Page 8 of Seizing Control: Part One

“Screw school.” The giant yawn that she tries to suppress makes a mockery of her objection. Eyes watering, Cherub pulls the covers back. She pats the mattress next to her. “Come on.”

“I’ll be fine on the floor.”

“Sure, you will.” She rolls her eyes when I don’t move. “Dad will be at the compound for the night... no one will know you’re here.”

“Go to sleep.” It irritates me that she’s aware of the dissonance between me and her father. “You’ll be FUBAR at school... your perfect marks’ll plummet.”

In the wake of my blatant deflection, Cherub rolls her eyes, then pokes her tongue out. I go to chuck her under the chin with my knuckles but pull away at the last moment when I remember that they’re bleeding. I will never sully her with my violence, so I drop down to my haunches to press a kiss to her forehead instead. The cotton pyjamas she’s wearing cover her from collar bone to ankle, yet I know her father would flip his lid if he caught me this close to his daughter.

“Go back to sleep without an argument, and I’ll give you a ride to school in the morning.”

“Promise?” She holds out her pinkie.

I hook my little finger around hers. “Promise.”

As we both make ourselves comfortable, me on the floor, Cherub on her bed, an easy silence dawns. It’s the first moment of peace I’d had since Doc came to the farm to check my mother and made his pronouncement that she didn’t have more than a few days left. Watching the woman who birthed me fade away from the breast cancer she refused to fight was hard as fuck. I had so many things I wanted to say to her. Questions. Insults. Pleas. A whole heap of blame, anger, and dislike. A dollop of unearned love that I’ll deny to my dying breath. It all percolated in my head until I was drowning in all the words that I couldn’t bring myself to say.

The gaping divide between us came down to two things.

She didn’t love me.

She only came back to die.

Why?

“I’m sorry about Chantal,” Cherub whispers. I stare up at the ceiling as the sympathy in her voice makes my gut fill with hatred. “Mum said you were holding her hand when she died. That was really kind of you.”

“Wasn’t my call. Just kinda happened.”

“Hades wasn’t there?”

“Nah...”

Pulling the pillow from behind my head, I jam it over my face to stop myself from screaming. The burning turmoil that I’ve spent days fighting to suppress whips through me. I need to vent. Purge the depths of my soul. Flood the world with the bile that poisons me. Drain it before it infects every atom of my body and I lose my constant battle to stay on an even keel.

My anger is trying to taint the only sanctuary I possess.

I won’t let that happen.

I won’t break while I’m with Cherub.

Before I can think of a way to change the topic, the girl who holds my heart in her fist sums up reality without sugar coating it. “That’s bullshit... I love Hades to death, but he’s a really shit dad sometimes.”

“Yeah.”

The sound of her feet hitting the floor is the only warning I get before she body slams me. I know that I should chastise her for cursing. I know I should stop her from removing the pillow from my face. I know that I definitely shouldn’t allow her to curl up next to me on the floor with her arms around my neck. It’s not right—even though nothing feels more right to me than this.

Since she finished primary school, everyone comments about our attachment.

Particularly Brutus...

My president has made it clear than I shouldn’t be near his twelve-year-old.

That a nineteen-year-old man shouldn’t be this close to a pre-teen.

I’d normally agree.

I’m a killer.

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