A/N- This chapter contains emotional abuse and physical abuse. Please consider this when you decide to read.
I have been honored by the one and only Dollybigmomma who Beta'd this chapter and is an absolute angel. Give her work a look!
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Bella
The sound of the front door slamming brought her out of her deep sleep instantly. Bella couldn't even be relieved she hadn't dreamed because she realized what time it was.
Oh god. Charlie's home and I've been sleeping. I didn't cook, I didn't clean. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck…
"Bella?" he called into the house, his deep voice turning it into a bellow.
She rolled out of bed quickly, the room spinning. With a sick feeling, she realized she hadn't even closed her bedroom door, not that it would have helped anything, but she didn't have time to worry about that now. She hurried down the stairs, her grip on the railing the only thing keeping her from tumbling to the bottom.
"I'm so sorry, Ch- Dad, I was…um…doing homework." She didn't know why she lied, it just slipped out. If Charlie was anything like Phil- which Phil had assured her he was- he could tell she was lying instantly, or at the very least would find out. He was a cop, for fuck's sake.
"Oh, that's alright, Bells, I wasn't expecting you to be waiting for me or anything. I think I'll order us a pizza tonight, what do you think?" He took off his tool belt and hung it by the front door.
She was stunned. Phil would have never let it go that easily. Even if he had wanted pizza in the first place, it would have been the fact that she wasn't ready if he didn't that would be an issue.
Oh fuck, Phil!
She nearly felt the need to hurl, as she realized she hadn't called him or Renee after school.
"Pepperoni okay?" Charlie looked at her, his voice the picture of pure innocence.
She nodded wordlessly, continuing down the stairs slowly and into the kitchen to finish the dishes from that morning. She had a headache, and the lights seemed too bright, but she wouldn't risk angering him further. Maybe he would finally do something when he was drunk, or at night. There were a few times, before Phil had turned completely, where bits of his true self would show through his façade; like when he was drunk or tired.
Right on time, Charlie grabbed two beers from the fridge, and she tensed for a second before continuing on the dishes. If he was going to get drunk and wail on her, she would need to get her homework done first. She finished the dishes and quietly snuck up to her room.
Bella fished her phone out of her backpack and turned it on. She usually turned it off for school, and in her fatigue, she'd forgotten to turn it back on. Immediately, her phone began buzzing with the onslaught of messages from Renee and notifications of missed phone calls.
She skipped the earlier messages and went straight to the most recent. It was from her mother, and read, "Phil says call at 8, be ready for a lesson." She cringed and looked at the clock She still had a couple of hours before then, so she would have to wait. The panic made her run to the bathroom, her body heaving, but she hadn't had enough food to throw anything up. She tried to be as quiet as she could, not wanting Charlie to find her in such a vulnerable position. Luckily, he didn't seem to hear.
When she was younger, any time she got sick, even when she tried not to show it, Phil would always manage to sniff it out. She didn't know if he really went harder on her at those times, but it always felt like he did. The beatings felt longer, they felt more brutal, and it felt like it took longer to recover.
It also felt like he tormented her more. If he came home and found her shivering and coughing, he made sure she cleaned the house top to bottom, more often than when she wasn't sick. She always did everything she could to hide any illness from Phil, and she was fully prepared to hide it from Charlie as well. When her body finally stopped squeezing her to death, she sat back, not bothering to move from the floor. She caught her breath and gulped some water directly from the faucet, rinsing her mouth of the bile she had managed to squeeze from her stomach. After the traces of her fit had been rinsed away, she hurried back to her room, quietly closing the door behind her.
She tried to occupy her mind with the busy work they had been given, but there was too much anxiety, too many questions unanswered. What lesson would Phil try to teach her via video call? How bad would her mom get it for her carelessness in forgetting to check in after her first day? Not to mention her troubles with Charlie…
When would Charlie snap? What would cause it? What would he end up doing to her? Would he tell Phil something? That she deserved it? Phil had said he would check with Charlie, and if she was disobeying, then he would take it out on her mom, probably worse than he would tonight.
She tried to focus on her homework until she heard the doorbell and spotted a delivery car outside. Charlie must've met the guy at the door because she saw the delivery guy get into his car and leave.
"Bella, pizza's here!" Charlie called up to her, and then there was silence.
She went downstairs and saw that Charlie had taken a plate of pizza into the living room with him, leaving the box open on the kitchen table. She wasn't sure how he felt about her eating in her room, so she quickly ate a slice while standing by the table. She didn't want to eat, but she knew that if Charlie paid attention to her food the way Phil did, he would punish her for not eating, even if it was pizza.
If Phil knew she was eating pizza, he would torment her relentlessly, warning her not to gain too much weight, or he wouldn't have a reason to keep her around. Though she was still hungry, she stopped after one thin slice. Besides, her stomach was still unsettled after her earlier event, and she wasn't sure if she would be able to keep her single piece down anyway.
Bella returned to her room upstairs and again checked the time. Still too far away, though she could feel the time creeping closer. She set an alarm on her phone for five minutes before 8:00 p.m., so she could be ready. She threw herself into her homework, trying her best to not check the clock every few minutes, though she was sadly failing.
When the alarm on her phone finally went off, she jumped, despite having watched the time slowly, painfully tick away.
She opened up her computer and booted up the program. She again watched the clock, and as 7:59 p.m. turned to 8:00 p.m., she hit the call button. The call was answered almost immediately, Renee's face filling the screen. Renee set her phone down against what Bella assumed to be the TV in the living room, and then she sat on the couch with Phil.
