“You don’t agree?” His eyes bored into mine, demanding submission.
The silence stretched between us like a tripwire. I could feel the air change, the shift in his breathing, old instinct warning me just before his temper found its mark because no matter how obedient I was, it wasn’t ever enough.
His hand became a weapon, seizing my hair with such savage force that individual roots screamed in protest. My head snapped back, neck exposed. The pained scream that surged up died stillborn as my teeth sank into my tongue.
“Don’t think,” he hissed, lips brushing my ear with obscene intimacy, “that because you may leave this house, and soon spread your legs for that Kostas trash to get the first go at your virgin cunt, that anyone butmewill ever own you, Selene.”
His grip wrenched tighter, twisting until my vision fractured with unshed tears. Then came the shove—not just backward but downward, as if he meant to drive me through the floor itself. My body became weightless, then crashed with bone-jarring force that sent shockwaves through my spine and expelled every molecule of oxygen from my lungs in a single, pathetic gasp that made me feel all the smaller and humiliated.
I braced, waiting for him to kick me while I was down, but he simply stood motionless above me, neither flinching nor offering help, his shadow blocking the light.
"See. That's your rightful place," he soothed mockingly. "You can get up so long as you don’t forget that. I expect to see you at breakfast.”
Then he was gone.
I stayed exactly where I was a moment longer, my breath shaking but controlled, my cheek pressed against the polished hardwood that still held the ghost of my mother’s blood. It was cold against my skin, grounding me in this moment of forced submission.
Every part of me screamed to break, to shatter, to weep. My throat constricted with the effort of containment, my chest a pressure cooker of unshed tears, but I’d cauterized those pathways years ago with white-hot determination. Tears were one of his favorite novelties, trophies he’d collect with a cruel smile.
What rose instead wasn’t grief.
It was hatred—pure, undiluted, and alive. It scorched through my veins like acid, eating away at anything soft I could have ever felt for him. His loathing was a match; mine was napalm. It coiled inside me like a viper waiting to strike, finding sanctuary in the darkest chambers of my heart where his fists and filth could never reach.
Someday our places would be reversed.
I would stand over him as he lay broken, watching recognition dawn in those cruel eyes when he finally understood that I was the architect of his downfall.
The dress felt heavier in daylight, a second skin cut from blood-red velvet. It hugged every line of me, a bodycon silhouette I hadn’t chosen so much asclaimed.
My mother’s necklace rested against my collarbone, its gold catching the morning light like a quiet rebellion.
My heels clicked down the corridor, counting down to something I wasn’t ready for.
He always insisted on eating together, and I never understood why. Maybe it was the illusion of family, or maybe he liked the symmetry of it.
The obedient daughter across from the man who owned her silence.
Sleep had evaded me all night, rage simmering beneath my skin with nowhere to go. Amara wouldn’t call for another two days, our conversations strictly scheduled, voice only, never text. Those calls anchored me when nothing else did. Without them, I drifted in isolation—exactly as our father intended. I always wondered why he allowed me to have a connection with her when he seemed so angry she’d slipped away from his grasp.Maybe it was meant to be another twisted form of punishment for something I had no control over.
Once, I'd had someone close to me. Coraline. Until the night I wandered through the house wondering what was taking her so long to get us something to snack on and found her in the kitchen with her leggings shoved down and my father thrusting into her over the island.
The sound had hit me first—wet, rhythmic, animal—before I fully processed what I was seeing. She saw me. Her eyes, glassy with something beyond pleasure, locking with mine. She’d given me a look of victory, or maybe triumph and I realized she had never actually been my friend.
After that, every girl who smiled at me became a potential traitor. Every woman who reached for my hand became another weapon he could use.
The isolation wasn’t loneliness; it was a fortress I’d built stone by stone around myself, each rebuff and cold shoulder another layer of protection. But in the darkest hours before dawn, when the house settled into its hollow silence, sometimes my defenses would crack. I’d catch myself rehearsing conversations with ghosts, silently spilling all the words I’d swallowed down for months.
When I entered the dining room, the absurdity of it struck me all over again. A table fit for twenty, dressed for two. Crystal, silver, and fresh flowers. An entire performance of civility for no audience.
He sat at the head, his tablet and stylus before him, breakfast untouched. His gaze lifted—slow—lingering first on the dress, then on my necklace before it reached my face.
At least we sat at opposite ends of the damn table. Distance was a small mercy, but I’d take it. I had more than a few daydreams about driving a knife through the back of the handhe liked to strike me with before planting my fork clean into his jugular.
Then maybe breakfast would finally be as lovely as it was always presented.
He glanced up again, the faintest curl of a smile tugging at his mouth once I was in my chair. “You look like your mother did at your age.”
His tone was warm—almost fond. As if yesterday hadn’t happened. Or the day before. Or all the other days before that. That was his favorite trick. Cruelty disguised as normalcy. Pretend long enough that nothing was wrong, and eventually, the silence between you began to agree.