The Villainess Is My Cute Daughter

Chapter 229: You Hate Me, Don’t You ?

[A/N: This Chapter contains horror and graphic descriptions of past child abuse. Reader discretion is advised.]

[A/N: I’m Gonna mass release from tomorrow as much as I can. No set number but can be 4-12]

He stared at the door. It felt like the house was actively dragging him inside.

He scowled and dug his fingers into his temples in an attempt to fight the pain.

He took another step... and the whole world shifted.

The bright blue sky disappeared. Broad daylight flipped to pitch-black night in a single second.

Adrian looked up and saw moons. Twelve of them.

Twelve massive, glowing moons were up there in the dark sky. And every single one was a swirling mess of colors.

He stared.

"What the fuck am I looking at?" Adrian muttered. "Did I eat bad mushrooms?"

But weirdly enough, the longer he looked at the moons, the less his head hurt. The intense pain slowly faded away.

He looked back down at the mansion door and the headache instantly spiked again. But it wasn’t as bad this time. So he took another step forward.

Then he stopped.

Raw fear hit him hard. He spun around. He stared at the empty courtyard behind his back. Then he looked right back at the door.

"What the fuck did I just hear?"

Then he heard it again.

"Please... escape."

It sounded hollow and weirdly robotic. The voice was barely there. He could hardly even make out the words.

He slapped his hands over his ears and shook his head hard. He turned around to bolt back out to the road.

The archway was gone.

Instead a solid, twenty-foot stone wall blocked the exit.

He turned back to face the mansion.

"Horror movies taught me not to go inside." Adrian mumbled. "But what the hell am I supposed to do when the exit just vanishes? Guess my fate is sealed."

He looked back up at the twelve neon moons.

"Oh great demon." Adrian sighed dryly. "Just give me a quick death, please. I really don’t want this to hurt."

He shoved his hands deep down into his pockets. Took one massive, shaky breath and just marched right up those stone steps.

As long as he ignored the broken logic around him, his head stopped pounding. And this was easy since the world itself kept him from thinking much.

He reached the doors and pushed. The heavy wood swung open without a single creak.

He stepped inside.

The second his boots hit the floorboards, the dam broke.

Memories flooded his brain. Oresfall. Draven. The monster wave. The high elves. The broken bones. Every single piece of his life smashed into his head all at once.

He collapsed.

His knees slammed hard into the wood. Every single nerve ending in his body felt like it was burning alive. He threw his head back and sucked in a massive breath of air, looking up at the ceiling. He was back in his own damn house.

This was Oresfall and he knew it now.

Adrian dragged himself up and stumbled down the hallway, checked living room and saw that it was empty. Then, he checked the kitchen and that was empty too. There were no maids, no guards. Burke wasn’t there, his butler Damien was gone, the chefs were missing and basically, the entire massive estate was dead silent.

But something told him he wasn’t alone.

He rushed straight for Aria’s room. He wrapped his hand around the knob and threw the door wide open. Aria was sitting right there in the middle of the bed. She had her legs pulled all the way up to her chin. And she was crying.

It was this quiet, pathetic little sound. He could barely hear it, but she was definitely crying.

She had on a dirty, plain potato sack of a dress that didn’t even have sleeves.

Adrian froze in the doorway. He could see a lot. And he saw things he really wished he hadn’t.

Her tiny arms were covered in dark, overlapping bruises. The purple marks crept up her thin neck and down her legs. Her hair wasn’t long or pretty. It was cut so short and jagged. Like someone just took a pair of dull shears and hacked it all off in the dark. And small, round burn marks dotted her pale skin.

They looked exactly like someone heated a metal spoon over a fire and pressed it right into her.

Adrian couldn’t even move from the doorway. He was completely paralyzed. He didn’t rush over to hug her.

The shock just nailed his boots to the floorboards.

"Aria?" Adrian called out. His voice was soft.

Aria stopped crying. She picked her head up super slow and stared right at him. Adrian felt his chest physically tighten up. His brain was screaming at him to just turn around and run for his life. But his boots were glued to the floor.

All he could do, was stare at her in pure horror.

She had no eyes. Her eyeballs were completely gone. There were just two empty, hollow sockets instead, and it wasn’t black inside. Deep inside the empty holes, he saw a swirling, dark red liquid. It looked exactly like he was staring into an ocean of blood.

And she was smiling.

It was a ridiculously wide, unnatural smile. The corners of her lips looked like they had literally been sliced open with a knife, extending the bloody grin all the way up her cheeks until the cuts nearly reached her empty eye sockets. She looked like a cursed, butchered Joker.

She tilted her head.

"Father." Aria whispered. Her voice echoed strangely in the room. "You are here."

Adrian stopped breathing completely.

"Why didn’t you take me?" Aria asked. "Mother and brothers hit me every day. Do you all hate me, Father? Am I cursed?"

Every word felt like a physical blow. He knew it was a fake. He knew this was just some sick dream. But the guilt still tore him up inside.

He took one slow step into the room.

Something invisible grabbed him. It yanked him hard across the room. The massive oak door slammed violently shut right behind him. Adrian ate the floorboards, landing face-first on the hard wood. He pushed himself up onto his hands and knees and stared at the bed.

Aria was changing. The bloody holes in her face rippled. Pale skin stitched itself back together over the cuts on her cheeks. Two normal eyeballs grew right out of the bloody sockets. The dark bruises faded from her arms. Her chopped hair lengthened down her back.

In a matter of seconds, she looked completely normal. She looked exactly like his Aria.

But she felt wrong.

She just sat there on the sheets. She stared down at him with this dead, hollow look. Her eyes were totally blank. It looked like there was absolutely no soul left inside her body.

"Papa." Aria said softly.

Adrian stared up at her.

"You never spend time with me." Aria whispered. "You just yell at me whenever I try to help you."

Adrian opened his mouth to scream back. He tried to tell her no, tried to explain why he did the things he did. He desperately wanted to apologize and say he just wanted her to be safe. But his throat didn’t work and absolutely no sound came out. Aria just kept staring right through him with those blank eyes.

"You hate me, don’t you?" Aria asked softly. "Just like everyone else."