He sat casually, and leaned back, arms stretched out across the back of the couch. Renee was being meek, though, and she was sure he had put on this casual façade just for her.
Lucky me.
"Hello, Isabella, how was your first day of school?" His voice was so calm. Bella was sure he saw her headphones, but he was talking in such a way, that any outside observer would think that he was asking a perfectly innocent, even polite, question. She knew he was trying to get her to let her guard down. She wouldn't.
"It was alright. Some people tried to help me find my way to classes, but it was simple enough, so I didn't need their help." She had chosen her words carefully. She was telling him the truth, partially anyway She was implying that she was keeping to herself, which she was, but not to the extent Phil wanted her to, though. If he had it his way, she would never utter a word to another person and would stay in the shadows. But that wasn't how life worked. He would also punish her for acting too differently, for drawing attention to herself. She was damned either way.
"Oh yeah? Did you see any familiar faces?" What he meant was, "Did you see your old friends?" she could answer that one honestly.
"Not really. I recognized some people from kindergarten, but I could barely remember their names, just Angela, but Jessica had to remind me of her name." Partial truth again She wouldn't bring up Mike unless she absolutely had to.
"Ah, I remember Angela, she was always a very nice girl," Renee piped up, and Phil gave her the smallest, nastiest look.
"Well, if you had such a lovely day, why didn't you bother letting us know when you got home? What were you so preoccupied with that you couldn't call us?" His anger was starting to seep through his words. It was coming.
"I'm sorry, Phil, I had my phone off during school, and I forgot to turn it back on when I got home. I was doing homework." Again, careful wording. Both statements were true, but she didn't need him to know she had fallen asleep when she'd gotten home. He would call her lazy and demand she get back to work.
"Don't, if I need to reach you, you'd better be reachable, do you understand?" He sat forward now, glaring at her. She could nearly feel his evil stare from all these miles away. It made her instinctively turn her look down, avoiding eye contact.
"Yes, Phil. I'm sorry. I'll leave my phone on from now on." Despite her urges, she made sure not to murmur, Phil hated that.
"You'd better. But I think we need to make sure this lesson sticks." Phil stood up and got closer to the camera. "If I notice you looking away, I'm only going to make it worse for her. You don't want to do that to your mother, do you, Isabella?" Bella shook her head, too afraid her voice would fail her.
"Good girl." He smiled evilly, and the punishment began. Renee tried to stay calm, knowing that too much reaction just made him angrier, but none at all was even worse. Bella started tearing up. It wasn't the first time she'd been forced to just watch Renee get beaten, but it hurt each and every time. She felt so sickeningly guilty, the single piece of pizza in her stomach threatening to make a reappearance, but she forced it down. If she threw up, her mom would get it even worse. She believed what Phil said, of course she did. He'd done it before. The beating seemed to take hours, but by the time he was done, only half an hour had passed.
Phil left Renee curled up on the floor and picked up her phone. "I went easy since it was your first infraction. Make sure it's your last." Before she could agree, Phil hung up. Bella could see her reflection on the black screen, and she saw that the tears had managed to escape, rolling down her cheeks.
Slamming the laptop shut, Bella angrily wiped the tears off her face, she wouldn't let herself cry. Nothing had even happened to her, she was weak, and selfish. It was Renee who had been beaten, not her. These tears were not deserved.
She went to the bathroom to splash icy water onto her face, forcing herself to calm down. She had homework to do. These stupid feelings were a waste of time and energy. She had to keep her grades up, or Renee would get it even worse. Bella had seen Renee broken, unable to go in to work for days before. Bella would not be the cause of it. Especially with schoolwork, something she could control. She gave herself a serious look in the mirror, something she was all too used to seeing from Phil.
Bella needed to move past it. Besides, she had Charlie to worry about now.
The whole evening, she tried to focus, her mind unwilling to stop listening for Charlie's feet on the stairs. She had made it through most of her homework before she finally heard it. The thumping of his feet. She quickly hid her homework and moved from the desk. Phil would occasionally tear up her homework if he was too tired to beat on her, or if he just felt like it, ensuring she would have to stay up to redo it or risk her grades.
When the thumps stopped outside her door, she found herself holding her breath. Waiting. Listening. But the thumps resumed, moving to the bathroom, the door closing. She let her breath out, but she didn't yet relax. Maybe he just wanted to keep her waiting. Maybe he wanted a shower first. Maybe…
The toilet flushed, the sink turned on, and before she knew it, Charlie was in his room. No yelling, no threats, no anything.
She calmed herself down, and she went back to her homework cautiously. She finished, still not believing Charlie wouldn't come for her. She changed quickly and got into bed, not bothering to brush her teeth, in case that was when he decided to strike. She preferred to take her beatings near soft furniture.
She stayed there most of the night, unable to relax enough to get any quality sleep. At least at Phil's, she was able to sleep most of the time. Bella had figured out more of Phil's moods and patterns, and she could hear if he was starting in on her mom. If he was, she knew he wouldn't be coming to her that night. On the odd day, he didn't get on either of them, his loud snoring would let her know when he was down for the night.
But with Charlie, she wasn't sure of anything. He hadn't shown any anger, even any annoyance. It was worse, in a way. Truly anything could happen.
Maybe nothing will happen, the smallest, quietest part of her brain suggested, and she shoved it down quickly. Of course, something would happen, it always happened. Getting hopeful would only make the snap hurt worse.