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Four. Spycraft During Summer.
Patience was a virtue Amelia lacked. She liked to believe she inherited that from him. Everything broken inside her—every sharp edge, every bitter thought—had to come from somewhere. And in her mind, all roads led back to him. It was all his fault. Every goddamn thing she hated about herself.
He was short-tempered, and the slightest weight on his shoulders could spark an explosion. A bomb loaded with every emotion he didn't know how to process—rage always at the forefront. He was an expert in chaos, always too loud, always with just about enough force to turn their home into a cemetery. A quiet, hollow place haunted by the echoes of the things he screamed.
And he only got worse with time.
Amelia never bothered to hide the disgust on her face when he spat venom at Margot. That was all he ever did. He poisoned their home. Amelia had to watch him grow angrier with her mother's silence, as if her stillness was the problem, as if her calm could undo the mess he made of himself.
They watched his fury like it was routine. At first, she chalked it up to stress. Maybe he was just easily frustrated. But he kept lashing out. Again. And again. A never-ending cycle that only paused when his throat dried up or his tongue twisted too tightly. But he always found a way to bite back.
Father barked at Daughter.
He thought himself noble. A good father. A hard-working one, who set the bar high for his daughter, and raised her with rules and discipline. But all he ever did was turn their home into a battlefield, where raised voices were weapons and anger was ammunition.
Amelia wouldn't realize she'd been crying until Margot pulled her in, her gentle cradle reassuring her with her soft arms around her body. Let him be. He's having a bad day, she'd whisper. The words stung more than anything he ever said—because every day was a bad day. And Amelia was expected to let him be.
She was expected to ignore the slammed doors. The fists breaking the walls. The glass-eyed sharpened stares when he passed her in a fit of quiet rage.
He was everything a father shouldn't be. And Amelia was tired of pretending he deserved peace.
Margot would cling to the girl like he might rip Amelia away at any moment. What could a woman do? She was young and fragile, a mother of a precious little girl. Too soft for the war she married into. A teacher who loved too deeply and cried too much for being a wife. What could a woman do?
Children grow up. Teenagers see things far more than just what the surface offers. And Amelia was only fourteen—maybe younger—when she first fantasized about tearing the voice from his throat and taping his dog mouth. About stopping his words before they could bruise her mother's heart again.
