~ Liach POV ~~
Cisco Estate — 8:40 AM
The doors close behind me with a finality I feel in my bones.
Papa doesn't turn from his work. His sleeves are rolled, his jaw tight. The room is quiet, except for the slow, deliberate sound of his pen dragging across paper. A report sits open, slashed with red ink.
"You failed." He said, his voice came rushing down with power vibrating through my spine.
I don't move. "Yes." I replied, braising myself for the worst, because I've failed twice. Which has never occurred.
"No excuses?" His tone is much colder now.
"None that matters papa."
He turns slowly. And the look in his eyes makes me colder than the night I stood over Lucan's body.
"This was your second opportunity," he says. "You got inside. You had his schedule. His habits. His trust. You were close enough to feel his breath on your skin."
He walks over towards me, steps closer. "Instead, you came back smelling like him."
My throat tightens.
He knows, he always does.
Papa studies me, eyes scanning like he's dissecting me, molecule by molecule.
"You're wet," he says.
The word caught me off guard. "What?"
He leans in, his breath in my ear. "No now. Then. In his bed. On his lap. Wherever the fuck you were when he had his hand between your legs."
The words slap harder than his fist ever could. Still, I don't react. Not visibly.
Gabriel steps back, slow and deliberate. "I made you, Liach," he says. "I carved you from bone and fire. You weren't built to be seduced, Liach. You were built to seduce and kill."
"I know Papa, I'm sorry."
"No. You don't." He crosses to his desk, opens the drawer, and pulls out a small velvet box, tossing it at my feet.
"Open it."
I kneel, picked it up and opened it.
Inside is a silver blade Lucan's.
"I took it from your brother's body the night you proved yourself."
My stomach knots, why is he hellbent on torturing me?
"You're going to use it again," Papa says.
I look up. "On who?"
"Yourself."
The silence was torturing.
And I knew what this is. It is the blood he takes in place of my head for failing.
"I want one inch," he says coldly. "One inch of skin. Carved by your hand. You want to prove to me you're still mine?"
I stand there staring at him, thinking of what I could say to change his mind. "But Papa, this will affect the mission."
" A mission you have already failed twice? Get a grip, Liach."
"Papa I'm sorry, but I can't do this, this will affect my physique, it will compromise my body, papa."
" Ahh. I see you're out of your mind now. Talking back while I speak, and not following orders?"
I take the box with the blade, walk to my room into that bathroom, take off my clothes, stand naked with just my undies. The blade was laying there in the box looking back at me, as I contemplated whether to use it or not. But I couldn't, I couldn't touch those blades, instead I used my spare blade in my room. I caved off a skin and a flesh from my stomach around my waist region, picked up a first-aid kit and bandaged the wounds.
Does Papa still not trust me? Even when I'm his Heiress and his only remaining child. I do everything he tells me to, why does he still treat me less than a stranger.
"Papa I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking."
"No," he replies. "You are. If you think I'll let you give my name to a De Luna just from the excitement between your thighs. It's better you die now"
"Then don't send me back. Why don't we kill him another way?"
He smiles, a smile when doesn't reach his eyes.
"You're going back. Because now you owe me a body."
I don't answer.
"You'll fix this," papa says, voice flat. "Or next time, I won't pull you out. I'll bury you inside it."
With his final words. I handed him the box and my cut body part. "Here" I said, stretching out the box to him.
"Good. This should remind you of your mission."