Rule and Ruin

one; the power in her blood

chapter one.

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TO RULE AND TO RUIN, aren't they the same thing?

That was all Selene could think about as she stood beside Dino, hands clasped behind her back, chin lifted high, and eyes wiped empty.

Two cowering men knelt before them with two guards holding guns to the back of their heads. The sight made Selene's stomach lurch - out of disdain rather than pity. She had trained herself long ago to never feel pity.

"Dino, please," the one on the left whimpered through a strained voice. "It won't happen again, I promise."

Selene knew their pleas were pointless. A ruler like Dino only knew how to ruin, and from the curling grin on his aged face, she could tell he took pleasure from it.

She was used to ruin, which was why she paid no attention to the men's desperate attempts to make eye contact with her, as if she knew mercy any more than they knew loyalty.

Dino cackled. It was a disgusting sound of choked cruelty and it made the two men cower further into themselves. Their fingers dug into the ground and their knees trembled against the weight of their bodies. Dino lit up a cigarette and took a few puffs. Selene watched him slowly circle the two men in a manner that allowed him to wallow in the power he held over them. He enjoyed the way they trembled. He enjoyed hearing their desperate pleas. Most of all, he enjoyed the ruin.

He returned to his spot beside her and pressed the cigarette butt into one of the men's necks. The man screeched until the guard behind him dug the gun harder against the back of his head. He shut his mouth and his face turned red from his suppressed shrieks of pain. The sight made Dino laugh.

Dino walked to the door and Selene turned to follow. 

"Cut out their tongues first," he said to the two guards when they reached the door, "so they know the consequences of running their mouths. And then shoot them."

Dino paused for a few moments to listen to his victims' hopeless cries of fear. There was a glint in his eyes, as if the sound was music to his ears. Selene walked ahead, training her eyes ahead at the black car, and pretended it was just the wind crying. She opened the car door and waited.

Dino was an aged large man. The wrinkles around his blue eyes had spread to the corners of his chin. His greying hair grew in strange angles that no one dared to point out to him. He waddled more than walked, and when he climbed into the car seat after a few moments, he did so with a strained grunt.

Selene climbed in after him. She closed the door behind them just as the gunshots rang, and she pretended she could hear nothing but the car door slam.

She had gotten accustomed to pretending things away.

"The traitors are rising in numbers," Dino said as the car started to drive away.

Selene focused her gaze ahead.

"And you know what we do to traitors, don't you, Selene?" he said.

"Of course," she turned to look at him with a pretty smile.

He gave her an ugly grin in return and reached over for a strand of her black hair. "Your father would have done much worse to them." He watched her strips of hair slip from his stained fingers. "Ruthless bastard, he was. You look just like him."

It was a comment Selene had heard countless times. Once, she had treasured those words. Part of her still did.

Selene remembered as much about her father as a seven year old could. She couldn't remember his voice or his laugh. She could barely remember the way he looked. She remembered a vague shadow of a tall man, who used to hold her tiny fingers in one hand and a pistol in another. She was always looking up at him. Up and up his tall frame, where his shadowed face hid away, as it did in her memories now.

She grew up on tales of him. Word of mouth. Rumors of that ruthless bastard. That mad genius. Selene's memory of her father had become entirely built on what Dino fed her. How he had plotted the most detailed heists. How he murdered and maimed anyone who crossed him. How his death marked the end of an era.

Selene liked hearing about it. She liked knowing how feared her father was. She liked seeing how his name, which she bore, still sent shivers down spines when spoken. His power was her power.

And even without him, Selene knew power as she sat in that car, trusted by the now most powerful man of the underground.

This was power. She had power. She had no reason to fear the wind that cried or the bullets that slammed doors.

Power ran in her blood.