Chapter 80: Hello father
I stand in front of the cell, feeling a sense of calm wash over me as I watch the broken man behind the bars. My father—or whatever I’m supposed to call him now—stares at me with hollow, lifeless eyes. The *great* Duke Robbens, stripped of his title and power, now nothing more than a caged animal awaiting his fate. I step forward, letting the flickering torchlight illuminate my face, and his gaze sharpens, flickering with recognition. His fury is palpable.
"How could you do this to me?!" he roars, gripping the bars with white-knuckled hands, shaking them as though he could break free through sheer force of will. "I gave you everything! You ungrateful bastard!"
I can’t help the smile that curls at the corners of my lips. Amused. Detached. With a flick of my hand, a chair slides across the stone floor toward me, scraping against the cold stone as I take a seat. My hands rest atop my cane, and I lean forward slightly, studying him with the kind of curiosity one might reserve for an insect struggling underfoot.
"I don’t know what you’re talking about," I say, my voice soft, almost gentle. I savor the way his face twists with rage, his fists slamming against the iron bars in a desperate, futile display. His fall had been hasty in the end, but I’d always imagined dragging it out, watching him crumble piece by piece as I slowly dismantled everything he held dear. I could’ve finished him years ago—I’d had all the evidence I needed. But killing him outright would’ve been far too kind. No, I wanted him to fall, not as a noble Duke, but as the pathetic, groveling man he truly was. How unfortunate.
Looking at him now, with those vaguely familiar features I see in the mirror every day, I feel...nothing. There’s no hatred. No lingering desire for revenge. Just emptiness. A big hole of nothing.
I think back to when I was ten, that day my mother dragged me to his grand estate, full of hope that maybe, just maybe, he would accept me. I was so young, so desperate for something more than the filth of the brothel streets I grew up in. The massive house loomed over me like a monster, its grandeur both terrifying and alluring. I had been so excited, so full of hope. What a fool I was.
I scoff internally. That hope had been crushed so quickly. The next four years with him had been just as miserable as the back alleys I’d come from—maybe even worse. At least in the brothel, I hadn’t had expectations. By the time I was fourteen, I had already run off to the battlefield, anything to escape the suffocating emptiness of his home.
"How dare you..." His voice brings me back to the present, and I glance at him, half-listening as he babbles on about noble bloodlines and betrayal. His voice rises in a crescendo of rage and indignation, but all I feel is boredom. Was this supposed to give me closure? Was I supposed to feel something? Regret? Relief?
I stifle a yawn, my thoughts drifting to Noelle. I’d rather be in his arms, away from all this meaningless noise.