Chapter 4. Suffering and determination

*WARNING: MENTIONS OF ABUSE AHEAD. IF NOT COMFORTABLE, PLEASE CONTINUE TO NEXT CHAPTER. *

"Who do you think you are?! You're just a burden to us!!!" A middle aged man, with dark hair, face covered with wrinkles and lots of facial hairs, clearly showing his aging, thundered.

Suddenly, Roselia was kicked on her side. "You little lass, why don't you just give it to us?" a petite, who a lot stronger than what she seemed, screamed right into her ears while gripping Rose's black locks tightly.

Roselia cried painfully. Not from the hitting but from the rage that was building up inside her. Somehow she managed to get a pan from her left side and realized she was in the kitchen and was ready to give a damn hard blow onto the woman

She swinged her hand and the waited for the loud sound of collision and painful scream of the evil woman when....

Roselia jolted awake. "Was it a dream?" She thought while wiping her cold sweat that ran down her forehead onto her cheek. She lazily fell back and closed her eyes. She thought onto her situation and the dream. Oh, how she wished she would do whatever she was about to do in that dream.

Roselia wasn't an idiot. She clearly knew, now that the cops were involved, then her supposed to be parents will be here anytime. And when they knew that she ran away taking away what she was supposed to give to them, the scene absolutely won't be pretty. She sighed, clearly annoyed.

"Stupid vampires. Why the hell did they have to chase me? Everything was well. I was safely going to Academy of my dreams. Everything was going according to the plan. Those scumbag parents of mine would never let me go to study in the academy. It was a perfect plan of runaway. And now I've to go to that hell hole, everyone calls my home." Roselia continued to curse her life, fate and luck. But, she couldn't even curse in peace, as the massive obstacles of her life, entered through the threshold of the room.

She groaned internally but, kept a straight face towards them. The two people, who entered just stared at her with the same expression as Roselia, on their faces. Anger no, it can be categorized into rage. The intense staring contest was broken by officer Wang, who entered after the old couple.

"Miss Manhattan, your family is here to take you." She scoffed a bit, unnoticeably of course.

"Family? You should spend a day in place of me to know about my family." she thought internally. All the while, the couple just glared at her with rage burning eyes. She wanted to just disappear or just walk out from here right now. But, there was no chance.

This officer would rather give her a death sentence than sending her with them. At this point she would even agree to experimented on, rather than going to home with them. Yeah, hell would be much better than what she faces there.

"Mr. Manhattan, she is fine. The doctors declared she can go home, but you have to keep her away from any kind of violence. We are very sorry that your daughter had to face such a thing and suffer from it." Wang said with a lot of concern laced in his voice.

The man, Robert Manhattan, Roselia's so called father, gave the officer a sweet but, weak smile. "Nobody knows what can happen. I'm thankful that she's alive." Saying this, he turned towards Roselia and gave a smile.

Roselia immediately grimaced. His mouth and smile can be believable but, the gaze in his eyes clearly told what his true intentions are. He certainly was happy seeing her alive, if not, they will probably be begging on road side. He was such a great actor. "Maybe, I picked up their acting at some point." she thought when, she remembered what she did a while ago.

Wang immediately smiled brightly. "Yeah. But, I've have to tell you. We would expect her assistance when we solve the case. Hope you will be cooperating with that in future." He continued.

This time the woman, Claire Manhattan, spoke up. "Its fine. She would definitely help you with this." Roselia was surprised when the woman's voice cracked a bit saying that. "Exactly, how much perfectly can they act? Evan the Oscar lady would cry and go off from them seeing their acting." She internally thought.

Wang, unknown of all truth, kept on explaining them about the situation. Roselia continued to fear what was coming when she gets home. The married couple were listening to the officer while occasionally glaring at the girl sitting on hospital bed with a big bandage over her head.

"Thank you so much, officer. We can never be more thankful for you saving her. Now, we would like to take her home." Robert spoke out and Roselia's heart dropped to her stomach. If she wasn't lying on the bad, she could have sworn that it would leave her body through her feet.

The couple fixed her with a death glare and she understood the meaning clearly. There was no chance to escape now.

After that everything happened in a blur and soon she was alone with the couple in their car. Everything was eerily silent as she sat in the backseat, afraid. Tears almost welled up in her eyes when she saw their house coming into view. She never wanted to see it again in her life. As soon as the car stopped, Roselia bolted out of the car, trying to escape into the her room, her safe haven.

Her sister, Sophia Manhattan, the only daughter of Manhattans, was seated at the couch. Eating snacks and chilling out watching television. And also waiting for Roselia. Roselia quickly dodged her and ran into her room. Quickly locking it. She panted and slid down the door. After few seconds. there was a loud banging at her door.

"Hey, you pathetic bi*ch, open up! How dare you try to run away from here. You are not leaving anywhere until you give us what we want." Sophia shouted from outside, while still kicking and banging the door. Roselia closed her eyes to control herself. Did her birth parents didn't have time to find good care takers for her? Why did they leave her with these money swindlers to suffer? Why? Just why?

"Sophie darling, you should go and sleep.You will get dark circles if you stay up late at nights. Tomorrow is your joining. Go prepare and check if you got everything. No need to deal with all this." Claire spoke out addressing her daughter. The last sentence was literally dripping with so much venom, one could shake in fear hearing the dialogue to whoever it was directed to.

"Fine, mom" Rose heard footsteps receding. But, she heard a pair of footsteps approaching her door. She held her breath. "Roselia, you really upset me. I'll deal with you tomorrow." she heard Robert say and soon the footsteps left and she took a deep breath.

She crawled towards her bag, which was given to her back safely with all her belongings. She took a neat and clean white colored envelope and turned it around. "High Academy" was written neatly in cursive at the front of the envelope. She took out the letter and looked at the date of her joining. It was day after tomorrow. And she didn't know how she would even get out of here.

Roselia clearly knew they wouldn't allow her to go to the Academy, that will steal their chance to snatch her assets and money. She passed the test with impressive score and got accepted with a scholarship for her entire study there. Her dream. She can't afford to leave this chance. So, she made a perfect plan for running away and joining the academy and live there. But, all of that went under the drain.

She looked out of the window to the night sky. The sky was shining with pretty stars. Tears welled up in her eyes when she saw it. She also wanted to shine like that.

"Can't life just once be fair with me? What did I do to deserve this? Do I really deserve this suffering? No, I would not let that happen. I'll show them what I've got. Roselia isn't weak." She determined her mind.

With a new found determination, she set everything up. She wasn't going give up on this opportunity. This time she had to make it out of here.

Unknown to Roselia, there was something that universe had in store, she wouldnt even ever think of it in her dreams, waiting at The High Academy. Where all the secrets lie.