Chapter 27 Nicole #2
Then something rains down over my head. Pencils. They strike my back, bounce off my shoulders, and scatter across the stone. Hitting the floor, they roll in every direction like spilled dreams that once drowned in the River of Forgotten Dreams.
I reach forward, and my fingers brush one of them. I know it by touch—the pencil I use for the first strokes of every animal I draw. There’s nothing warmer than the slow unfolding of life on a blank page.
My father took that from me! He convinced me that in the world of successful people, there’s no room for “childish sketches.” ‘Drawing is not a real profession.’ My talent is only good for drafting buildings.
I clutch the pencil. My palm trembles—not with fear, but with rage. Instead of spinning this time, my vision sharpens. I press my hands into the floor. Pain slices through my knees, my back, my fingers. I rise, and this time, I don’t let them force me down again.
Daniel Deliberov stands in front of me, his smirk fading. I reach out and shove him with a momentum that surprises me. It doesn’t come from muscle, but from a deeper, wilder part inside me.
He stumbles, and the crowd falls silent. They all step back, creating a wide berth around me.
My focus drifts to the haze beyond the tables, and I start toward it…I’ve barely made any progress when my father blocks my path.
His sharp, disapproving scowl makes my shoulders slump, and even the weight of the simple pencil in my hand seems to shrink under it. I flinch inwardly. “Look at you. Naked. Filthy. Holding a pencil. Is this the future you’re choosing?”
My heart pounds in my chest. He keeps staring at me, and with each passing second, his cold, calculated judgment erodes my newfound confidence.
“I spent years trying to make you into something. To turn you into a predator. A shark.” He lets out a short, joyless laugh. “And yet… You’re still a prey.”
“Dad, that’s not—”
“Isn’t it?” His voice sharpens. “Would you be anything if you didn’t ride on my money and my name? Is there any substance behind that ‘Little Baroness’ title, Nicole?”
“I…”
“There’s nothing!” The words hit me harder than any slap.
Nothing.
Pain clenches around my heart. Shame floods through every part of me, curling my shoulders inward. My fingers loosen, and the pencil slips from my hand. It rolls across the stone floor, along with the last shred of my confidence.
My father’s right. No matter how hard I try to embody the “Little Baroness,” underneath, I’m just…Nicole.
The loser.
The girl they all used to mock in the middle of the schoolyard.
Gravity crushes me, dragging me to my knees. My gaze snags on the pencil as it skitters farther away, its faint scrape against the stone slicing through the silence.
I bow my head, letting my hair spill forward to shield my face.
Let them not see the tears.
Let them not see the shame.
Let them not see the crack inside me that I can’t hide anymore.
“I knew it,” my father says, victorious. “You can train her all you want, but if the material’s weak, you get nothing.”
Someone laughs in the crowd. My spine curls in. My hands drop to my thighs. I pray to dissolve into the dark.
A victim again.
Tears stream down my cheeks as my mind drifts back into every humiliating memory of my childhood. All the times I stood with hunched shoulders, hair hanging like a curtain, my heart aching. Around me, pencils lay scattered, eyes filled with scorn.
They hate me, not for what I’ve done. But for who I am.
Nothing.
And then… another thought breaks through. That moment when Gaetano made me kneel. He forced me to drop the mask because he recognized it before I did. He already knew there was no substance behind the “Little Baroness.” She was a title. A facade.
But his eyes held no disgust. No pity, nor judgment. They didn’t weigh me as if I were a disappointment. There had to be something else he saw, because desire flickered there. As though he sought to understand me, not to humiliate.
Maybe I’m deluded and blindly searching for a bit of hope to cling to…
No. I’m not imagining it. His gaze held something different. It felt real.
And if the Black Joker can give me that kind of recognition, why can’t my own father?
I can be perceived differently.
That single thought drives my fingers to snatch the pencil off the ground. I don’t know what I’m about to do, but I stand up and face him. His gaze falls like a gavel—final and unflinching, full of verdicts.
“I’m your daughter,” I declare.
Laughter ripples around me.
My father presses his lips into a tight line. His eyes travel down my face, my bare body, and rest on the pencil in my hand once more. “My daughter doesn’t crawl across the floor like an animal, naked as the day she was born, clinging to some pathetic little pencil.”
It’s not her fault…” a hesitant voice says. My mother.
“She’s not my daughter. Not the one I raised,” my father says.
A strange sense of clarity rises in my chest, and my grip on the pencil tightens. His words spin through my mind, and this time, they fail to pierce. They leave only silence.
“Dad…” I meet his stone-cold gaze. “I am what I am.” My voice doesn’t shake. “If you can’t accept that… then do me a favor and step out of my way.”
The voices fall silent. The air stills. My own heartbeat stops at the realization of what I did. God! I just told my father to move.
His eyes narrow, and his tone drops into a deep growl. “Say that again.”
My insides shiver at the threat he radiates, but there’s no turning back for me. “Get out of my way, Dad.”
The pencil in my hand starts to hum. The air thickens, and the pressure in my chest intensifies. And then—
He’s gone. So is the crowd, the tables—everything’s vanished.
The cave’s darkness spreads out before me. Gaetano stands a few steps away, wearing an expression I can’t interpret.
My limbs are stiff, but I push myself forward, narrowing the gap between us. “I’m here.”
The tears start to flow.