Ready Or Not (The Hunter’s Club #2)

Chapter 37

37

Antisocialist - Asking Alexandria

Age 10

Smack! The sound of my dad’s hand hitting skin is loud in our living room. My mom cries out, clutching her face. Dad looms over her, stomping his foot down on her ribs. I hear a crunch, and my mom screams.

“So you chose being a whore over being loyal?”

I watch from the other side of the couch. Dad came home in a fit of rage, with his face all red and his body jerky. He spotted my mom and laid into her. I’ve seen what my dad does to those who defy him. He makes me watch as he kills them slowly. Why did my mom not know not to cross him?

My mom screams loudly as my dad stomps her in the crotch. I swallow. My body feels like it’s being ripped in half. I want to stand by my mom and my dad at the same time.

I’ve never seen my dad so out of control. His movements are explosive and blind. Usually, everything is planned down to the smallest detail. He’s made me study anatomical charts to read off to him the most sensitive parts of the body, and we take days to test those parts on real people.

Dad stumbles partially, righting himself. “You betrayed me, Olivia.”

“No, please,” she sobs.

“Couldn’t keep Rob out of your inbox, hmmm?” Dad’s voice wobbles, and it makes a cold feeling run through me. Dad is never weak.

My mom cries harder. Dad snaps his gaze to her face. Snot is running down her nose. I want to scream at her to stop. Stop being weak! Dad has never acted like this. Why is she making it worse?

Everything feels wrong. My whole body feels wrong. I feel weak.

Dad raises his boot and crushes it down on Mom’s face.

I watch, blinking slowly. I want to sink back down inside myself and never come back out. Goosebumps run across my skin, and I feel prickles on the back of my neck. Not safe. Not safe!

It’s a while before I realize the room has gone silent. There’s no more sound, and I peek out from behind my hands. Dad is bloody. The floor is bloody. My mom is bloody. My dad’s chest heaves. He turns to me, and the look in his eyes is unsettling. He looks wild. He doesn’t look like my dad.

Not safe. Not safe.

“Where’s her phone?” His voice is pitched high.

Slowly, I glance around. I don’t know.

Dad rustles through her pockets and yanks it out. He waves it in the air. “This is what you get when you’re not loyal, son.”

I swallow.

Dad drops to the couch and starts going through her phone.

I’ve been around enough dead people to know my mom is dead. There’s too much blood. Too much…stuff that should be inside on the outside. I don’t want to look at her face because I don’t think it’s there.

I don’t move. I don’t want to draw his attention.

Dad is quiet for the next week. I move carefully around him, trying to figure him out. Finally, after a week, his behavior changes. His shoulders loosen a fraction, but he never explains anything to me. It’s only years and years later that I learn that after hiring a hacker, Dad found out Mom wasn’t talking to Rob at all. Rob had created fake conversations between the two of them to make my dad mad. To make him weak.

Now, every time I think of impulsiveness, I remember scraping my mom’s body off the carpet. Impulsiveness is never safe, and I decided I was never going to be like that.