Paris Monsieur in Gotham) [DISCONTINUED]

(Chapter 20)

Dahlia woke up bright and early- earlier than usually actually. The moment she opened her eyes, discipline kicked in to remind her of the definite course of action to be taken with vigour.

Washing up and getting dressed, the first thing she did was reconnaissance. God knows what her siblings could be plotting or what kind of traps they could’ve discreetly prepared all over the manor have it be a harmless prank or a deadly trap to decapacitate.

She also checked under every surface, every drawer, every nook and cranny and inside any object that could be used as possible storage for any humiliating blackmail material. She even checked the chandelier!

Thankfully, Pennyworth didn’t know about the last part and fingers crossed, he never will.

Her paranoia paid off however when she found a small stack of adoption papers hidden in Todd’s disgusting laundry hamper.

She had shredded those and flushed them down his toilet.

After that, she saw to it to go over the menu Pennyworth had planned to make. God forbid her siblings tried to slip some kind of truth serum into Marcel’s meal.

Alfred had chased her out after her triple check and forbade her from coming inside to disrupt his cooking any longer. She would’ve threatened to fire him had he not given her the look and remind her that she was in the kitchen which was Alfred’s domain.

She wisely did a tactical retreat.

“You’re wound up today.” Dick remarked as she did her routine training to loosen up.

Dahlia just grunted, not turning to acknowledge him but not dismissing him either as she pounded the punching bag.

“I dunno bout you but I’m looking forward to dinner tonight.” Dick went on. Dahlia scoffed at the obvious bait.

“You always do.” She grunted.

“Yeah but for once, it’ll be interesting.” He said.

“Grayson, pray tell when was the last time we had a dull dinner?” she pointed out.

“Four nights ago when Bruce and Tim talked about business stocks?” he tried.

“Which prompted you, Todd and Stephanie to waste good peas in an attempt at a real life version of Plant VS Zombies?” she shot back.

“Hey, we ate all our other greens.” He defended.

“Pennyworth looked ready to throw a fit.” She huffed.

“Memory serves, your hands aren’t clean either missy.” He pointed out with a smug smirk as he sauntered towards the gymnastics equipment.

“I only retaliated in self-defence.” She said defensively.

“Riiiiight.” He drawled from his handstand on the parallel bars.

Dahlia grunted, punching the bag. Her punch was noticeably more powerful now that she simply pictured the blonde Barbie’s face onto it just for the heck of it.  Panting, she unwrapped the combat tape from her hands and took a swig from her bottle.

“……..so….you gonna tell him?” Dick asked, somersaulting off the parallel bars and walking over to sit beside her.

“About our night life? In all honesty, yes but not today and certainly not tonight or tomorrow or the day after.” She replied honestly but Dick could sense the wary hesitance underneath it all.

“So you’ll tell him someday?” he clarified.

Dahlia nodded.

“Weeell look at it this way; who knows? There’s also the chance he might be able to find out himself before you tell him.” He said.