Chapter 2
Grace (present-day)
“Come on pick up,” I whine dialing my best friend’s Mitri’s number. his actual name is Dimitri but when I met him when I was three years old I called him Mitri and it stuck. I’m the only one whos allowed to call him that. I met Mitri the day that my parents died. Were killed by a day drinker. We moved in with my papa that weekend and I used to go back and spend the summer at Mitris until a few years ago when something happened while I was there. I woke up in a hospital bed with two months missing from my memory. That was the last time I went to Dimitris. After that, he’s come to new york for the summer.
“Hey, beautiful what are you doing don’t you have testing today?” Mitri asks his face appearing on my screen and I shrug smiling.
“I’m in between test and haveing lunch what are you doing?” I ask and he flips the camera around to show his group of friends.
“Just having lunch with the gang,” he says and I smile at them. I’ve met them all but I don’t lie people. I’m homeschooled so I don’t have a lot of experience with public interaction and my brothers are super overprotective. As if he heard my thoughts, my twin, Lucas the devil himself walks in.
“Hey Dimitri,” he says sitting next to me.
“Hey, Lucas you taking good care of my best friend?” Mitri says and I blush. Out of all of the men in my life these two are the most overprotective.
“Grace Jaine here for your next round of testing,” Luca says and I groan.
“Shes early what the heck,” I whine and Mitri laughs.
“Call me tonight ok Gracie,” he says and he hangs up.
After testing is all done I go and sit at the piano and just stare at it. The doors locked but I know Lucas is sitting outside the door making sure I’m ok. Tears free fall down my face as I silently cry for no reason in particular. I just cry. This happens a lot. I just cry and feel like my heart is breaking. The only time that this doesn’t happen is during the summer. So I think it’s just the stress of having so much school work to do.
Once I compose myself self I open the door and run to my bedroom. I don’t want to face Lucas. He feels my emotions it’s weird he can feel when I’m in pain when I’m super sad when I’m angry it’s like ESP.
I shut my door and walk over to my huge vanity. I look tired. My hanging Papasan chair has never looked more comfortable. I grab my phone and a soft blanket and go sit in the chair. Thinking I’ll just close my eyes for a few minutes but before too long I’m deep in sleep.
I wake up to my phone chiming. I pick it up. It’s ten o’clock at night. I groan and open the text message.
I hope you had an amazing day hummingbird I called at seven but it went to voice mail your probably sleeping after all the testing you did today. If you want I’ll be free all day tomorrow so we can talk- Mirti sent at 7:59 pm
I look again at my messages and find the one that just made my phone go off.
Tell that boyfriend of yours that you’re not as safe as he thinks. We know exactly how to find you and where your idiot grandfather tried to hide you. And let him know that it wants to keep you alive he had better listen to our demands- Unkown sent at 10:15 pm.
I read the message over and over starting to panic. I can’t breathe. I feel like there is a rubber band around my chest keeping me from being able to breathe. Tears flow freely down my face and the only thing coming out of my mouth is muffled sobs.
The door bursts open revealing all four of my brothers looking panicked. Three of them start looking around the room and Lucas runs over to me.
“Breath grace it’s ok I’m right here breath,” he says rubbing my back in comforting circles. I shake my head and try to pull away from him. They are so irritating. They treat me like I’m going to break apart at any second.
“What happened, Grace?” Kyler asks and I take a deep breath wiping the tears from my cheeks. My hands are still shaking and I can hardly breathe but I’m starting to calm down.
“I had a really bad nightmare,” I lie not looking at any of them. Lucas always knows when I’m not telling the truth but he doesn’t say anything. “You guys can go back to bed I’m fine,” I say and they all leave. Well, all besides Lucas he stays absentmindedly tracing the scar on my arm.
“Lucas, what the matter?” I ask completely forgetting about my problems for a second. He has the look in his eyes that he always gets when something happened and he doesn’t want to tell our brothers but we tell each other almost everything.
“Grace we are moving to North Dakota,” he says and I look at him.
“Why what happened?” I as and he shakes his head.
“Well, papa wants to move back to where momma grew up and Kyler already lives there most of the time after he turned eighteen we just can’t stay here anymore. Besides you just finished half of your senior year so you can pick up at a public school over there,” he says and I shake my head.
“No I’m not going to public school not happening,” I say and he stands up. Looking defeated and just exhausted altogether.
“We'll talk about this in the morning grace I’m not in the mood to argue with you right now. Go to sleep you look exhausted,” he says and I listen, the text message from the unknown person completely forgotten.
