91. Leo

"You still can't hold your breath underwater," I chuckled when her eyes rounded in surprise that I knew.

I used to watch from behind a wall while she shared the pool with Daniel Yrote as he taught her to swim. She was horrible at learning and that affected the swimming lessons her father used to give her.

She almost drowned every time she swam with Daniel Yrote before he died, so when I saw her fall into the water while attempting to cross the bridge leading away from the orphanage where she had been staying, I knew she would most likely drown again.

After she was taken to the orphanage, it became hard to even see a shadow of her. I used to go there every day, only to meet the guards waiting at the gate. That was till that day I saw her running away.

She fell midway through the shaky bridge and passed out in the water before I could swim to her. I took her to where I started to live after Daniel Yrote died. I only had to turn my eyes away from her for some time and she was out, running like I didn't just save her life.

I pursued her but I stopped when she met a police officer. She let him know I was after her so I hid and watched them take her away in their police car.

I tried to keep track of her but I lost her. I never saw her again till Omar sent her my way. I couldn't tell if she remembered at least the part where I saved her drowning ass but she was staring at me like she wanted to smash my head into the glass holding the water I just forced her face into. I knew she would if I let her.

"Not if my head is being forced into it," She replied to my statement. She could swim now, it was easy to decipher from her words.

"What were you asking about Lade," I remembered she mentioned him a moment ago. I had decided to give her any information she asked concerning killing Lade since it was getting closer to when she would do it.

She looked undecided if to re-ask what she had done before but chose to speak after a short time.

"Why do you want Lade dead?" She sniffed after her question.

"Because he's an asshole?" I huffed and watched as she quirked her brows at me.

"You're an asshole too, you know," She spat at me, forgetting I still had my hand in her hair. She pursed her lips at the realization of what she just thought out loud.

"Lade's father killed your father," I decided to cut the arrogance off her tongue by telling her.

"What?" She let out a question that sounded like a whisper. I let go of her hair and started back towards my room, buckling up my belt before I couldn't control myself any longer from making her knee and yanking her head back by pulling her hair.

I just finished helping myself get rid of the pain of my dick growing to the thought of her and here she was again in front of me with a fucking wet hair and her bathrobe sliding off her shoulders, seducing me without effort.

"H-How would you know that?" She asked in a shaky voice.

"One of your father's workers betrayed him, she helped Lade's father get to Daniel Yrote and kill him the way he did." I stopped walking when I got to my room door. "That's one of the reasons I want you to kill him," I told her before going in and shutting the door before she could ask anything more.

Getting revenge on Lade was just one of the reasons I wanted him dead. Aside from that, there were many more, many more too complicated for Mae to understand.

I sat at the edge of my bed and started to remember what happened the day Daniel Yrote died. After my mother had walked in after Mae, and saw the bloody scene of the dead Daniel Yrote, some men had come in too.

They had heard Mae crying loudly and rushed in to know why. Meeting my hands stained with Daniel Yrote's blood led them to think I had something to do with it.

It made me flee the mansion. I ran from something I didn't do but not for long. My mother was still there. When I came back for her, I learned that she had been tortured every day since I left not because I left but because she confessed to helping Lade's father have easy access to kill my father, Daniel Yrote.

I didn't believe it till I went to get her out and she urged me to return to where I was hiding. She told me herself that she did help Lade's father, and that she did it because she still hadn't forgiven Daniel Yrote since he raped her and treated me like a slave.

I wanted to be angry at her after she confessed the truth to me but that was taken from me. She was killed. Right in front of me, a bullet was screwed to the back of her head and to this day, I can't define my next actions. I still couldn't define if it was smart of me to flee again because I knew they could kill me next, or if I was just weak by not staying back to mourn my mother.

It was while running and hiding I met Omar on the streets. He was a petty thief when I met him. He had stolen some loaves of bread and had bumped into me while running from the owners of what he stole. Somehow, he stuck some of the loaves into my open hand and kept running.

I didn't become alert of what he did till some people started to hit me and call me a thief.

With a purple-black right eye, I had sat in a corner, rubbing off my wounds from the beating I got for being a 'thief'. I had almost killed Omar when he came up to me in the shadows of the corner where I sat. I was more than ready to push him into the busy road and watch cars run him over but the mother fucker begged for his life. And somehow, we started off a friendship from there.

I had his back whenever he stole for us, and made sure to cause a distraction to get his chasers to stop going after him every time. The only time I didn't have his back was when I was busy saving Mae from drowning.

He had been caught and taken to a station where he somehow allowed himself to be brainwashed to join the force with free education and shelter. And just like that, he became the typical 'good guy', and I remained the 'bad guy'.

It became hard to see him. It took years to get to see him like it used to be but then I had joined the city's private military company, for the fun of it.