Their Little Princess | ✔️

Chapter Sixty-Three

"How was school?" Elijah asks as we drive toward the warehouse.

"It was fine," I say. I don't tell him how nervous I've been all day. Partly because I don't want him to worry, but I also want him to think I'm not scared to do this.

He wants me to open up. He wants me to tell him how I'm feeling or maybe what I plan on saying, but even I don't know yet.

"You're strong for doing this, Maddie," Is all he says.

And that's the last thing either of us say on the ride there.

His words run around in my mind until we park outside the warehouse. He opens my door, letting me out and I follow him inside. He talks calmly as we make our way toward where I'm assuming they keep Daniel.

We walk over to a door, Alessandro is standing in front of it, a phone to his ear as he talks lowly and in Italian. He hangs up, "Are you ready to do this?"

No. "Yes."

He nods, typing something out on his phone as he presses his thumb to the print reader on the door, it clicks and he opens it. I'm nervous, I know this is something I have to do for my own journey to healing.

"If he says something mean, you can't make me leave," I say, "I have to do this."

Elijah frowns, but agrees, "Alright, we'll be right here, okay?"

I take a deep breath and walk into the room. If I do this now, it'll be painful for a moment. But it'll be better for me in the long run. I try to remember that.

I'm assuming they can hear everything he's saying. I take a look around at the room I just entered, it's pretty big but I realize there's something like a large window set up. A door off to the side for entry and exiting. Behind the window...Is Daniel.

He watches me intently. I sit down in one of the chair facing the window, watching him as well.

He looks horrible. Like he's lost to hundreds of fights. But he doesn't look like he's on the brink of death. He looks bad. He's bloody and bruised in some places, his nose looks crooked, like it was broken but left untreated, I have enough experience to know that the purple bruises around his body are broken bones that weren't tended to.

Even seeing him makes my heart race, my hand clenches and unclenches, my stomach closes in on itself and I have to breathe hard to get even a little bit of air. I can't tell if I'm angry or anxious. maybe both? I feel a bitterness that I don't remember feeling before. It was only fear when I used to see him. Now it's fear, and something else I don't quite recognize.

"How does it feel?" I ask.

It's not spiteful. I'm genuinely curious. Seeing him in the condition he's put me in so many times. But I don't expect much from him, and so I can't only blame myself for the sting I feel when he responds, "It feels amazing knowing I caused Lorenzo's daughter even a fraction of the pain I feel now."

Except I knew he'd respond that way.

I guess my mom's cynicism might be beginning to peek through on that aspect. Her cynicism, or maybe my mind trying to protect me.

"I don't know how to hate you," I say, finally, "You succeeded in making me think that I don't have the right to feel that way. You made me feel like I deserved everything wrong that has ever happened to me."

"I really don't care—" Daniel begins.

I cut him off, "I had to learn how to turn the pain you caused me into strength. I had to turn the 'trust-issues' into 'self-defense' and put positive labels on all the horrible characteristic you forced me to take on. And now I'll never know what it's like to be truly happy, to be carefree, because thanks to you, I'll always be looking over my shoulder, I'll always hold people at arm's length, I'll never be able to accept people in as family, because you were the only person who I ever gave that privilege to and you ruined me."

He doesn't say anything. And in this moment, I wish I was more like Sandro. I wish I could read expression like a book sitting in front of, or learn to hear the volumes in the silence. But I can't. So, regardless of whether he's actually listening, I continue.

"I try to be happy, but there's always something in me screaming that I don't deserve it. And you had the chance to fill a part in my life that I was missing. You had the chance to give me a proper childhood." 

I say this, because I know it's true. Regardless of how he felt toward my father, he could have still let me have my innocence.

Hurt my father by giving me the childhood my father didn't have the chance to give me.

I'm putting myself into his shoes now, it isn't hard because I know deep inside, I've built enough bitterness and resentment to do so, but that scares me. The thought scares me. The feeling scares me.

Am I like Daniel?

I dig my nails into my palm, "But we all have our reasons. You were probably hurt at some point. Maybe my father hurt you in a way that you were never able to get over. And for that reason...I forgive you. And it isn't because of anything you did. It's because I'm starting to understand that you can't expect a change without changing anything, and I've been holding resentment toward you since I left Seattle, and it hasn't brought me anything for more pain. I understand that maybe the things you did to me weren't my fault, but healing from it is my responsibility. And for that, I forgive you, Daniel. And I'm truly sorry for you. I'm sorry for the pain my family has caused you, and I'm sorry that your life had to turn out this way."

I stand up, "And when you die," I say, my voice is quiet and harsher than I remember it being before, "And you're rotting in hell with my mother," I pause for a moment, my fist tightening as I attempt to ground myself, "Tell her I forgive her. And that I'm sorry I couldn't save her."