Chapter 35: Dear Father, I Will Sin.
"Louise Dubois! What an honour!" The priest exclaims, greeting her with a radiant smile.
"I’m here for a confession, Father."
For a woman who claims to be in the church to confess her sins, she looks majorly unrepentant. She sits with her legs crossed and her back straight, dressed in black despite the warmth of the day.
Like a crow. Or the daughter of one.
"That is what I’m here for," the priest responds, lips stretched in a sanctimonious smile. "The house of God welcomes all those who wish to cleanse their souls."
"Cleanse my soul, you say...?" The corner of her mouth twitches upward.
Seven years ago, Louise Dubois was at the peak of her life. She alone had become the sole heir to the Dubois family fortune and was given the right to claim Orion Vassilis as her boyfriend.
The years of uncertainty were over. The doubts had disappeared.
Or so she thought.
"Dear father, I have sinned." Her voice is calm and tinged with a hint of nostalgia.
Long before they started dating, Louise had already staked her claim on Orion. She had never dared to call him hers because he hadn’t chosen her then, but she let everyone know that she was his.
And then one day, on the first day of high school, he approached her without warning and casually told her that they would be dating from then on.
She was ecstatic.
"I had finally been rewarded with the thing I desired most..."
She had finally won. Louise spent years following Orion Vassilis around like a lost puppy, holding on to every eccentric word that fell from his lips, and trying to project her importance into his life.
She admired and feared him equally. She orbited him and hung on his every word as his most devoted follower for years.
Then, he finally chose her.
Now, Louise knows that Orion didn’t choose her out of something as unreal as love, but she didn’t need him to choose her that way. All she needed was for Orion to pick her as his partner.
"I worked hard...harder than any other person."
She wasn’t the only one who set her eyes on the Vassilis heir. There were many others like her. Girls from older families with larger fortunes. Girls whose mothers had spent decades as the brightest flowers in high society.
But Orion still chose her. He chose her above all those other girls. He chose her knowing exactly what someone like her meant in their society.
A society filled with the next generation of powerful families. A society where every friendship was intentional, and every relationship was strategic.
She thought that meant that Orion had something he too wanted from her. She was naive.
"I was like Icarus. I had finally gotten to the sun, Father," she laughs softly, "but no one told me that I would still burn like him."
While she chased Orion, she noticed the strangeness. She noticed the weird and absurd fascination he had with her half-sibling. It was difficult not to notice.
Orion was fascinated by Adrien, to a worrying degree.
And he didn’t even care to hide it. Why would he? The rules that applied to ordinary people had never applied to Orion. With the weight of his family name, he could do as he pleased and no one would dare to speak against him.
The Vassilis family is a family that comes from a line of old money. The kind of money that comes with a prestige and class that the nouveau riche could never hope to emulate. Except maybe in a hundred years.
The kind of money that survived wars and economic collapses.
"I was at the height of it all, Father..."
The Vassilis family owns numerous businesses, but they deal in the old currency, their wealth rooted in things that would never become irrelevant. The type of money that never runs out. Inexhaustible money.
Land, jewels, transportation, agriculture, and investments. Assets so deeply entrenched that they seem almost immortal.
So, Orion Vassilis being the heir to that family meant to a twelve-year-old Louise that he could probably buy both her, her mother, and all the rich old bitches that looked down on them.
Orion’s status would provide the freedom and security that she would never find anywhere else. She knew she had to get him.
"Even if it’s wrong for others to want, I do not believe that it is wrong for me to want, Father."
Louise hates the wealthy. She hates how sharp their gazes can be, their condescending smiles, and their thinly-veiled insults. She hated all of it.
And yet, she was drawn to Orion who stood above it.
"He could do anything, Father. That man could commit every sin against humanity and people would still kneel to kiss his feet." She would still kneel to kiss his feet.
Orion Vassilis will never have a criminal record. He will never want for anything. No insane person would ever have the guts to look down on him.
He will never face anything like the consequences of his actions. The world exists for his entertainment, and it’s not a situation that would ever be vice versa.
There is absolutely nothing Orion Vassilis could do that the world would have a right to judge him over.
People don’t criticize men like Orion. They admire them. Fear them. Lower their heads when they walk past.
And for psychopaths like Orion, they do everything to make sure that they never cross paths with them.
That is probably why he decided to leave the family’s inheritance to Leon to start his underworld activities. Because Orion craves entertainment.
People who have everything are bored, and boredom can be more dangerous than hunger. Hunger can cause death, but boredom can lead to destruction.
"I had it all...and it was stolen from me."
Orion craves stimulation. He craves an existence worth battling with his madness over. Louise knows that if she ever spoke to Orion the way her half-sibling does, she’d be eviscerated.
The priest’s voice echoes past the curtain. "Stolen by whom?"
Louise smiles. It’s not a pleasant smile.
For years, she watched Adrien easily take away every drop of attention that she had to scrounge for from Orion. Who else could be the thief but Adrien?
He had Orion’s interest from the beginning. He had his fascination and all of his attention. The things Louise had spent years trying to earn.
All so she could be safe. The crow’s daughter wanted to be a dove instead.
"By a thief who never even knew what he stole."
The worst part was that Adrien didn’t even seem to want Orion’s attention. He hated him more than he feared him.
Many people hated Orion, but for some strange reason, only Adrien’s hatred seemed to fascinate him.
He rejected Orion’s existence repeatedly. He would dismiss him blankly, argue with him, and still ignore him. And somehow, that made Orion even more interested in him.
"A thief who doesn’t know what he stole is merely the scion of the devil," the priest’s voice thunders across the confessional, heavy with righteous fury.
"I hate him, Father," she admits quietly. "I hate him more than I’ve ever hated anyone."
Not because Adrien was cruel. In fact, to Adrien, Louise and her mother were the cruel ones, and in the eyes of everyone else, she and her mother were vultures.
She hates Adrien because he exists. Because his existence drew the eyes of others into her life. He effortlessly occupied a place Louise could never reach.
A place that everyone made Louise feel wrong for stepping into. The door was closed in her face before she could even make it past the doorway.
Her hate for Adrien had nothing to do with Orion at first, because she believed that Orion’s fascination with him would never get anywhere, but she was proven wrong.
And that was way before he appeared by his side as his fiancé. Her resentment she had spent years swallowing, finally spilled.
After everything that rat bastard had done, he dared to still come back, and at Orion’s side at that?
How dare he?
Her envy became resentment. Resentment became bitterness. And bitterness evolved into hatred.
Adrien will regret it. He will regret every step and every action he’s taken that has led him to where he is today. He will regret not dying far away as a good little runaway.
He will regret walking back into the heart of the society he could barely stand to be among. And his regret will lead to his demise.
If Louise doesn’t do the honors, then Mother will, and if she doesn’t...many others would love to teach her half-sibling about the beauty of despair.
Louise isn’t at the church to ask for purification or to confess to her past sins. No. She is at the church to let go of all of her reservations.
She will sin and sin. She will plot and destroy. And she will eat her cake and have it.
Her red lips stretch into a soft smile.
"Tell me Father, can God forgive a woman who has no desire for His forgiveness?"
*******
And that is the explosive finish for volume 1 of our introduction arc...if you want to call it that.
The tension will now begin to mount from here onwards.
— TheLovePoet
