"You want to know what I think? I think you are the only one who sees yourself as a monster. As a beast. I believe that if instead of trying to shut people out and instead try and little someone in, you'd find one person who sees you as you. I alrea...
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-Xavier-
"P-please," the man begged, looking up at me with wide eyes full of fear. Pathetic. That's what they all were.
Weak and pathetic.
"I-I have a wife," he stuttered, eyes full of tears. "And children!"
I wiped my knife, wrinkling my nose as the white cloth absorbed the red liquid.
Placing down my knife I picked up my gun.
I could see the man shake from the corner of my eyes.
"Please, Mr. Blackthorn," he pleaded, his voice breaking. "I-I didn't betray you! I haven't told anyone, anything!"
I turned to look at him, raising a single brow. "You didn't?" I asked, voice cool and collected.
The man immediately looked down.
I took a moment to study him. Tied up and bleeding. Two of his fingers missing.
I smiled. "Why're you looking at the floor?" I asked, tilting my head to the side. I grabbed his chin and forced his face upwards, to look at me. His blue eyes were full of unshed tears, his nose gushing blood and crusted snot. "Did you or did you not betray me? Betray the Blackthorn name itself?"
He quivered. "I-I..." he stuttered, but it seemed like he had given up on his lies. "I'm sorry," he said. "Please, have mercy."
I laughed, letting go of his chin and watching his head fall limply. "This is mercy," I told him and smiled, right before I lifted my gun and shot him between the brow.
"How'd it go?" Daniel, my cousin and right-hand man asked me, quickly following behind me as I used a towel to wipe my hands. I had washed them for twenty minutes, hating the blood that had crusted under my nails. "Did you find out who he worked for?"
"No," I said simply, quickly making my way down the hall of the West Wing.
Daniel sighed. "You killed him before he could tell you, didn't you?" he asked tiredly. "You need to get that temper under control."
"If I didn't have my temper under control," I hissed, "I would've killed you a long time ago. But, as you can see, you're still very much alive. Sadly."
Daniel rolled his eyes. "Love you too."
I didn't return the sentiments.
I had taken over as the head of the Blackthorn family at sixteen, Daniel was ten. He had been a boy who had not been exposed to the world the way I had. Coddled by every nanny his mother hired to keep watch of him while she shopped and went on lavish trips with her friends. Too young to remember or know anything that went about that year. Too young to know how I had made his father watch as I slit the throats of all of his men, poured gasoline over their bodies and made him watch as they burnt.
Too young to understand his mother hadn't run away to Ireland because she didn't want him, but because I had left her husband's finger with his wedding ring in her bed and told her to run and never come back.
Too young to know how his father had died. How I had made the entirety of the Familia turn against him, how I had made them hate him for breaking almost every lengthy rule all heads and members of our families had to abide by to keep the peace.
I was sixteen.
Young, but not naive. I wanted power, wanted the power that had been stripped from me back and got it.
I felt no remorse for what I had done or for what I did daily. Despite hating my uncle for what he had done to ruin my family, marking me with scars that would never heal, I could still thank him for beating those lessons into me.
Feel nothing.
No pity.
No regret.
No remorse.
"I heard that you sent Finn and Kalen to get the Beaumont man," my cousin said, looking over me warily.
That part of the story my cousin knew.
Everyone in this world knew.
"Yes," I said, my entire body feeling even colder. "Are they on their way back?" Daniel nodded/ "Any hassle?"
"Um no," he said. "But one of the girls threatened to call the police on them and wanted to attack them with a knife."
Despite myself, my lip twitched upwards.
Silly girl.
"And has she?" I asked, looking him over. "Called the 'authorities?"
"No," Daniel said. "Nothing."
I nodded.
Maybe she wasn't as much of an idiot as I originally anticipated. "Did they let them know that we'd be back for the money?"
Daniel was silent for a second before he nodded. "Yes, but, don't you think it's a little cruel?" he asked, looking over at me. "They're just girls, they don't have—"
"It's what happens," I snapped back, looking over at my cousin, gaze as sharp as the knife I had used to cut off that man's fingers, that man's eyes burnt into my brain. His cold, lifeless eyes had stared at me with so much terror, so much hatred, so much pain...
My uncle's words came back to me.
Feel nothing. No pity. No regret. No remorse.
The scars littered around my body burned and I straightened, adjusting the cuffs of my suit. I wrinkled my nose at the dark red dots that lined the white cuffs
Daniel didn't make any comment.
I sighed. "Theodore Graves has asked to meet with me tonight."
Daniel's eyes widened. "Really? The man can't stand you."
It was true, the man couldn't stand me. If I wasn't who I was, I'm sure the self-righteous bastard would've made many attempts to kill me. But, he wouldn't dare touch me. No one would dare to touch me.
They had known the full scoop. How I had slaughtered my uncle, destroyed him, decimated him and everyone who dared cross me.
Theodore Graves was just angry I had used his eldest and only daughter to ruin my uncle's reputation.
I'll admit, I do feel a sliver of pity for what I had done to Octavia. The girl who had shared so much of her soul with me in the nights I had laid with her in my bed, had told me she loved me, laying her soul bare to me, telling me about every single wretched thing she saw and endured with her father, only for me to have stabbed her in the back.
I almost felt bad.
The pretty blonde daughter of Theodore Graves, the ice queen of our world, had truly been flabbergasted when I had shunned her out after killing my uncle, realizing I no longer needed her, realizing I had used her. Had played the games she had thought she could play with me. Embarrassed her. A woman scorned.
She shouldn't be angry with me though, she came out stronger than ever, so win-win.
"Any ideas of what it could be about?" Daniel asked me and I clenched my jaw in reply, hating the uncertainty of the entire situation, how I didn't know what to expect.
