Devil's Angel ° {K.M}[Rewriting]

{000}

Pilot
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"Oh, I'm in pieces it's tearing me up but I know a heart that's broke is a heart that's been loved."
—Ed Sheeran {Supermarket Flowers}
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Silence permeated the vehicle and its four inhabitants. Grayson Gilbert spared his daughters a glance from the rearview, his wife, Miranda, peeking at him from the corner of her eye before sighing softly, fingers drumming an anxious rhythm on her thigh. Half an hour ago, Elena had called her, near tears, asking her to pick her up on the outskirts of town—far from the Forbes' resident where she should have been. The mother had been angry, at first, before then disappointed but worried. Grayson had first opted to go by himself but Miranda felt too restless to stay at the house and wait with Jenna and John. 

So, here they were, part of the way home and she felt it was enough to break the silence. "So," she twisted in the passenger seat to look back at her girls, "what happened?" Neither would look at her, each stubbornly facing their own respective windows. "Girls—" Miranda was cut off as Grayson turned back to glance at Elena, "Girls, you owe us an explanation at least." The sisters exchanged a glance but as Elena sat forward, hands fidgeting in her lap, headlights too bright lit up their vision. "What—Dad!" 

Her scream was followed by her sister's and mother's as the pair of headlights whipped out of the oncoming lane into theirs. "Grayson!" Challenged with hitting the oncoming vehicle head-on or swerving, the father chose the latter in his panic, hoping that whatever lay in front of them would be a safer fate. For better or worse, it gave them time. Underbrush and thin trees bent and broke under the weight and force of the car barreling along the side of the road, the zig-zagging vehicle that had driven them off the road in the first place long gone and onto another, unfortunate victim. 

The screams of the car's inhabitants echoed inside as Grayson struggled to regain control, realizing all at once that maybe a head-on collision would have been more merciful—much quicker than being trapped in a car at the bottom of a river. The impact was rough, his head snapping forward to slam against the leather of the steering wheel hard enough that his vision blurred. The father was dazed, breathing harshly over the sound of water seeping in through the cracks and crevices. "S-Shit." He swore, blinking rapidly against the spots in his vision as he pried his fingers from their white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel. 

"Miranda? Girls?" It hurt to turn his neck to look at his wife but he dismissed the pain as he saw her motionless, head resting on the window. He reached for her as he twisted further to look at his daughters. Elena was unconscious as her head lay lolled onto her shoulder. She breathed shallowly, however, lessening the bubble of panic in his chest. "Dad?" A whisper of his name and a graze of a hand on his shoulder. Grayson screwed his eyes shut as he shadowed his eldest's hand with his, squeezing it tightly. "Yeah, baby, I'm here." He heard her shuffling before she was leaning forward, pressing her head into his shoulder.