"Then who's my father?" Eric managed at last, voice thin with something like hurt and accusation.
"Your mother can answer that," my foster father snapped, each word a stone hurled at Eric.
"Don't be foolish enough to think I'd do that to my own child." His footsteps thundered down the stairs, heavy enough to wake the dead and make the deaf hear.
The blood in my veins freezed and burn intensely like fire at once. A furious, animal part of me wanted to leap up and stab him as he was going or pushed him down the stairs. Another part a smaller, gentle cunning part held me back, whispering patience. I heard Eric sob, small and broken, and the sound spurred pity steamed with anger in me.
"Coward," I muttered, as I spat angrily. My teeth found my nails again and I bit so hard that iron filled my mouth. Fingers that had bled before dug at my arms until they bled again; the sting grounded me. I looked at the red tracks on my skin and laughed — a low, lucifer sound that didn't belong to me.
Plans began to roam in my head like a snake. He had to die. He had destroyed too many lives — his wife, his son, maybe others I hadn't even seen. I would teach him a lesson he couldn't survive. But murder needed more than heat; it needed a map. I sketched it in the dark of my mind: where, when, how. Escape routes. Alibis. How to make it look like someone else. How to leave no prints that would draw eyes to me.
What if I pretended to move out first? People would assume I'd left ,gone on my own and might not look twice when something terrible happened in the house or even accused me.Maybe I'd take a bag, stage a quiet departure. Or perhaps I could get Eric to leave town, coerced him into visiting a friend, then strike. But Eric and I didn't have that kind of relationship.
The more I thought, the more the plan sharpened. Each detail calmed the animal in me a little and hardened the hand that would hold the knife. Maybe I shouldn't use knife and just allow him break his head like his wife.
I pictured the scene again and again: his look when he realized the world had finally answered him back in his own up of tea. The house going quiet, the weight lifting like a hand off my throat. But under the imagining sat another truth — the part of me that still felt guilty for other blood on my hands, the memory of Mira, the taste of funeral dust. If they ever suspected me, everything would tumble
So I started mapping out my plans starting with the house blueprint: I strolled the whole house for hours and nights, watched where the light fell on the stairs, noted which windows were stuck and which doors squeaked. The planning became a ritual, and ritual turned the chaos in my head into a weapon. I need an escape route after all and no trails exposed.
If the dogs he called security had been any good, they'd have smelled me coming. They would have suspected the great calamity befalling them already. They would have known they were turning into city of Heracleion already.
But they were as cold and useless as everything else in that house. As I paced the perimeter, Eric's soft sobs threaded through the night and sharpened my urge. I wanted to go after him, to end the sound, but heat alone wouldn't do it — I needed a map. I had to think like a detective: what would they look for if the monster in the house was found dead?
I didn't want Eric blamed. He was a coward, yes — stupid, maybe — but he was not the guilty one I aimed for. My fury kept company with a weird, thin pity for him.
"Hey, Lila. Who took my money from my wardrobe?" my foster father bellowed, voice rolling through the kitchen like a threat while cooking dinner.
"I… I needed some money and you weren't around," I lied, voice small and innocent .
The slap came hard, hot and immediate — the one I had sworn to return tenfold. My cheek burned. He leaned in, eyes cold as ice and lifeless. The animal look!
"Do you have parents who could earn that kind of money?" he snarled.
"I'm sorry, Daddy," I said, though the word tasted wrong in my mouth.
"Who the hell is your father?" he spat. "You're a thief. You know I don't joke with my money. If you wanted it, I would have given it — what did you spend it on?"
"Sir…" I started, and he smashed my head into the edge of the kitchen cabinet. Pain flared; warm blood trickled from a small cut at the base of my skull.
"Now! Pack your things and leave my house!" he barked, voice full of disgust. "You ingrate!" he spatted and walked out.
I stood there, the world narrowing to the sting on my skin and the taste of iron at the back of my throat. And then, calmer than I felt, I answered in a whisper:
"Yes."
Mission accomplished.