Mission: Impossible (Harry Styles)

Chapter 23

I awoke from what felt like years, the steady sound of beeping disrupted my slumber. I couldn’t really tell if I was awake or if I was dreaming. I felt so numb and my vision was so blurry. My head was pounding but the rest of my body felt okay. I had definitely been sleeping for days.

                I blinked a few times and rubbed my eyes until my vision was somewhat clear. I was in a hospital room. Usually, hospital rooms were bland and made me feel depressed. But this one was different, it was adorned with hundreds of flowers and balloons. Some printed with ‘Thank You’ messages and others said ‘Get Well Soon’. 

                My memory struggled to come back to me. I remembered everything that happened at the arena and the horrible things I discovered that day. But I just don’t remember how that day ended or how I even ended up here for that matter.

                Mr. Dagger’s face haunted my thoughts. The fact that he was my uncle and I killed him was still so hard to process. But what he did to my mother was the hardest to digest. My stomach churned at the thought of it. She didn’t deserve any of what she went through. She was a hero who sadly made a lot of enemies.

                Even if I would have left with my uncle like he planned, he would have still blown the place up. It sickened me. How could someone be so cruel? Especially someone who was related to me. I then saw why my dad hid that part of the family from us. He was ashamed and wanted to keep us safe. I just didn’t understand why they hadn’t been caught a long time ago if my dad knew about it. I still had so many questions for my dad. But I admire the fact that he did so much for me and my mom. Although, he couldn’t protect my mom, he was still my hero.

                I felt a light knock on the door that soon revealed the hero himself. “You’re awake,” he whispered and then took a seat at the edge of my bed.

                I sat up against the headboard, “How long have I been here?”

                “About 2 days,” he responded casually as if being unconscious for 2 days was nothing.

                “W-what happened? I don’t remember much after I got that last little girl out of the arena.”

                “You barely made it out before the place blew up. You literally flew up in the air and hit the ground hard. You had a minor head injury but it’s nothing my little spy can’t handle.”

                I smiled at the nickname. He hadn’t called me that since I was a little girl. “Dad, I’m sorry for disobeying you and sneaking out.”

                “Don’t worry about it. I should be apologizing for underestimating you. I just didn’t want to let you go because I was afraid of losing you too,” he looked outside the window and I could tell he was thinking about mom. “I’m sorry you had to find out about everything this way. I’m sorry WE had to find out this way.”

                “You didn’t know about all of that?” I questioned.

                “I first found out about my family’s…business when I was about 17 years old. Which was around when I met your mother.  We were just good friends around that time. She was in England for a mission kind of like yours and she was supposed to find my family and stop them. I had no idea that they had been doing it for so long. I was shocked, afraid, and ashamed. I didn’t want anything to do with them. So I helped your mom catch them and we both stopped them. We thought we had stopped them for good. That’s when I decided to run away and join your mom at the academy. I had never been happier in my life. Yet I felt sorry for myself because I didn’t have a family anymore. But the academy soon became my family,” he sighed as he stood up and started playing with the blinds on the windows. “I should have been smarter. I should have known my brother was smart enough to bring the family name back to life. He was at the academy the whole time and I gave him access to everything he needed. Including your mother…”