I couldn’t relax until Katherine had fully left this manor. I was lucky that at the very least she was a woman of her word. She went to grab something, poked her head into the room to tell Trinity that she was leaving for the night, and that her father would probably come back tomorrow morning. I stared out the window while she climbed into a large truck, and I finally let out a breath of relief once she had driven away. “It has been a while since you have seen her, right.” Trinity stood beside me watching the woman that ruined my life leave.
“Y-Yeah,” while she didn’t recognize me I still didn’t feel safe. “She still scares me very much.” I allowed Trinity to lead me back to her bed and help me sit on top of it. “Does she scare you as much as she scares me?”
Trinity nodded her head and held up her thumb and pointed finger. “Just a little bit, I mean she scared me today when-” She paused a bit and I noticed her hand went to rub at her side where that bruise was. “However, I know that as long as my daddy is here, that I am gonna be fine. If she ever goes too far, he will protect me, and there is no one in the world stronger than my daddy.”
“I don’t know, I think my daddy might give you a run for your money,” I gave her a small smirk that showed her I was just teasing.
She gave me a long roll of her eyes and elbowed me a bit in the side. “Don’t get to cocky just because you are a tiny bit stronger than me when we spared means nothing. My daddy is a master of what I am not good at, so I am sure he will make like work of your dad.”
I gritted my teeth a bit at that. “You have no idea how strong my daddy,” I thought to myself and jumped a bit as a controller was set in my lap. I looked up to see her starting to load up a game on her PS4. “Do you really want to play me in Tekken?” I asked with a smirk. “I am really really good with Katarina.”
Trinity returned my smirk with one of her own. “Trust me, I can beat you with any character.” As she clicked on a random character and began to crack her knuckles. “So do you want to make a small bet about this game?”
“What kind of bet?”
“Loser has to answer one question from the winner, truthfully.”
“Deal.”
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“Oh come on!” I snapped as I tossed her controller down on her bed watching it bounce a few times on the bed. “You have to be cheating!”
“I’m really not,” Trinity responded as she set her controller down and made another tally underneath her name. “Man what does that make? Seven in a row, do you want to play again so I can win again. At this point you're gonna have to tell me your life story with the amount of questions that you owe me.” She was stupidly good at this game, I stood no chance against her, I had three characters that I was really good at. She beat each of them with ease, two of them being perfect games, meaning I never landed a single hit.
I let out a groan as I fell back onto her bed, hoping that maybe this bed would just swallow me whole, my pride taking much too many hits today that I could barely stand it. “I am a girl of my word so ask me whatever you want and I will answer them.” For the most part at least, I had a few topics that I was gonna have to probably lie my way through.
The bed bounced a bit as Trinity laid down beside me. She reached for another smaller remote and hit a button, her small stereo began to play a bit of soft music I recognized as lofi. “Okay first question, how old are you?”
“13 years old,” I answered.
“And how many months?”
“Is that your 2nd question or should I just add it onto your first?” I looked over at her, as she went quiet probably had not thought about that. “I will be fair and not count it as a 2nd question.”
“Thank you,” she said with a bit of laughter.
“I am 13 and four months.” She let out a small sigh at that. “How old are you?”
“13 and two months.” She answered. “At least you are not too much older than me.” She then asked her next question. “What is your family like?”
I smiled a bit at that as I thought back to probably still angry momma and probably very scared little sister. “Well my momma is really nice, she is kind, and I love her very much. She is kinda stern with me and is probably a bit upset with me about something so kinda not looking forward to facing her. I have a little sister named… Cinder. She is really annoying sometimes but I don’t know what I would do without her. She gets me in trouble a lot, she is also starting to challenge my momma a bit more but she is quick to end that. My daddy is everything to me, it is hard to describe him, but I don’t know what I would do if I lost him.”
“Who taught you how to fight back home?”
“A lot of people, my momma started my training, Katherine helped me a bit but I don’t like using her style. My daddy taught me some and I have a few teachers on the island that have taught me a bit more to take me to a new level. If you ever lived on the island, we have an entire day dedicated to training outside, both with teachers and playing games that involve using jepei.”
“It sounds fun,” her next three questions were nothing too personal. What kind of things did I like doing? Did I play sports? Do I have a boyfriend yet?” Her 2nd to last question was one that caught me off guard. We had been laughing about boys that we liked, both in our lives and celebrities, when she suddenly asked. “Are you related to Katherine?”
My entire body seemed to break out in a cold sweat as I took a breath to collect myself. “W-Why do you ask that,” I bit the inside of my lip from the slight tremble that came from my voice.
Trinity sat up from her bed and stared at the television for a bit. “You remind me a lot of her, your jepei aura is kinda similarly shaded, just much brighter and warm while her’s is darker and cold. When we spared and you got a bit serious you have a similar look to how Katherine looks when she is annoyed. I don’t know you just feel a bit similar to her.”
