Writing was therapeutic for her. It helped to calm her ever-raging nerves. She folded her notebook closed and sat it on the ground beside her. She hadn’t thought about Angelica in what felt like forever. She missed the stupidly naive girl but was also glad she would no longer have to put up with her tiring display of innocence. Angelica was nothing but a headache to her.

She ran a jagged fingernail over the stone walls again and again. She was bored and tired and hungry and her head still hurt but she had nothing to preoccupy her time with. There wasn’t even a window in the room where she could glance outside and see how the world was faring without her presence. 

From what she had seen before, it seemed the world had finally laid down to sleep. The land was cleansed without a single human being or animal in sight. She wondered if she was the last survivor along with the witch. If so, she would never forgive the sick mind who’d thought to play such a cruel joke on her.

She hummed as she continued to scrape her nail against the stone. She’d already broken one nail, doing as she was, and it continued to bleed. There was a red stain in her dress from where she’d bunch it up in hopes to stop the blood or at the very least hide it. It wasn’t as if she wasn’t well accustomed to the irony liquid, but that only applied when it came from others.

She’d gotten hurt far too many times in her life to count, but that didn’t mean she’d ever become used to the many wounds that littered her skin. They were still symbols of all of her failures. All of the times she’d slipped up just like her father. 

“How long do you plan to stay?”

She didn’t bother turning around. It was another one of the ghosts from earlier, one she now recognized with a bitter sweep of sadness, anger, and arrogance. The voice was deep, husky, raspy as if it’d only ever known the touch of a cigarette. She recognized it despite the fact that she had heard it so rarely in all of her years of living. Maybe it was the distinctiveness of it or maybe it was because it was her father.

She turned her head slightly to look over her shoulder, her face twisted on the beginnings of a smirk. He stood tall, a dark shadow in the darker room dressed in that clean, black suit as he was. He was a bigger man, the type that could make most men back down without having to say a word or lift a finger. The type most women in Manson would kill to have by their side if only for the security of his presence. “I was just thinking about you.”

“Can’t understand why,” he replied in a low voice. Wisps of smoke moved around his intimidating form. “If you had a brain at all, you’d be thinkin’ about how to get out of this place. How long do you plan to stay? How long do you plan to stall the inevitable?”

“The inevitable?”

“Your death at that woman’s hand,” he clarified. 

“She couldn’t,” she frowned. “I would never let her.”

“And you think I let that man send me to an early grave?”

“I think you fucked up and paid the price,” she gritted out. She turned completely to stare the man down with heated eyes. “I’m smarter than you, I’m stronger than you, I’ve outlived you—”

“Have you?” He crossed powerful hands over his chest, tilting his head down so his hat cast a deeper shadow across his upper face. It was intimidating but she refused to cower. She wasn’t going to let her father of all people treat her like he treated everyone else; like incompetent prey just waiting to be skinned alive. “Just because you’ve opened your eyes every morning doesn’t mean you’ve lived. How much have you truly lived?”

“How much have you?” she challenged. She and her father were more alike than she found comfortable. She could now recognize what her mother had been saying and it pissed her off that she was right. She trod lightly on her words.

He smirked a crooked grin that showcased some of his missing teeth and the cracks scattered across his dry lips. “I’ve been living ever since I could boss folk around. I had that town around my damn finger. There wasn’t a place I could go where people wouldn’t bow their heads and pray for the privilege to live. You have no idea how much I lived.”

She remained silent, waiting for him to get everything he wanted to express out of his system. She’d never seen him converse that much. Truly, it felt as if he had talked more in those five minutes than in his entire life. Maybe it was because she’d never asked the right questions. Maybe it was because her mother tended to avoid the subject of his dirty work. After all, it frightened her. 

She’d never talked much when she was younger, either, so she couldn’t fault the man.

“Atlas Valorian,” he proceeded, trapped in his reverie and she didn’t plan to help him out of it. “A name that made all of Manson piss themselves in fear. You can’t comprehend how satisfying it feels to be so powerful, girl.”

“You realize none of this matters anymore, right? Your lifetime of work met its demise the second you did.”

“I’m not around, but my spirit sure as hell is.” He walked over to her, then. He yanked her head back by her hair to force her to stare him in the bottomless onyx pits where his eyes should have been. She winced at the sharp pain running throughout her scalp and in her tense neck.

“Learn to respect death, girl,” he gritted out. “God knows you never respected life.”

With that said, he released her and strode past. By the time she turned around to regard him once more, he was gone. 

She cursed, the sound as sharp as the ice crystals that hung outside the window. Everything about that man rubbed her the wrong way. Her father reminded her of Atticus of Delaney. His condescending words, his harsh actions, his relentless ego… It brought about a familiar rage. Leaning down to retrieve her journal, she flipped it open to the next clear page. It took a decent amount of flipping considering she had gotten bored and mindlessly scribbled across a good portion of them.