Darker than Darkness

Part 6

Anubhav

Like any perfectionist, I had a particular dislike for losing.

The last time I'd lost at something, I was eight and up against the greatest chess player in all of Moscow.

Like the dunce he was, my step father knew nothing about the game, nor was he smart enough to know who I was up against.

He just knew that I lost.

He beat me so hard I broke eight of my fingers.

However, the pain wasn't what had thrown me off the edge, it was how in doing so, he'd prevented me from playing for two entire months.

I'd spent those two months plotting my step father's death.

And although, this specific instance wasn't a loss, it wasn't a win.

Plans were derailed, my carefully curated timeline was altered, taking my adequate mood with it.

The Ademaro girl had soured it.

Patience was a virtue and I was extremely generous with it. It took a great deal to annoy me, even more to anger me. And in the few hours of knowing the girl, she'd managed to vex me, not once but twice.

It had seemed as though I had made an entire lapse in judgement.

I had a plan for how I wanted things to play out with prisoner, ways I would make use of her to further my own agenda. There was only one thing I hadn't accounted for, and that was the possibility of her being anything but the docile, naive girl I thought Leonardo Ademaro's daughter would be.

This one was far worse

It would seem that her entirety was a nuisance. Everything from the way she ate her food and spoke to me, to the way she kept pushing the bounds surrounding her, even when she knew she'd lose in the end.

She was everything I disliked in a person.

Loud, far too hard headed and ill tempered.

As if that isn't enough, she was an even number association.

I couldn't stand those.

It was a quint essential sign, one that pointed to a conclusion I was not well prepared to come to, especially this late in the development of my scheme.

I wanted to kill her.

That was far from the original plan.

"Haseena - also known as Haseena Mallik." Feo begins from my right. "Grand-daughter of a Indian who also happens to be the last known King and existed even after independence." My steps don't falter upon hearing the news, although it does strike me as interesting how a girl that lacked such social etiquette was kin to royalty.

"Leonardo must have knocked up one important woman and then decided to keep his bastard a secret." The twin to my left chimes, his words thick and coated in the taste of bitter resentment.

I remain impartial to the men on either side of me as I continue down the hall and towards the library. The only place in this ancient dump that I deemed worthy of my continued use.

That is until I've built my living quarters and am able to wind down in a space void of prehistoric toxic fumes.

I cast a glance to the overgrown boy throwing a tantrum. "Whatever stick is shoved up your dick, take it out." There was no room for his dramatics. I didn't value any form of emotional displays, including his outbursts.

"In America, they say he has a stick shoved up his ass." I don't offer the twin to my right a response, I merely offer Feo a glimpse of my attention, dried and unimpressed.