MALLEABLE

CHAPTER ZERO

malleable: easily influenced; pliable.

♠︎

She was sixteen when he first saw her.

She was the definition of beauty, with her soft glossy burning red hair with hints of light brown that bounced on her frail shoulders when she turned her head towards the side to talk to a boy.

Her boyfriend, to be precise.

She sported a bright red lipstick on her plump lips which contrasted her porcelain skin. Her piercing deep blue eyes would roam around the huge ballroom every once in a while in search of her father.

My God, she was beautiful.

She adjusted the body-hugging bodice of her flaming red cocktail dress and looked away uncomfortably when her boyfriend got a little too close, running his finger up and down her slender forearm.

The metallic butter knife in his hand dug into the calluses of his hand as it bent unnaturally. He tolerated the scene in front of him and the sharpest part of the knife dug into his palm.

Kill, break, destroy.

A warm hand on his shoulder made his eyes snap from the beauty to look up at a middle-aged man, barely in his forties.

"Quinton," the man said with a big grin as Quinton stood up from his chair and gave the man a quick hug.

"Rob" Quinton's gravely voice greeted back as he cast his sharp eyes back at the beauty, now her eyes were solely focused on them.

The man in front of him, Rob, followed his gaze.

"Sabrina" Rob hollered, making Quinton snap his head back at him.

Sabrina.

He knew the name a little too well. She was the daughter, his friend told him all about during their army days. How she was the only sunshine in his life after her mother had passed away at childbirth.

Rob was only eight years older than Quinton, and Sabrina was Rob's sixteen-year-old daughter.

That realization should have deterred him from his growing infatuation, noting that he was thirty-one to her sixteen-year-old self.

But it didn't. In fact, it fed to his dark twisted desires.

His dark, dangerous eyes followed the movement of her swaying hips as she walked around the table and made her way towards her father.

She smiled up at her father as she finally reached them and laid her plump red lips against his cheeks, making Quinton fist his already bleeding hand in rage.

It didn't matter if he was her father. Didn't matter if that father was his old friend, hell it didn't even matter if that girl was almost half his age.

He saw red.

Literally.

If her father got all her affection, he would gladly snatch the life out of him. The life he had saved in a war a few years ago.