Another's Demise

Empty Rooms

Alara

"I don't think we should," I heard the whispers from beyond the door. I knew those voices still bright with the kind of happiness reserved only for the young.

"She'll kill us," the second voice piped up and I smiled softly to myself, just imagining them ears pressed up against the door, waiting for the Queen of Blood to scare them out of their skin.

"What are you guys doing?" Isobel's voice tore through their hushed whispering, swinging the door open as the twins tumbled through the frame, "Caught these rascals eavesdropping," Isobel, my half sister was probably the only person I truly engaged with. Otherwise, I sat holed up in this room, working on a way out of this.

My fingers would reach up to my shoulder, the rough skin, of a what I had thought was a birthmark, primed between fingers that knew now that it was so much more than just a birthmark.

More of a birth right.

I thought bitterly. My expression softening at the terrified faces of Hussain and Harun, their small hands were pressed against their backs innocent looks gracing their faces which were always bright with mischief.

"I have no idea why Dad let them in, like I know Alessia trusts him and all but seriously, him as a babysitter?"

It was an odd occurrence the two twins left here as Alessia travelled to try and secure a business deal. The business that Isobel and I knew was just a farce for the real Torres family business.

"Beats me," I lifted myself and saw the boys shy away from me. For a moment I felt that lurch in my throat, the truth of it all. They were afraid, children were afraid of me.

I wondered how much the young boys had heard, whether the legend of the Blood Queen extended to the playgrounds, whispers amongst children who knew nothing of what it was really like.

Isobel ruffled both their heads, and their grins widened, "Your Mama's going to kill my dad you know," she crouched down her eyes mock analysing them as she traced a finger across their sticky hands, "How many ice pops have you guys had?"

"Two?" Harun answered but it was more of a question.

Isobel's gaze steeled, and for a moment she looked too much like our father. Isobel was biologically Vincent's niece, but after the death of her father, she had been adopted, but their eyes were strikingly similar, dark and brooding, the sort you could fall into and never return.

There was power in her look, in her stance, and as she grew, as she became more familiar with the Mafia, the training rooms, the duties she thought she was bound to I dreaded the day she became old enough to pried on by the swaths of unsavoury men in the underworld.

"Four," Hussain admitted, "But don't tell Ami, she'll be mad."

"At my dad probably," Isobel rolled her eyes, "Where's your sister anyways?"

"At school," they spoke in unison.

"School?" Isobel frowned, "It's a Saturday?"

The two boys shrugged and scuttled off, sure that they no longer wanted to be confined to this room.

"Some babysitting dad does, right?" she sat down on the bed, before falling backwards dramatically, before crawling comfortably onto the bed, "He just can't say no to Alessia. I mean, it's a good thing, I love it but sometimes I just wish, he was like that all the time."

"A good person?" I said bitterly.

Isobel's lips curled into a pensive frown, "He's not – I mean," she searched for the words, but her eyes, the ones that looked too much like his said it all, "He took me in when no one would. You would think the people that are hanging off your every word when you were alive would care, if you were suddenly killed. Leaving a daughter behind. But nope. No one gave a fuck-"