He winks. “I can find out anything I want, princess.”
Ugh. The arrogant prick.
“You don’t like the life you were thrown in, huh?”
“What’s there to like?” My gaze gets lost in the lights and buildings being soaked by the rain. “Everyone here are copies of copies. It’s like they strive to be each other instead of their own selves. If anyone tries to rise above the norm, their heads will be chopped off.”
Silence greets me, and I slightly tilt my head in Levi’s direction. I gulp at the intense look in his eyes as he watches me. It’s like a reappearance of the black Levi who beat Jerry to a pulp.
Only now, violence doesn’t seem to be his driving force.
It’s something much more unsettling and invasive that I feel it straight to my bones.
Goosebumps erupt along my skin, and I’m sucking the air out of my lungs instead of breathing.
There’s wickedness in the way Levi watches me. A promise. A damnation. And if I’m not lying to myself, there’s also a connection. Since that day I stopped and saw him in that party, there’s been an invisible line enchanting me towards him.
I tried to push, I tried to pull, but the damn thing won’t break. He’s trapping me with his cruelty whether I like it or not.
“Uh, did your mum teach you any cool tricks?” Way to go, Astrid. You sound like an idiot.
I just had to fill the silence with something or I would’ve been sucked into his orbit.
My question seems to have done the trick since he focuses back on the road. “My mother threw me at the step of my father’s house in the middle of the night when I was two days old then she ran away like a thief and never looked back.”
“Oh, umm…” I’m flabbergasted, not only by the load of information in one sentence, but also by the apathetic tone he said the words.
Just when I’m debating how to respond to such a bomb, he continues, “the only thing I learnt from that woman is that you can become rich if you’re knocked up by the right man.” He winks. “Not that I can use her tactics.”
His complete disregard of something so important is crazy. No. It’s terrifying. It only proves how much a deviant Levi King actually is.
But again, if his mother who should be bound by nature to love him abandoned him, why should he have any compassion for the rest of the world?
“What about your father?” My voice is small as if a higher range would make him run away.
“What about him?”
Did he abandon you, too? Are you completely incurable?
Before I can voice the questions, the car swivels to the right and I brace myself, almost hitting the roof of the car.
It’s then I notice we’re headed in a completely opposite direction from home. The road’s lights disappear and the way becomes narrower and darker like in a real-life horror film.
“Where are we going?” I murmur, trying not to sound as spooked as I feel.
He says nothing.
My back muscles snap upright as my eyes bulge, bouncing between him and the pitch-black road.
“This isn’t funny, Levi.”
“It isn’t supposed to be.”
My breathing stutters as distorted images from that night with Mum claw at my walls like hungry predators.
“Don’t… Don’t…”
“You’re a good little princess, aren’t you, Astrid?” His tone switches to a chilling, apathetic range.