Chapter 176 DERANGED
AURORA'S POINT OF VIEW.
What is the meaning of this? Kai, why the hell is my daughter dressed like a... like that? And why is she in your car?"
Kai didn't answer immediately. He took his time, smoothing the lapel of his suit, his hand never leaving my back. The possessive heat of his palm was the only thing keeping me from screaming at the man I used to call daddy… the man I idolized because he was everything a girl could have dreamed of.
"I believe the term is a date, Armando," Kai quipped, his voice dripping with a casual arrogance that made my father flinch. "Though, if you want to get technical, fiancée is much more accurate."
"Fiancée? Not if we have anything to do with it. Your fiancé is Morgan.” She held onto her daughter, and just like that, Morgan’s eyes filled with those fake tears again, a sad look in her eyes as she burrowed her face into her mother’s side.
Seeing this, Dad turned to me with anger. “How could you do this to your sister, Aurora? Look at the mess she is…and it’s all because you dared try steal her fiancé."
I felt the air leave my lungs, but not from fear—from the sheer, pathetic absurdity of it all. I looked at Morgana, tucked into Denise’s side, shaking with those well-rehearsed sobs. It was a performance I had seen a thousand times, and for fifteen years, it had worked. It had stripped me of my home, my father, and my dignity.
But she forgot one thing. I wasn't wearing a blue tutu anymore.
"Steal?" I let out a laugh, and it wasn't the broken sound of the child in the rain with her mother. It was sharp, melodic, and carried the sting of a whip. "Dad, you’re confused. You can't steal something that was never truly hers. Kai isn't a trophy to be passed around the De la Vista house; he’s a man who finally opened his eyes. And for the first time in her life, Morgan would have to learn that she cannot have everything."
I stepped closer, my heels clicking against the stone driveway. I felt Kai’s presence right behind me, a wall of heat and immovable power giving me the added confidence I needed to make them eat dust.
"And Morgana? A mess?" I tilted my head, my wild curls moving with the slight wind. "She looks perfectly fine to me. In fact, she looked quite... energetic in that lecture hall with Toby yesterday. Didn't she tell you? Or was she too busy crying about her broken heart to mention she’d cheated on her ex-fiancé with my scholarship boyfriend?"
The silence that followed was absolute. My father’s face went from red to a ghostly, sickly white.
"What did you just say?" Armando hissed, his eyes flickering to Morgana.
"You heard her, Armando," Kai intervened, his voice smooth as silk but twice as deadly. He reached out, his hand sliding from my back to my waist, pulling me flush against him in a move of pure, unadulterated ownership. "Your perfect daughter is not so perfect after all. It turns out, she is exactly like me.
The difference is that while I fell in love with someone so special, she chose to be as cheap as a slut looking for bread. I don't do second-hand, and I certainly don't do disloyalty."
“How dare you speak to my daughter like that?” My father hissed, stepping forward slightly but stopping before he could even reach Kai.
“I did not see this energy when your wife called my fiancé a whore? Preferential much, Armando?” Kai chuckled. “What a hypocrite.”
“Aurroa! Would you truly stand there, watching this stranger insult your father like this? How dare you be so unfilial?” Densie hissed.
“You’re right, Denise,” I said, realizing my mistake. Kai froze beside me, and Dad, along with Denise, with a peeking Morgan had smiles on their faces. “I made a horrible mistake.” I shut my eyes. “I should be applauding my fiancé for speaking the truth instead, dear step-mother.” I finished. Kai settled beside me, and I relished the way their mouths dropped in surprise.
“Aurora!” Dad hissed. “What does your mother teach you?” My smile froze immediately. “Did she teach you to be a whore?” He scoffed, and I froze, already sensing where this would be headed. “I should not expect anything less from her anyway….like mother, like daughter. Birds of a feather, flock together.” He chuckled.
I stepped forward, my lips pulled in a grimace to reply, but Kai held me back, stepping in front of me with his hand now on my hand as we joined fingers.
“You should be ashamed, Armando.” He started, his tone tight, tense, and heavy, reminding me of a loaded gun. “You married your secretary after sleeping with her so many times she fell pregnant with your dear daughter. Meaning Morgan is illegitimate, but you married your whore, put her in the same house as your legal wife, and your legitimate daughter.
Now that Morgan had followed in her mother’s footsteps, acting like a whore herself, you dare speak on the daughter of a woman who isn’t the one who stepped out on you?
You truly have a gift.” He chuckled. I watched his back, my heart fluttering at his defense of me.
The only person to have done that was my mother. Seeing another human being stick up for me….it filled me with a sense of joy and gratitude I’d never felt.
“How dare you?!” Dad yelled. “I am your elder, boy.”
“Then act like it.” Kai did not raise his voice once. He had his other hand in his pocket, a calm, leisurely stance about him as he stared Dad down. He was so tall that Dad barely reached his neck or shoulder.
“You…….are insane,” Denise remarked, but Kai did not even appear offended. If anything, he seemed…pleased with that. He stepped back in line with me, a smirk on that handsome face, while he said;
“Good. You should see me when I’m deranged.”