Daisy | Levi Ackerman

Chapter 39 - Revering Indifference

[Naomi]

"Naomi? Naomi!"

I looked in frozen shock towards my grandfather, as he marched up the place where my grandmother had just dropped her head lifelessly on her velvet chair. We were playing tea party. The moment she had taken a sip of her little dainty cup, she looked at me and started to choke, drawing in deep and sharp breaths in a struggle.

I didn't know what was happening, I was so little. I was too unfamiliar with death to recognize it when it was happening before me.

"What have you done?!" Grandfather Edward exclaimed, his eyes smeared with fear and anger. "Oh dear god! Dear god!"

I shivered, unable to say anything as I stood there and watched him take the motionless Grandmother Victoria in his arms, his arthritic fingers trembling. "No, no! Victoria! Wake up, say something!"

Tears gushed down from my juvenile eyes, confused, frustrated, unable to tell him what happened before she just fell asleep. I was uncertain of what I saw. I disbelieved and denied whatever truth I held within me.

"Ivan!" Grandfather bellowed, his throat running dry. "Ivan, come here! Quickly, boy!"

In the distance, I saw my father come rushing from the giant waiting room door, its loud creaks signalling the worst of my fears. My mother came running by behind him, worried sick in her face.

"What happened?" Dad asked, as he walked over close to us. "What is it, Father?"

"Your mother, she's dead!" Grandfather cried out, cradling the sweet old woman in his trembling arms. His bloodshot eyes terrified me down to the core as he glared at me. "This little brat was with her while it happened!"

"Naomi," Dad looked down at me worriedly, the look of utter denial in his face. "What happened?"

"I... I d-don't know, daddy..." I whimpered, unable to move as I looked up at him.

"Isn't it obvious, Ivan?! That kid poisoned your mother!" Grandfather roared. "I told you, long before you took these two commoners here, that they're slowly out for our property!"

"You have no right to talk about us that way!" Mom said strongly, taking my side. "Mother Victoria had just passed away and yet here you are, accusing a child!"

"Isn't that convenient?!" Grandfather spat back at her, his eyes in lust for blood. "You would use a child to slowly kill all of us and take this estate for yourselves, because no one would prosecute her! Who's next, myself?!"

"Enough, father!" My dad spoke out, stepping forward in mine and mommy's defense. "The child has been playing like this with Mother Victoria for many years. It's so unreasonable for you to accuse her now."

Grandfather blinked twice in disbelief at witnessing, for the very first time, how Ivan, his only son and heir- had come to our defense. "You... You have truly fallen for their manipulation. Do not tell me you care for these... These.."

"I will not hear you speak ill of them no more." Father overpowered his voice. "You may not ever accept it, but this child is of our blood- and whether you believe it or not, she is incapable of murdering her kin. Now can we just move our focus to the significant loss we have at the present?"

That was the first time in history that my father had come in our defense, had protected me from the wrath of Lord Dietrich. It never happened again, however. My father had remained cold and indifferent of me and my mother like all those years before. I never once felt him truly love me. If he did, he'd failed to make me believe so.