Chapter 107

Third Person

The bed is warm and comfortable. Chloe soundly sleeps, hugging one of her pillows to her body, stuck in a whimsical dream that takes her away from the instant turmoil of her day to day life. She turns over in the bed, tugging the sheets right below, her chin just for it to be yanked off of her body, her body snapping awake.

Philip and Hannah stand before the bed, angered looks on their faces. Philip steps away, her father, ignoring her eyes before she turns to look at her mother, whose arms are crossed over her chest. A scowl is etched into her face. The contempt and distain she holds for her daughter prominent.

Chloe scrambles on top of the bed. She remains silent, still in a state of shock while her father begins to pack her belongings into trash bags. She looks back towards her mother who does nothing, simply glaring at the daughter. She has loved for the last twenty years of her life.

“Mom?! Dad?! What are you doing?” Chloe stammers, finally slipping off of the bed, frantically trying to stop her father. He pushes her away and she falls back, catching her herself on the bed to turn and look at her mother. “Why are you doing this?”

“you really don't know? You really don't know what it is that you have done to humiliate us further?!” Hannah raises her voice at her daughter.

She gets on her face, grabbing her hands and pulling her up from the ground. She pushes her back onto the bed and points her finger at her, hand trembling from the anger that resonates throughout her body.

“I'm going to give you one last chance to open up about what it is that you have done! You already knew how much trouble we were in now that we lost your sister's inheritance and you just had to go and fuck it up more, didn't you?” Hannah screams, her voice bouncing off the walls.

Chloe sobs, bringing her knees up to her chest as her world begins to crumble from all around her. She shakes her head and silently dismisses her mother's claims that she humiliated them, unable to bring herself to open up about her and Reid’s latest failed attempt to sway Logan back to their side.

“You have left me no choice,” Hannah growls. She snaps her fingers and Philip stops what he is doing, reaching into his coat pocket to place a stack of printed photographs under her hand.

Chloe's eyes widen. She stares at the photographs, unable to comprehend what could possibly be enough to get her own mother to turn against her. That's when Hannah begins to toss the photos onto the bed, Chloe’s sins finally revealed to her and the room around them.

They are pictures of her kissing Reid. Photographs of Chloe in clubs with men while she's drunk out of her mind, smirk on her face as she pulls them into the bathroom. Other photo show her leaving the bathroom, clothes and make up messy with love bites, bruised into her neck.

Chloe picks up one of the photos. Her tears fall onto the glossy photograph, her vision blurring by the second. She looks up at her mother, a silent plea for mercy spreading across her face. It is only when Hannah turns away that Chloe finally is able to bring herself to speak again.

“Mom! I know it looks bad, but I promise you that it will never happen again! I will always listen to what it is that you have to say and I promise to never disobey you ever again!” Chloe's pleas fall onto death ears.

The young woman scrambles across the bed, capturing her mother's hand into her own, just for it to be ripped away from her. Her mother slaps her, the stinging sensation, causing more tears to fall from her eyes. Chloe holds her cheek, her loud and violent sobs, leaving her body as her father continues to throw her belongings into the black trash bags.

“You have brought us so much shame. You are a shame to us and our family as well as the pack! We have no choice but to kick you out!” her mother yells. Chloe opens up her mouth to speak again, and Hannah raises her hand, immediately silent, saying, the young woman who looks like a blabbering child on the bed.

“Mommy!” Chloe reverts to her child persona, the grief from the situation, pushing her to an extreme limit. “Mom, please! Please! Please don't do this! I promise that I will be better! Please, I love you so much!”

“Shut up!” her mother yells in her face, beads of spit colliding onto her skin. Chloe tries her best to be quiet, but her sobs give away the devastation that she feels in this moment. “You are not the daughter that I raised. You are an abomination. I never want to see you again.”

The words sliced through her chest like a hot knife to butter. Chloe shakes her head, an overwhelming sense of anger and betrayal, settling into her bones. It festers in the depths of her stomach, replacing the nausea. She felt with an unbridled rage that she assure to unleash at any moment.

But she holds back. She simply wiped her tears away and gets off of the bed. She wears a pair of pajama shorts matched with a light pink cotton shirt. Before her stepfather can finish, destroying her room, packing it up into trash bags, Chloe steals the plastic from him, snatching it away.

She looks down at the trash bags and then looks back at her parents. They wear disappointed expressions on their faces. Her mother shows no sign of remorse, her choice in the matter, definitive and final. Her stepfather, on the other hand, looks painted by this, hidden behind layers of disapproval and irritation.

She wipes away the tears that fall from her eyes. She glares at them, her fist balled at her sides.

In this moment, she realizes that her parents never loved her. They do not even love each other. They simply love power, money, greed, wealth…everything that she has been conditioned to inspire for in her life.

Chloe hates them. She hates everything that they stand for, and she hates that they have turned her into a soul, sucking viper, somebody so self focused and shallow.

“You…” her voice trails off. She raises her finger and points between the two parents, hands trembling and her voice shaking from the anxiety and anger that she feels. “You are going to regret this. I'm going to show you that this is the worst mistake that you could've ever possibly made.”

“We will be waiting to see what you have in plan,” her mother says, in a mocking tone, lacking all of the warmth that it once held towards her daughter. “hopefully this time it does not fail as you have failed in the past. Maybe then, we will see you as our daughter and not an impostor.”

“Fuck you, Mom,” Chloe spits the words out like venom, “you’re a coward.” Her mother simply does not react to it.

Chloe gathers up the trash bags and storms out of her room, rushing down the stairs, slamming the front door of the house behind her.