Chapter Three - In the end

JULIET POV (EIGHTEEN )

I look at the bruises on my neck, my gaze traveling from the dark finger marks to meet my dead blue eyes in the mirror.

I've now been choked more times than I care to think about. That seems to be the abuse of my father's choice. He chokes me until I pass out.

Sometimes, I stand over his sleeping form, and I want to kill him. I want him to know what it feels like when you have someone's hands wrapped around your throat and have the life squeezed out of you, wondering if this would be the last time you're alive.

He calls me whore. Slut. Tramp.

Your mother's daughter.

For three years, I've been living in agony.

I pushed Alyssa away because she would have seen what state I was really in.

I've become the true definition of the nickname Ice Queen now.

I don't even have a friend anymore.

What pisses me off the most is that it wasn't even hard to discard of her. Just a few unanswered calls and texts. Giving her the cold shoulder at school. Before I knew it, she had new friends, her eyes refusing to meet mine in the classes we share or when I see her in the hallways.

A friendship spanning thirteen years just thrown away. Just like that.

It seems like my mother was right after all.

Friends stab you in the back.

I wish I could resent my mother a little more. If she didn't die, I wouldn't be so utterly alone. She could have protected me from my father's wrath.

Instead, she chose to forget her sorrows by drinking a handful of sleeping pills and then taking a bath, ultimately drowning to her death.

And I had to find her lifeless body.

When I think back on that day, I get even more angry. The turmoil inside me is boiling, and it's threatening to spill over.

Yet I keep all the fury carefully bottled inside me, just waiting for the day when I can finally unleash all the blackness from within.

The Morettis has it coming.

All of my despair starts with them, and that is where it will end.

They have infiltrated my bloodstream, and they flow through me, keeping me hostage and obsessed.

I want to destroy them. Learn their weaknesses and use it against them.

Everything that I am was built on what the Morettis has done to my mother. They're the reason she took those sleeping pills, the reason she died.

It's because of them that my father is living in a constant state of drunken haze, wanting to hurt me at every corner because I remind him too much of my mother.

I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night, panic clawing up my throat, and I can't breathe. I die over and over, oxygen struggling to get past my windpipe.

I can feel my father's hands on my throat, and sometimes I wish that he got the job done. I wish that he would put me out of my misery once and for all.

But I fight for my life every single time. I want to live. Even if it's only to make the Morettis suffer.

My cheerleader coach beams at me as if she's the one that just got the biggest news.

"This is what you wanted, right!" She laughs excitedly as I stare at the piece of paper in my hand. "With your academic score, they're offering you a full ride!"

My hand trembles slightly as my eyes go over the words in slight disbelief. I worked my ass off for this. When kids were out partying and dating, I was behind my books. I was working out, spending hours at the cheerleading club perfecting my technique.

But this is more than what I could've asked for. A full ride? Good things like this don't happen to me.

"All they want is a photo op with you wearing the uniform and signing the papers. " She claps her hands like an excited toddler. "I mean, it's not the best cheerleading program. You could have done way better than them, but it's a great school."

It's the best cheerleading program for me. Because it's where the Moretti triplets currently are, and cheerleading puts me straight in their path.

I've received offers from schools that win national championships, but I was never interested in them. Cheerleading has always been a tool to get me out of my father's house. And I'm really good at it. There are even fan pages dedicated to me, but all of that is just background noise.

I carefully fold the letter and put it it back in its envelope as of I'm not freaking the fuck out. I smile at my coach, even if it's fake. Over the years, one learns exactly how to convince people that you're happy.

"You can let them know I accept."

Coach squeals and hugs me tightly. I fold my arms around her because that's the right thing to do to fit in, even though I hate physical contact. I much rather prefer the high five.

But this is the end of an era for me.

I'm fucking leaving this dreary city behind, with a full ride. I couldn't have asked for better.

This is my chance to start over where nobody knows me.

And my chance to destroy the Morettis.

Like their parents destroyed mine.