Chapter 181: There’s Something A Little Bit…

ADRIEN’S POV

Bit by bit, he had drawn his attention completely away from my mother, leaving me alone to watch her die. And once she was gone, Alice and her daughter Louise moved into the main house, claiming my mother’s rooms, taking over her gardens, and pushing me further and further into the background until I felt completely erased.

Alice made me feel less of myself every single day. She chipped away at my self-worth until I was convinced I was the most pathetic, useless thing to ever draw breath.

"Look at you, Adrien," her voice echoes in my memory, cold, sharp, and dripping with polite disappointment. "You have your mother’s weak heart and her foolish mind. You are soft. You are fragile. You are nothing."

It was not just the brutal words. It was the physical touch. It was the casual cruelty she dished out whenever the mood struck her.

Sometimes she would slap me herself, a quick, burning blow across my cheek whenever my tone was not respectful enough or when I dared to look her directly in the eye.

Other times, she did not even bother to lift her own hand. She would look at the house servants with her pitiless eyes, nodding toward me with a quiet command.

"He needs to learn how to stand properly," she would tell the senior butler, her face calm and unreadable. "Take him down to the pantry and make sure he understands how to obey his elders. Do not leave a mark that anyone looking will see."

And the servants, terrified of losing their high-paying jobs or eager to stay in Alice’s good graces, would drag me down into the cold pantry.

They would pin my arms behind my back and hit my stomach until I collapsed onto the cold tiles, wheezing for air while Alice sat upstairs drinking her morning tea.

"Stay down, kid," the butler had grunted back then, his breath smelling of stale coffee as he pinned my neck down. "You make things difficult for all of us when you do not listen to her."

"Please," I had choked out, my eyes stinging with unshed tears, my ribs aching as I tried to pull away from his heavy grip. "Just let me go."

"Quiet," he had snapped, landing another heavy blow into my side. "Alice said you need to learn your place."

She broke me down until I had no pride left. She stripped away my dignity piece by piece.

She broke me down so badly that when I ended up on the streets years later, working three excruciatingly long years as a prostitute just to keep a roof over my head, I felt like that was all I was ever worth.

I felt like my body was just an object, belonging to whoever had the money or the power to take it.

Then came Anna.

Anna was my hairstylist. She was the first person in years who touched my hair without wanting to pull it, hurt me, or assert dominance over me.

She was gentle. She spent hours trimming my overgrown locks, teaching me how to wash my face properly, showing me how to dress so I did not look like a trembling wreck.

She made me fall in love with my face again. She made me want to start taking care of myself after those terrible three years on the street.

She was not just a hairstylist to me. She was my friend. No, I wouldn’t call her my only friend, but she was the only human being in my world who saw me as someone worth saving, someone worth caring about.

"Look at yourself, Adrien," Anna had told me once, her hands soft and warm as she brushed a strand of hair behind my ear, smiling at my reflection in the mirror. "You are handsome. Do not let anyone make you feel like you are ugly or worthless. Look at your eyes. You have so much life in you."

And Masamune killed her. Anna is dead.

My fingers grip my knees so hard my knuckles turn bone white, my fingernails digging through the fabric of my trousers. A violent wave of restless rage surges through my chest, making my blood run scalding hot.

Masamune killed Anna. They shot her down like she was nothing, and made sure I listened to every single second of it.

Yet, when Masamune hijacked Leon’s kidnapping attempt on me, when I woke up in that casino and was faced with Yaya, the leader of Masamune, they did not hurt me. They talked to me. They let me leave without a single scratch on my body.

It makes no sense. It makes absolutely no sense.

Why kill Anna and spare me? Why let me walk out of that casino unharmed after destroying the woman who helped me rebuild myself from the ground up?

I remember sitting across from Yaya in that brightly lit VIP room, my heart hammering like a trapped bird against my ribs. I had wanted to scream at him.

Every fiber of my being was screaming to leap across that polished desk, to dig my hands into his collar, to tear him apart with my bare hands.

’How dare you?’ I had wanted to howl at his face until my lungs burst. ’How dare you kill Anna? How dare you take her away from me? She was innocent! She had nothing to do with your sickening power games! Why her? Why did you kill her and spare me?’

The rage inside me was so immense, so agonizing, that it felt like it would tear my chest open right then and there. But I had to hold back. I had to bite my tongue until I tasted blood, forcing every ounce of venom down into my throat.

Because I wasn’t even sure whether Yaya would let me live if I stepped out of line. I was terrified. I was sitting in the lion’s den, face-to-face with a man who viewed human life as nothing more than loose pocket change.

I couldn’t trust a single word that came out of Yaya’s mouth. I did not want to believe Yaya. I couldn’t afford to believe him.

I remember looking into his eyes, my breath coming in short, terrified hitches as I tried to muster the courage to force the questions out of my throat.

And I ended up saying nothing.

"You can go now, Adrien," Yaya might have said casually, waving a hand in the air like he was dismissing a stray dog, not even looking up from his stack of chips. "We have no quarrel with you."

’You killed her,’ I had wanted to scream. My voice would rise uncontrollably with a volatile mix of rage and terror. ’You killed Anna. Why?!’

I opened my mouth, desperate to shout at him, desperate to demand a real answer, to ask how he could live with himself after ripping away the only person who had given me a shred of dignity.

But before I could even open my mouth to ask, before I could scream or demand anything at all, Yaya moved.

*****

Are you all familiar with the term ’unreliable narrator’?

—TheLovePoet