6

Mia stood in the hallway, watching everything with wide eyes. Her body still ached, and her heart felt like it was about to jump out of her mouth. When Elisa realized she wasn't moving, she stopped abruptly and stared at her.

“Hurry up! Let's move!”

“I'm not going,” Mia said, her voice trembling but firm.

It was like lighting a match in a shed full of gasoline. Elisa completely lost her temper. In one swift movement, she crossed the room and, for the first time in her life, slapped her daughter across the face.

The sharp sound of the impact echoed through the house.

Mia recoiled, bringing her hand to her face, more shocked than hurt. Her eyes filled with tears, but not from pain. From anger. From disbelief.

Elisa was breathing heavily, her chest rising and falling as if she had run a marathon. Her eyes were red and glassy. And then, the truth came out.

“Your grandparents are dead, damn it! We need to go to your father... unless you want to end up like them!”

Mia was paralyzed. The words hammered in her mind, shattering every other emotion. Her grandparents... dead? The image of them dropping her off at school earlier that day flooded her mind. They were smiling, waving at her. They had told her they loved her, asked Mia not to hate them. It didn't make sense.

But her mother's eyes didn't lie. There was pain there, deep and raw. A pain Mia had never seen before. And as much as she wanted to scream that it was a lie, she knew it wasn't.

Slowly, tears began to roll down Mia's cheeks. The floor seemed to have broken beneath her feet. But before she could really cry, Elisa shouted again:

“Now, Mia! Go get your things!”

The scream was like a snap that snapped her out of her trance. Still in shock, Mia turned and climbed the stairs. Each step was heavy, each heartbeat painful. Everything she knew was falling apart before her eyes, and worst of all, she had no idea what was coming next.

Downstairs, Elisa went back to stuffing clothes into bags, her face still wet with tears she insisted on ignoring. There was no time for pain. There was no time for mourning. They had to run.

Again.

As soon as Mia disappeared up the stairs, her footsteps echoing softly and hesitantly, Elisa collapsed onto the living room floor as if all the strength had been drained from her body. The silence that followed was broken only by her own sobs, at first restrained, then uncontrollable, shaking her chest with the same intensity that anger had shaken her gestures minutes before.

She hugged her knees to her chest and let the tears come. It wasn't just exhaustion. It was everything. The fear, the guilt, the pain she had kept inside for so long... the weight of so many years on the run, moving from city to city like someone changing clothes, pretending everything was normal to protect a daughter she no longer knew how to protect.

For the first time, she felt something stir inside her—not a thought, not a memory, but something physical, visceral. A premonition? A click? Maybe it was just her soul screaming. 

Time was running out.

There was no point in running anymore. There was no point in changing her name or city.

They were close.

And Elisa knew: either she faced them... or she lost everything.

She stood up slowly. Her face was still wet, but her expression was firmer.

Telling Mia everything would be the worst punishment of all. How could she explain the years of lies? The changed cities? Her missing father?

How could she face her daughter after denying her a whole life?

But she had no choice.

It was time to go all the way.

Even if it meant going back to the beginning.

Even if it meant... Owen.

Mia's small room seemed to shrink with every step she took. The narrow walls, low ceiling, and sparse furniture seemed to compress the air, making it thick and difficult to breathe. Anger and sadness mixed in her chest like a storm. She couldn't stop thinking about her grandparents, the last time she saw them—smiling, waving out the car window, as if everything was perfectly normal.

“Dead,” she thought, trying to understand the meaning of the word. “My grandparents are dead.”

But something was wrong. Very wrong.

She wanted to ask her mother what exactly had happened, how, when, why. And the more she thought about it, the stranger it all seemed. The rush, the slap, her mother's almost frenzied urgency, the explosion. It was as if the world had suddenly collapsed — and she hadn't even had time to say goodbye to anyone.

The truth was that Mia didn't want to leave. And above all, she didn't want to continue living in the shadow of her mother's paranoia. This story that they were after her, that Mia had a rare disease, that she was too special... it all seemed more and more like a fabrication, a madness born from Elisa's unstable mind.

With her heart pounding, Mia made a decision. 

She would confront her mother. For the first time. She would demand answers.

She slowly descended the stairs, as if each step were a confirmation of her courage. She found Elisa in the kitchen, her eyes red and still wet, wiping her face with a dish towel. But this time, Mia wasn't intimidated. She wasn't going to back down.

“Mom, how did my grandparents die?” The question came out dry, direct, with no room for beating around the bush.

Elisa stared at her for a second, surprised by her daughter's firmness, and then replied in a tired voice:

“They said it was a car accident. The truck overturned.”

Mia absorbed the information in silence. Their car was old, almost prehistoric, as she used to joke. She always complained about the noisy brakes and the heavy steering. It wasn't hard to imagine that something could have gone wrong. A flat tire. A broken brake. A moment of carelessness.

Even so, there was a latent discomfort. A tone of suspicion.

She took a deep breath, trying to contain her emotions, and said firmly:

"I'm not leaving. If you want to go, fine, go. But I'm staying. There's no one after us, Mom. It's all in your head. We have nowhere to go. I've finally made friends, I even have a boyfriend. It's my last year. I want to graduate with them. I want my prom. I'll be eighteen in three months. And I've made up my mind: I'm not going to be part of your madness anymore."

The words were like knives, cutting through the silence of the kitchen with precision. Elisa turned pale, her eyes wide, as if she had been slapped again—but this time by her own daughter.

She was silent for several seconds, just staring at Mia. Then she whispered:

“You have your father's mark. If you don't go to him, you may not survive the next crisis.”