her, the disdain in his eyes, the harshness of his words. She knew he didn't want her here and she couldn't blame him. She could never be the girl he'd described. She was too damaged, too broken. Who would want someone like her? Who could love someone like her?

The tears finally came then, silent and hot, streaming down her cheeks as she lay there in the darkness, her body shaking with quiet sobs. She cried for the little girl she had been, for the pain she had endured, for the innocence that had been stolen from her. She cried for the person she had become, for the fear and the doubt and the uncertainty that plagued her every day. She cried because she didn't know what else to do, to relieve this pain.

Eventually, the tears slowed, and she was left feeling empty, drained, exhausted. She wished she could talk to someone, tell them everything she was feeling, everything she was going through, get it off her chest. But she didn't know how to put it into words, to show someone the scars that ran far deeper than the ones they could see.

She wished she could just forget—forget everything that had happened, everything she had been through. But she couldn't. The memories were a part of her, ingrained in her very being, and she hated them for it.

Figuring it would be impossible to go back to sleep now—not that she even wanted to—Angela got out of bed and turned on the light. She used the bathroom, brushed her teeth, and took a quick shower. She then carefully tended to her bruises and welts as best as she could, wincing slightly at the tenderness. With her hair pulled into a messy bun, she reached instinctively for her contact lenses, only to remember they were no longer an option. Pausing, she glanced at her mismatched eyes in the mirror, a mix of emotions passing over her face, before she made her way out to the balcony.

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