I picked up a vase and hurled it. I didn’t expect it to hit Alaric, who had just walked in.
“Ahhh!”
“Ms. Selene! Alaric is in so much pain!”
His cry pierced the air like a siren and for the first time, Selene reacted. She shoved me hard, slamming me onto the coffee table.
Bang! The glass shattered and my body fell into the shards.
Blood seeped out, but I didn’t feel a thing.
Instead, I laughed. Bitterly.
I remembered the time I accidentally cut my finger while chopping vegetables for her.
She panicked so badly she nearly fainted. She rushed me to the hospital and demanded the best doctor treat a tiny wound.
Now?
Now she had poured every ounce of her love into someone else.
“Xavier, don’t take this too far.”
“I’ve been lenient with you because of your mother’s death. That doesn’t mean I don’t have a limit.”
“Hahaha… lenient?”
“You threw my father off a building and crippled him and that’s your idea of leniency?”
I stood up, letting the glass shards dig deeper into my skin.
I wanted the pain. I needed it. I needed to feel something that would kill the love I still had for her. It was time to draw the line.
Seeing the glass embedded in my body, she looked startled.
“Xavier, don’t punish me with your body. The matter isn’t resolved and honestly… I don’t care.”
It didn’t matter.
Whether she cared or not had nothing to do with me anymore. What mattered was finding my father.
“Xavier, I really didn’t mean to kill your mother. I ran because I was scared. Please… forgive me.” “I’ll kneel. I’ll apologize.”
He dropped to his knees, at least, he pretended to.
But I remembered that night. I had gone to confront him and found him laughing with his friends.
He was smoking, bragging, calling my mother “an old hag.”
The car that had hit her and her blood still on it—was a gift from Selene. They joked about how she died. Laughed at her pain.
And I had once believed he was just a coward.
Slap!
“If you really feel guilty, don’t kneel before me. Go turn yourself in!”
He held his face where I slapped him and started crying pitifully, like I was the one bullying him.
Selene’s expression darkened. She raised her hand and hit me back.
Slap!
“You already injured him with the vase! Why do you have to go so far?”
“He apologized! Why are you being so ruthless?”
Because it wasn’t her mother who died. Not her father who was thrown from a building.
That slap? It severed the last thread between us.
I turned away, blood soaking through my white shirt.
She used to love when I wore white. She would run into my arms, have me lift her and spin her around, laughing, calling me her one and only.
Those memories flashed through my mind, then vanished.
“Selene, we’re done. You go your way, I’ll go mine.” “Fine.”
She helped Alaric, who was perfectly fine, out of the house.
I didn’t waste a second. I went looking for my father.
I searched every hospital in the city. Every single one.
But he wasn’t there.
That’s when it hit me—Selene must have hidden him.
