Vienna {H.S}

Chapter 13

"What is this?" She repeated, her chin quivering. I looked in between the letter and her broken expression. How do I explain this to her? She does not need to know. It will create unnecessary drama. I could not avoid this conflict though, because by the way I could see her beautiful eyes coat with misty tears, I knew she had read the most important part of the letter.

"You're too young for this." I simply said, keeping on an unemotional mask.

"Bullshit!" She spat, her voice cracking as tears ran down her porcelain cheeks, staining them with dark traces of mascara. "I am not a child, when will you get that through your head?!" She screamed at me, infuriated.

I remained calm, which only seemed to irk her more. She ran her fingers through her messy hair as a sob wrangled its way out of her petite body, "How long have you been hiding the fact that you had a fucking child from me!"

I looked away from her, "Not long."

She suddenly let out a breathy laugh. "All those times you failed to do the simple task of driving me home, you were simply too busy pampering your daughter, and looking after your company. You know what? I bet you only agreed to let me go to public school so you could get me distracted while you attend to your secret family. What about her mother? You've been seeing her too, haven't you?"

When I failed to provide her with an answer she laughed yet again, shaking her head at me. "You're a joke of a father."

That one hurt the most.

After she stung me with her words, a heavy sense of tension hung between us. The silence was deafening. She shook silently, refusing to look into my eyes while I stared at my hands. Never in our lives together have we been so quiet, and with every second of silence passing I felt a weight getting heavier on my chest and a lingering sense of wounding pain.

"I was 20, I had my own gang and we were running a questionable business." I started quietly. It was time that I man up and tell her the full story, the one I had been avoiding the memory of every since it had occurred.

I sighed when she kept her eyes trained on the marble floor. "During that time, I had fallen in love with a woman named Emelia. We were as in love as they come. We couldn't bear to spend a moment apart from each other, and, like the stupid youngsters we were, we were expecting to be together forever. So we.. Never thought what happened would happen.." I tried to contain the bouts of memories that could no longer be tucked away, memories that brimmed over to the edge and left me shaking and gasping for air. Vienna finally looked up at me, she seemed like she was concerned, but quickly replaced that emotion with one of carelessness. "S-Something happened that changed all our plans forever.."

"I don't care." She solemnly cut me off. "I get it, you were in love and secretly had a child. What happened so that you could only recently remember you had one, and why did you ever adopt me in the first place? Why have you been hiding away for all these years, and why did you drag me with you?" She brewed with questions, some of them I could not bear to answer.

I opened my mouth, waiting for the words that would make everything seem okay to flow out. But that never happened.

"With time, you might understand." I murmured yet another cryptic response. This only seemed to anger her more, and she ran up the stairs like she's done many times over the past two weeks, and a loud bang could be heard, indicating that she slammed the door closed.

I followed her, knocking on her door frantically. I never knew what she could be doing behind that door, maybe she was plotting yet another great escape. One she would never be back from.

"Open the door!" I yelled hoarsely, slamming my fist again and again on the door, bruising my knuckles slightly. In that moment, I knew this wooden door wasn't the only barrier between us.