Page 69 of Beautifully Deranged

He followed me around with a hard cock.

Tell me—what’s a bigger sign we belong together?

I stab another piece of fruit. Feed it to him. His hand rests on my thigh now, tracing lazy circles, and I don’t even think he notices he’s doing it.

He gets it. He knows I’m not some unfeeling psycho. I’m just calculated. I know what I want. I protect what’s mine. And no, I’m not soft. I’m not sweet. But I’m not the monster they made me out to be, either. Morally gray, maybe. Human, definitely.

There’s a knock at the door. Loud. Sharp. No rhythm to it. With how this person is knocking, there better be something burning on the other side. I move to stand, knife still in hand, but Mikhail presses me back down with one palm to my shoulder.

“I’ve got it.”

I follow anyway.

When he opens the door, we’re greeted by the sight of my sneering father. He looks exactly like he did last time. Back then, I stood in this same apartment, in the same damn shirt, and he was at the door with that same disgusted look on his face.

Déjà vu.

“We need to talk,” he spits at me, barging in without permission. The door slams against the wall so hard I think it might crack.

“You little brat,” my father yells, face flushed red with fury. “You’re doing commission work now?” The words are poison in his mouth. “Your allowance is more than enough—more than most of the board makes in a year—and you’re out there working? Like a peasant?”

He steps closer to me, menace dripping off him, but it’s nothing compared to the violence brewing in Mikhail’s eyes.

“My colleagues keep bringing it up,” he snaps. “Do you know how humiliating it is to be laughed at because my daughter’s running around like a desperate little—”

“Enough,” Mikhail hisses, pushing my father back, making him stumble. “Keep your fucking voice down.”

I lift a hand without looking at him. Just to say:I’ve got this.My father acts like Mikhail doesn’t exist. He’s so pissed at me, it’s like I’m the only thing that exists in that moment.

“You’ve always thought you were so clever. So above it all. You were always a weird little girl, Lola. Always quiet, always off.I have always known something was wrong with you.” He starts pacing now.

He doesn’t notice how Mikhail seems to be bursting at the seams, or how my patience is wearing thin.

“You were never right in the head,” he continues. “All you had to do was look pretty, take my money, and smile when I told you to. That was your only job. And even that, you managed to fuck up.”

Mikhail lunges and drives his fist straight into my father’s face. My father stumbles back, hits the floor with a thud, blood pouring from his broken nose. Mikhail looms over him, his voice guttural when he snarls, “She’s perfect. You’re the one who’s fucked in the head.”

Yet again, my father doesn’t even look at him. Want to know why? Because he’s scared of him. Terrified of him. He thinks he can pick on me because I’m his “little girl,” but he doesn’t stand a chance against the six-foot-five beast that is Mikhail. Seems like my father forgot just how scary I can be.

He spits blood out of his mouth, ruining Mikhail’s white carpet. The punch to his face only makes his tongue looser. “I know you had something to do with Tina’s death. Don’t think I don’t see it. That sweet woman—”

“Your mistress,” I correct, coolly. “She was your mistress.”

“I loved her more than I ever loved you or your mother. I spent years pretending you were normal. Do you know what that did to me?” He laughs, short and bitter. “Having to sit at dinner tables, raise a glass, and talk about my daughter while knowing you murdered the only person who ever gave a shit about me? While knowing you were ecstatic when I got my cancer diagnosis?”

Mikhail moves again, fury in his limbs, but I stop him with one hand around his waist, fingers curling into his shirt. Helooks at me, chest heaving, eyes wild. And I say nothing. I just stare at the man on the floor and wonder how much more it’ll take before he’s finally fucking silent. At this moment, I regret not inducing cancer in him again after he recovered. I thought once would be enough—that he’d see how close death is and regret the way he used to talk to me as a child like I’m a monster, or the way he treated my mother. I was wrong.

“Every time I looked at you, all I saw was blood,” he sneers. “Darkness. Emptiness. A mistake I never should’ve made. Maria couldn’t even give me a decent child. Not one fucking thing she did was right. You’re just like her. Broken. Pathetic. A waste of a womb.”

Something snaps. The steak knife is still in my hands. No one disrespects my mother, or anyone else I care about. I lunge like a child mid-tantrum. What I lack in form, I make up for in fury. The first stab lands just beneath his clavicle, between the muscle and bone. It slices through the skin with a wet crunch, the blade grinding past cartilage as he screams. His face is a picture-perfect embodiment of shock. I pull back and stab again, this time angling lower. It goes through the soft pad of his stomach. I feel the resistance. Then give. Muscle tears. The knife grinds deeper. A hot gush of blood splashes across my forearm.

He grabs my wrist and tries to push me back, but I twist, bite into the side of his hand, and drive the blade higher into the side of his neck. It slides in under the jaw, scraping against bone. The sound is hideous, wet and sticky, like a boot in mud.

“Don’t talk about her,” I scream, animalistic. “Don’t say her name. You don’t get to say her fucking name.”

I stab again. And again. My arms shake from the exertion, my grip loosens, my knuckles slip against blood-slick skin. His mouth opens—another insult, maybe. A plea. I don’t care.

And then Mikhail is there. His arms wrap around my waist, anchoring me. I’m shaking so violently I don’t even realizethe knife has fallen until he plucks it from the floor. He brushes the blood-soaked hair from my face, presses a kiss to my temple.

---