“I’m not related to Katherine,” I answered, trying to sound neutral. “I suppose I learned a lot from her when she was brought to get me on the right path. A few of her lessons still stick within me, some I want to forget really bad.” I was relieved as Trinity seemed to accept that answer, however her last question made my stomach sink into my gut.
“Do you know what her daughter was like?”
“Why do you ask?”
Trinity let out a long sigh. “Because from the way she mumbles about her sometimes, I don’t think I will ever be on her level or good enough to replace her.” My entire body went cold as I listened to each word that escaped her mouth. “It is no secret that I think she misses her daughter. She won’t tell me why she has been away from her for so long, just that she is doing important business. However when I make a mistake, she often mumbles, she would have gotten it on the first try. She would be faster, she would hit harder. She said it a lot during our sparring match today. It’s so freakin frustrating sometimes, cause I am doing my best, so do you know what she is like? What this Verona girl is like so I can at least understand…”
“Verona,” it was odd saying my own name as if I was a different person. “Verona would probably be considered the best fighter in her age group. She was trained by Katherine since she was old enough to walk, training that no one could possibly imagine. She is really nice to her friends and will defend them tooth and nail, she is friends with a lot of people but has a close-net group that she tells everything to. I heard she used to be so open that you could read her like a book, but that all changed five years ago.”
“What happened?”
I found myself staring into her television and could see a brief outline not of this Cindy disguise I had put on, but of me. “Katherine, crossed a line that no one can come back from. No matter what she says, she isn’t away from the island on business. She is wanted on that island for crimes of treason, she attempted something that led to a very bloody day. Tarun’s Island was almost conquered by a group known by many names but we call them The Dark Order. It’s part of the reason I don’t live there anymore, my parents don’t think it is safe.” It was not a complete lie, nearly 15000 residents left the island after that day. Some were too scared to stay in case it happened again and we lost. “I think her momma tried to take Verona away from the island by force.” I could see events flashing through my head, as I spoke.
A tall man with black clothes and a scar over his head beating down my daddy as he fought tooth and nail to get me away from Katherine. The pain that filled my stomach as Katherine hit me as hard as she could to drop me, how I watched them jump my daddy until he couldn’t stand. The painful howls and roars that came from daddy Thanani as he tried to fight but was eventually shattered by Vitani and a large grizzly bear spirit. The smell of copper as my daddy lay in a pool of his blood, yet he still found the strength to keep crawling towards me. I remembered tasting blood in my mouth as I bit Katherine with all the strength I had and lay over my daddy to protect him. The white hot pain as she stabbed her hand straight through my left side and into my daddy’s back. How she left us for dead.
How she had shed a single tear in the process.
“After that day, Katherine never came back.” I finished looking over Trinity’s whose eyes were wide from shock. “There is a reason why Katherine scares me to death, both from what she did to me, and to what she did to her daughter, and since then as much as Verona tries to hide it. She can’t move forward from it, as much as she pretends that Katherine might have died, she won’t let it go. Not until that woman is dead. That is who Verona is, chasing after her mother’s sins, because the punishment for sin has and always will be death.”
“W-Wow,” Trinity exclaimed after several long moments of silence. “How is her daddy doing after all of that?”
“He is okay, I think he is on the police force now, he helps agencies around the world help put people behind bars. The last time I spoke to her, she told me that they recently remarried, to a nice woman named Ravana Khalid.” I used my momma’s maiden name. I looked over at Trinity hoping to maybe use the bit of fear building up in her eyes for good. “Trinity please believe me when I say, Miss Katherine is not a nice person. So please be careful.”
Trinity looked away from me but I could see the cogs turning in her head. She was biting down hard enough on one of her thumbs that I was sure she was gonna break the skin. “I don’t know much about the island,” she said after a while. “However, I will take you at your word, maybe that is-” She stopped herself mid sentence and shook her head a few times. “Anyway,” she stood up from her seat and started to walk towards her impressive pc set up. “Let’s stop talking about depressing things and just keep having fun. It’s my first sleepover in a very long time so I want to have more fun.”
I stood up and followed her towards her desk as she sat down and spun around in her comfy seat. I still didn’t know if Trinity was this mysterious figure that was helping Katherine commit some of these murders, however I hoped the feeling in my chest was right. She seemed like a brat when I first met her, but now that I have been with her, even for so little, she did remind me a bit of myself when Katherine was in my life. Sometimes bratty but my Daddy always made sure that side of me never stayed long, very competitive and good at games for no other reason than to be the best and brag about it. However, underneath all of that confidence and pride, and that bratty nature we seemed to have one thing in common.
A need to be as perfect with Katherine as possible.
I guess we had another thing in common, a daddy that would fight for us if we needed him.
Huh I guess there was actually a third thing we had in common. We both waited too late to truly say something to get her to stop, and let her keep molding us into what she wanted.
It’s a shame I couldn’t see just how far that third thing had been growing in Trinity.
