Chapter 69 ALICIA.
LUCIEN'S POINT OF VIEW.
YEARS AGO.
The first thing I could remember was glass breaking.
I was five, or maybe six, I don’t remember my age, but I was small enough to crouch low behind the banister without being noticed, and at the same time, I was old enough to know that what would follow after glass breaking would be the piercing screams of my mother, followed by the dark one of my father.
Her voice rang out shrill and afraid, followed by the sound of a smack. I peeked and saw her clutching her face, as she sat on the floor, her sobs racking through her as she wept silently.
“How dare you question me?” My father spat at her, his belt in hand, as he stood towering above her. My tiny hands had clenched into fists, as hatred blurred my vision.
It wasn’t the first time he’d hit her; hell, he did it so often, I could recognize the color of her real skin, as opposed to that of the foundation she used to mask the bruises.
“Please.” My mother whispered brokenly, trembling, as she stared at him with tears streaming down her cheeks. “You keep cheating on me. What did I do wrong? How am I not enough for you, Eldric? Why do you keep doing this? She sobbed. “This time it’s with my best friend. She’s Lucien’s godmother, Eldric! You didn’t think about how that would make me feel before you screwed her?”
She sobbed, and you would expect my father to feel an ounce of remorse, but instead, he smirked before swishing his belt back. It hit her on the shoulder, hard, and I could see the skin welting immediately.
She sobbed silently this time, biting her lip, as she grabbed onto her shoulder with shaky hands.
My father crouched to his knees before her and lifted her chin with two of his fore fingers. “You think you’re all that?” His lips pulled in a snarl. “I only put up with you all those years because I fucking thought I would get something out of a rich girl like you. But not, your ass parents dare to keep me from any inheritance, giving everything to you and that bastard you call son.” He spat, and immediately, her head snapped up.
“Don’t you dare utter my son’s name. Don’t you dare call him that. He’s the only good thing that came out of you.” Her voice trembled as she said it, but it cost her because he smacked her across the face.
This time, it was hard because her lip broke and blood poured out of it.
“You dare talk back to me? You bitch. I can’t believe I pretended with you all those years ago. You really think I would like someone like you?” He scoffs. “You’re so plain, so boring, so..ugly. I was a scholarship kid, but I still had taste. You ruined my life, and now, I’ll take it all out on you, and that bastard.”
“Leave my son out of it, Eldric. If you touch him, I swear, I’ll kill you. I’ll fucking kill you.”
“For that, I’ll go get the runt now, let’s see what you can do when I beat him to a pulp in front of you.” He moved, and I panicked, the urge to hide gripping me, but she grabbed onto his legs, stopping him in his tracks, as he fell to the floor from the force of her holding.
He jerked, kicking her off of him. The action was hard because I could see her sporting another bruise from it, but she wouldn’t let him go; she kept holding onto him each time he moved to come get me.
Before he could do anything else, she had grabbed something from the small table beside him, and with a grunt, she hit him across the face with it.
His body went limp immediately, falling to the side on the floor.
She sniffled and rose to her feet on trembling feet, before running out of the lounge on bare, bloodied feet.
“Lucien? Where’s my son?: She called, and I rushed to my room even as my small feet tripped on air multiple times. But once I got into my room, I quickly pretended like I was asleep.
But I never forgot anything, not even at the ripe age of nineteen. For the hell he put my mother through, he would pay dearly, and I will see him to his knees by the time I’m done with him.
I flipped through the pages of the journal I’d seen in her room last night. It was the anniversary of the day she’d been diagnosed with stage four leukemia.
The day her body started rotting from the inside out, and my fucker of a father was with another one of her friends that night. I remember the way he had come home, or rather, my mother’s house, reeking of alcohol and another woman’s perfume.
I recognized it immediately; it wasn’t something my mother would ever wear.
It was…too cheap for a woman like my mother. That was the first day the urge to kill someone came to my mind, as the image of me wrapping my hands around his neck flooded my mind. I imagined him turning blue, before his eyes would roll to the back of his head, and he would be one from this earth.
He never stopped cheating, even after finding out about her sickness. And it only pulled her further into the darkness she was already in, until it sucked the life out of her, and she passed away one stormy night in a hospital, with only my grandmother by her side.