And yet, despite everything, I smile.
I always fucking smile.
Because it pisses him off more than silence ever could.
He steps around his desk, looming like some bloated god of wrath. The stink of scotch, cigars, and the rot of too many sins clings to his breath as he leans in.
“You know,” he starts, rolling up his sleeves like a butcher before a slaughter, “I thought we were past the days of whipping your ass. Thought maybe you finally learned to walk in your legacy.”
My legacy? He means the blood-soaked one. The one stitched together with chains and closed-casket funerals.
“But clearly,” he continues, grinding his molars into splinters, “you’re still just a mouthy little shit who thinks the world bends for a grin.”
I tilt my head and speak slow, deliberate. “Wouldn’t it be easier if we all enrolled in the same class, Father? You could learn that you’re not king anymore. That you’re irrelevant. Rotting. And I’m the one writing the next chapter.”
His face twitches. That’s all I needed. I start laughing.
Laughter that spills from my chest like venom, splitting the air, until a flash of gold rings across my vision.
Crack.
His fist slams into my jaw with a feral crunch. My world staggers. My knees buckle. My grin fractures, but doesn’t die.
That’s when they grab me. Two of his lap dogs, leashed to loyalty, tear me off the floor like a carcass and drag me out. My head hits the molding. Then the stairs. Then cold.
I don’t scream. Screaming’s for prey.
They dump me in the basement, the one they remodeled just for me. Concrete floors. One flickering light. And memories soaked into the walls.
And then?
Nothing.
Just darkness. And time. And the sound of my own ribs swelling against my breath.
A white-hot light stabs me awake. Not warmth. Not dawn. A surgical beam dissecting me. My skin screams under it. My brain sloshes like meat in a blender.
I groan, shifting, every joint a monument to pain. My limbs are unrecognizable, bent things held together by spite. He called me apussy.
Me.
If only he knew what I’m capable of now.
I try to stand. Collapse.
Blood drips down my lip, and I lick it, like communion.
He won’t win. He can’t. Not in the long game.
I force myself upright, teeth bared in a smile too wide, too bloody, too full of future vengeance.
That’s when the door slams open.
He steps in, towering, smug, reeking of his own mythology. The man who thinks because he broke my bones, he broke me. But he doesn’t see it. Doesn’tfeelit.
The way death curls in my lungs now. How it stretches my grin.
“You ready to give up?” he asks, voice like gravel soaked in gasoline.
