Chapter 175 INSANE
AURORA’S POINT OF VIEW.
I rubbed my sweaty palm against the dress for the third time in five minutes. We were parked right outside the mansion, a place I had not set foot in since my fourteenth birthday. The car felt hot for some reason. Any moment now, we would walk in there, and I would see my father and stepmother for the first time in over four years.
A part of me wondered what my dad would think about me….would he be proud to see how much I'd grown? Would he feel guilt at the fact that he had not checked in on me for so long? Would he even ask about mom?
However, at the same time, I remembered….he could have been involved in the plan to poison my mother to her death. I wanted to trust him, but he kicked us out without a second glance, claimed my mother was a whore, and that I was not his daughter. Not even when my uncle presented him with the DNA test results….he still did not care.
I wanted all of them to burn for it.
Kai wanted an uprising, but I would give him a revolution.
I thought of Morgana. I thought of her smirking as she watched my mother and me beg my father not to kick us out…. It’d been my fourteenth birthday. I’d dressed in my favorite blue tutu, thinking dad would hug me tight because I’d won the ballet competition he’d made me enlist in.
I hated ballet…, but for him, I did it anyway because of how happy he looked whenever he watched me dance. But dad stormed in that night, a piece of paper in his hand as he stormed over to where I’d sat. he dragged me as if I were a ragdoll, burst into mom’s room, and kicked us out with one yell;
“Take your whore self and your whore daughter out of my house, now!” we’d begged, cried, screamed, but he shut the door on our faces, leaving us in the storm as Densie and Morgan smirked, looking down at us while Dad hugged and kissed his so-called family.
I remembered how Morgan and Toby planned to humiliate me, how she slept with him….how nothing I ever owned ever since she showed up in my life was ever truly mine. I thought of her mother, Denise, likely sitting at that dinner table right now, sipping expensive wine while the toxins she’d bought systematically shut down my mother's organs, while the doctors fought to bring her back from the ghostly death sentence they’d planned.
They thought they had erased me. They thought I was a speck of dust haunting the halls of Ravenscroft High, a girl who would eventually just... disappear. A girl who would never matter.
They were wrong.
“I want to see her face,” I whispered, my voice sounding sharper, colder than I ever thought possible. “I want to see the exact moment the light leaves Morgana’s eyes when she realizes I’m not just at the table……I’m the one sitting at the head of it.”
Kai’s grin widened, and for a second, he looked genuinely impressed. “That’s my girl. Now, let’s go make some people wish they’d never been born.
As the manor came into view again, illuminated by floodlights that made it look like every bit like the luxurious mansion dad had bought, I felt the weight of the red silk against my skin. It wasn't just a dress anymore. It was a middle finger to every person who had ever told me I wasn't enough.
They were all standing right outside. Dad had his hand around Denise’s waist, his gaze stoic as he watched the car. I noticed Morgan was there as well; her eyes narrowed at the sight of Kai’s car.
He got out before me, making sure to button his suit before rounding the car, and pulling the door open for me. With a bow, he stretched his hand out, leaving me to place mine gingerly in his. Anyone who saw us right now would think Kai was madly in love with me.
He helped me out gently, acting like I was as fragile as glass, grabbing me by the arm as he helped smooth my dress so it was flawless again. We shared eye contact for a brief second, but in that second, I knew what he communicated.
‘Make them seethe, green.’
Oh…I fucking will.
He kept his hand firmly on the small of my back, his thumb grazing the exposed skin of my spine, sending jolts of electricity through me that kept my spine straight.
As we walked over to them, the surrounding lights caught my dress, making me appear even more radiant than we planned. Their reactions….I wished I could frame it forever.
Dad’s stoic gaze transformed to a frozen one, clearly transfixed by me. Denise…oh, sweet, evil Denise. She had on my mother’s dress, her pearls, the very ones my dad had gifted her for their seventh wedding anniversary. She clutched the pearls as if she were having a heart attack, her eyes wide at the sight of me.
Morgan, on the other hand, looked as if she could not believe it was me.
My mother was now being cared for…. They would all burn for the hell we’d endured.
"Aurora?" My father’s voice was a low, dangerous rumble as his once shocked stare turned into an angered glare. He didn't step forward. He didn't even open his arms to welcome me as a father would. He looked at me with the same coldness he’d used when he threw a fourteen-year-old girl and her mother, his wife, into a thunderstorm. "