STOLEN || 18+ (Monsters #3)

.2. Never without thorns

"He, like me, is haunted by his heart."

- Mohmoud Darwish

Leyla

CAMPBELL MANSION

When I got downstairs, they were already gone.

My father was sitting on his large chair behind his desk, looking troubled but he cleared his expression as soon as I knocked on the open door.

He looked at me, our eyes were identical. I hated that they were identical. I was nothing like this man.

"They seem to be...taken with you, Leyla." He stood nodded his head towards one of the chairs across him.

I sat down cautiously. I had a feeling I wouldn't like whatever was about to come out of his mouth.

He set his elbows on the table, looking me in the eye. "They want..." He leaned back into his chair, his fingers drumming ok the table. His troubled expression returned. "Get out and send your mother in."

"She is sleeping-"

He raised his eyebrows and I shot out of my seat, jogging to the master bedroom and knocking on the door.

The door opened and my stepmother looked at me. She was dressed in a decent nightgown, looking like she owned the world with her blond hair still managing to be in perfect curls even though by her slightly swollen eyes it was clear she had been asleep.

"Father wants you."

Fear momentarily flashed through her eyes but she veiled it as soon as it came. She squared her shoulder and pushed past me without a word.

I kept looking at her.

She walked like a queen. I often wondered why she married my father. He wasn't a nice man, he was just a man in power and my stepmother did not seem like a woman who'd marry someone for just power.

I spent the rest of my night in my room, walking around and freaking out over good poetry, trying to push the Valentinos to the corner of my mind.

Yet green-eyed flashed in my head every time I closed my eyes. They looked to be opposites, one fire, and one ice, yet they complimented each other.

I fell asleep at nearly five in the morning, a book of sad poetry in my arms yet my mind whispering rhymes of green eyes.

. . .

I prided myself for knowing my father's secrets, he was just too slippery.

And now he was hiding something.

Countless meetings happened during the week, all of them happening with the door firmly closed and the voices nothing but gibberish to me when I pressed my ear to the door.

Something big was happening and I did not know what. The election wasn't there for about two years, then what had got my father so troubled?

I liked him troubled. I liked knowing what was troubling him, too.

I didn't find out, no matter how many times I sneaked inside his office and shuffled around his countless files, I ended up empty-handed and my head itching to get the answers. I could never resist a good mystery, and my bastard father was a mystery box for now. He had not been this interesting for years.

And then I heard it, shouting coming from the master room as I entered the mansion after buying a dress for my step sister's wedding.

"Why do you have to continue this?" Leona was screaming. I had never heard her scream.

"It's business, Leona. Stop overreacting."

"It's sex tr-"

A sharp sound rang through the hushed mansion. He had slapped her.

It wasn't the first time and I knew it wasn't the last either. Yet, him hurting her always spread dread through my body like venom. If a strong woman like her was getting abused by him, how did I, Astrid, and Gabrielle even have a chance?

I often wondered what life would have been like if my real mother was alive. She was gentle, not rough like Leona. She loved me and she reminded me that every day

I blinked back the tears and climbed the stairs to my room silently. I half hoped Leona would leave, she should leave, her daughter could support her but I knew Leona's pride won't let her leave.

Or maybe she didn't want to leave me and my sisters alone.

I wanted to bash my head against a wall. She doesn't care. She didn't, she even said that. She was not here for us, she was here for power and money, no matter how shallow it seemed for someone like her.

I had searched for my mother in every elder female I was related to or frequently talked to, I searched for her kindness and her ability to lift my heart in just a smile, and I had failed. There was no one like her. Soft but not weak. A flower but not without thorns, never without thorns.

The time for the wedding came - my step-sister's wedding - and my sisters were excited to go to New York. Astrid walked around in her new one-inch heels, her first as she was just seven. Gabrielle just whined about not wanting to go. My sisters and I looked like. Gabrielle was younger than me by two years and had a slimmer face than mine, her skin a little darker than mine and we had the same eyes. Astrid too, head the same features. Father's eyes and everything else belonged to Leona.

"Do you think she'll let me be the flower girl!?" Astrid, who was now in her golden dress which had too many layers, asked excitedly, grinning ear to ear as she skipped beside me while we walked to the limousine parked informs of the mansion.

"Probably not," Gabrielle said, looking radiant in her red fitted dress. She was a lot curvier than I was. There were changes of us getting photographed at the airport so we had to dress to impress.   "She hates us, remember?"

"She never said that," Leona reminded us as she walked past us, dressed in an emerald green dress.

"She hates us," Gabrielle stubbornly said as we got inside the limousine.  Leona just rolled her eyes but didn't say anything, peeking out of the window and pretending as if we did not exist.

Stop looking for warmth in this world, Leyla.

I couldn't.

I couldn't stop looking

. . .