Deserving | ✔

Chapter 32

The drive from New York City to Lancaster is the most tensile drive I've had since... Since the time I searched for Stephanie right after she went missing.

'Don't think about it now, Phillip,' A small voice inside my head says and I obey.

Tamara had broke down to tears after planting those words inside my head and I tried to calm her down so that she could tell me what exactly happened. But, I couldn't do anything over the phone and she just asked me to come there before she cut off our call.

And here I am, beating myself up to not think anything about it. And it's very tough... I mean, 'Dad was attacked' is a vast conclusion. It could mean anything. It can mean he had a heart attack, or he was attacked by a vehicle accidentally, or he was attacked by muggers or, my biggest fear, by the same mysterious gang of people who wanted to kill me.

Drops of sweat bead my forehead as my pulse increases to a high note. This is why I should stop thinking about it.

But, like I said, it is very tough to abstain from thinking.

After about three long, painstakingly meagerly passing by three hours, I reach my home. The main door is locked, so I reach for the set of keys my dad keeps in the flower pot. Rubbing the dirt off the key, I insert it and get inside the house.

My heart feels like it is lodged in-between my throat and mouth. The harsh beating of my crucial organ fills the insides of my ear and blocks everything out.

The living room looks just the same, with the old TV and the comfy brown couch I used to snuggle up in a lot of  weekends. It all looks normal. But still, something feels wierd.

I turn to go to my dad's bedroom when I notice it. Stains. There are stains on the footstep of the couch. I drop down to my knees to see what stain it is. I know it cannot be a regular common stain as my dad is pretty OCD about a clean house. He never even lets me sit on the couch without me removing my shoes. So that definitely says that something about this blotch of stain is abnormal.

As the couch is brown in color, the color of the stain is masked. I fish out my phone and turn on the flash option. On shining the light on the stain, I gasp.

The stain is red. Blood red.

And that's exactly what it is. Blood stain.

Oh, shit. Shit! Dad was attacked physically. I know it is his blood. Some son of a bitch had hit him enough to draw blood out. His death will be in my bare hands.

"Aargh!" I shout, letting my frustration out as I punch the couch repeatedly. Who would dare attack someone as sweet as my dad? My worst fear is that he got hit because of me. Because I sent Tamara here and the men searching me used him to hurt me.

No, no! This cannot continue. I have to end it. This shit got way too personal right now. How dare that little piece of shit lay a hand on my dad? He's going to hell by my courtesy.

I quickly run through the other rooms to see if there's any more evidence of him being hit, but there's none. I message Tamara to give me the address of the hospital they are at as I leave the kitchen at last when I bump into a vessel on the floor. Why is there a vessel on the floor?

I see the vessel and it is a pan turned upside down. On lifting the pan, a file presents itself in the open. It's a plastic covered file with a blue coating.

Taking it in my hands, I open it and see a bunch of papers attached inside. The first one is a copy of a police complaint.

My eyebrows braid in confusion as a scan through it. The purpose of the complaint is unclear to me. But as I read through the page, my eyes gorge out by two facts: