❛𝐃𝐎𝐍'𝐓 𝐁𝐄 𝐒𝐂𝐀𝐑𝐄𝐃, 𝐈'𝐌 𝐉𝐔𝐒𝐓 𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑 𝐖𝐈𝐅𝐄...❜ | 𝐍𝐨.𝟑

Chapter 9- Enough Is Enough...

Lauren's POV:
That noise...it sounds so similar to a klaxon: the sound of visiting time commencing, beginning an underway of unnecessary great emotional turmoil...for me specifically, that is. Noticing his hefty feet pit-pattering across the painfully light-blue, plainly-patterned stoned floor, which is cold to the touch, ever so ridiculously slowly making their way towards me, the same damned feet eventually halting to a stop before the large rectangular round-edged table, the only one thing putting any kind of distance between myself and my criminal of a father.

It has to be him...if anything, I pray to the God if there is one, that he is the one behind the undoubted stress, the idiotic-caused confusion and the constant worry pushed onto my future wife's and mine's consciences, and that we won't have to delve deeper into this unidentifiable mystery...being told that he's been the one creating the taunting sensation placed on our heavy souls all along will make us feel that much more weightless...and this point, hope is our only hope...

Having to lay my eyes on his dishevelled appearance after all this time apart, the last time seeing him being locked behind a set of  jail cell, strong and unbreakable metal bars which restrict any kind of minuscule freedom he had left in his narrow life, sparks a sorrowful feeling deep within my diaphragm that tugs on a string I find hard to personally identify...it doesn't create a feeling of empathy, sympathy, guilt or even regret. I just can't seem to figure it out...

"...Hi, Victor." lowering himself into the seat opposite me, a shaky hand harshly smoothes over his shortish stubble he seems to have grown over the past two or so years, the same hand then reaching to the top of his head to satisfy an itch sprouted from his roots that I'm almost certain isn't there. How should he respond? It wouldn't be considered 'polite' to reply with a question as to why exactly I'm here. But then again, my father was never considered an exactly 'polite' person. After the mountains of denied visit requests he attempted to make, which I unhesitatingly frequently turned down, why did I choose now to accept any of them?

"Hi, kid...how are the little ones?" this time, I find it fairly easy to make the decision as to what the pang of emotion spurred in my stomach is...it's nausea. To act as if the past never happened, never occurred, never caused me so much hate and resentment for years on end without being gratified even for a single utmost second...I can't look past that. I just can't.

"I'm not hear to play happy families, hate to be the one to break it to you." the familiar sensation I would often get as a child comes creeping slowly back up my postured spine, the way he would sharply narrow his pointy, leafy and dense pupils to scrutinise my face in a scolding way that seems ever so terrifying to young, pre-adolescent Lauren...but not this Lauren...the Lauren he's currently staring at is a confident, strong-willed and mind-driven woman who dominates people's souls for a living. No matter how weighted the years of trauma and unforgiving anguish pressurises on my emotion-heavy soul, the only sentence circulating around my mind again, and again, and again, is...

I'm not scared of you, sunshine. If anything, you should be scared of me...

"Then why are you here? What is it that you so desperately want that couldn't wait until I got out of this disgusting hellhole you and that woman of yours insisted on putting me in?" the entire reason why I contemplated my destined arrival upon this revolting trip from the beginning flies out of the window and makes a tragic fall for the earth's crust, at the sheer disrespect shedded on my fiancées person. You got one thing right, Victor. Emma's my woman, and no one disparages her in the way you just did, especially in front of me.

The perfect difference between us that I will be eternally grateful for - only one of us knows how to treat women right. "She has a name, and I'd thank you to pay more respect toward my wife-to-be." I dip my head in a daunting gaze, the verdant spheres of intimidation soaring into his own, the similar gaze usually obtained by myself that never seems to fail my attemption at asserting dominance, no matter how big and scary my prey is.