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After she destroyed me in four more games both pc and system consoles, and a very nice time of she and I doing each other's nails for about an hour. Mrs. Raynolds came into the room with a tray of light snacks and soothing tea, that I was sure she was hoping would put us to sleep. I found myself lying beside Trinity as she tried to fight the waves of sleep that were spreading over her body. I had seen my little sister fight sleep enough to know that with each long blink of her eye and each time her head began to drop. It wouldn’t take long for Trinity to completely fall asleep. I’m sure her earlier “lesson” with Katherine was also working wonders in putting her to sleep.
“Cindy,” Trinity spoke as she clapped her hands twice and most of the lights turned off causing the entire room to be clad in one dim light that was over her desktop. “Tomorrow, I was gonna invite Aaliyah and the others to go have fun and then go to my club. How about instead, me and you go and have fun, we can bring Aaliyah too, but I want to have fun with another jepei user. She would just slow us down.”
“I am sure that she would be able to keep up, and I would like it if my cousin came with us.” I was not gonna completely insert myself as this girl’s new best friend, I didn’t want her to replace Aaliyah with this Cindy act I was putting on. I didn’t want to hurt her if I needed to show who I really was once we got Katherine, and quite possibly her daddy in the process. “Besides, doesn’t the saying go the more the merrier?”
“Okay,” she said as she buried her head into her folded arms. “It would be nice to…” she didn’t say anything else as she finally seemed to fall asleep. I lifted her arm up after a few minutes and it was limp. She was knocked out cold. I could feel the effects of that tea starting to take hold as well as. The soft music that was playing on her stereo was not helping matters much. Now as much as I wanted to go to sleep, I remembered what Katherine had told us when she left. “Your father is probably not coming back here tonight, so behave yourself.”
If she was gone and her father wouldn’t be coming back. Then this was the perfect chance to go and look into things without risk of being caught. Worst cause, Ms. Raynold would find me and I was ninety percent sure I could knock out an old lady with little issue. So I pulled Trinity up and got her tucked into bed, before escaping her room and heading into the neatly clean hallways. I took hold of my gemstone and a moment later, Aisu appeared before me shaking her fur out and stretching her legs. “Sorry.” I said wrapping my arms around her. “I didn’t mean to not talk to you for a while.”
“We are working,” she said, licking my cheek. “We can talk much more when all of this is over and when we go home tomorrow. Mostly about how to escape Momma Ravana and Momma Leela.”
“Please don’t remind me,” I said, my hands going back to cover my backside. I shook my head a few times to get focused again. “Where was his office?”
Aisu nodded her head before leading me down the hall. I made sure to walk on the balls of my feet so I could be as quiet as possible. Unlike my other house that creaked with each step I took, I was practically silent as I walked like this. I stopped and pressed my back against a corner as I heard footsteps coming from around the corner. However, they sounded like they were moving away from my current position. I recognized Ms. Raymond's voice and she was walking to another woman, younger by the sound of it. “You didn’t have to put them to sleep, Ms. Raymond.”
“Child,” Ms. Raymond said. “When that girl goes to sleep, then we are off the clock. Besides you know if I didn’t do that she was gonna be acting up the later it went and the more annoyed I would get. I am nearly 60 years old, and I need to go to sleep.”
“I don’t think she would have been a problem today.” The other woman said and I heard what sounded like a door opening. “She has that nice new girl with her, and she seems to have a good head on her shoulders. Like Mistress Aaliyah was.”
“She does, she is from that island out there, with all those people with them special powers. Thought me how to make that ointment Master Wallace likes so much. Apparently she is related to Aaliyah, distant cousin or something like that.”
“That would make sense, good behavior runs in their blood.”
“Nah child, they just got momma’s that aren’t afraid to put belts to bottoms as we say.” Those two women shared a laugh with each other and I listened until their voices had faded. Aisu crept out and waved me over with a paw. I followed her into this hallway that was covered with expensive looking paintings. She disappeared through a door and a moment later the door opened revealing Aisu once more licking her paw.
“Please sit out here and watch,” I said creeping into the room. I was now in that large office. The desk looked much bigger than it had through Aisu’s eyes. It was covered in a soft and spotless brown carpet. The computer was completely off with a large cabinet that was probably filled with files. The three files from before were not on the desk anymore, he probably put them up or took them with him when he first left. I slowly shut the door and clicked on a nearby lamp before I lost all of the light that came from the door being opened a second ago. I than carefully slipped on a pair of gloves that I had brought with me just in case to avoid fingerprints. I than took out my phone and called the one person that probably would have more interest in this place than I ever would.
It only took one buzz before my daddy picked up. “Verona, how are things going at your little sleepover?” He was really bad at hiding how nervous and relieved he sounded. “Have you seen Katherine there?”
“No,” I answered, it felt wrong to lie but I was in no danger, she didn’t know I was even here so no need to worry him. “Mr. Wallace isn’t here either, Trinity is asleep and I am in one of his offices. Um… what do I do now?”
He let out a small chuckle before his voice got serious. “Alright, is there anything in there that could hold files or papers?” I answered yes before heading over to the large cabinet. I let out a growl as I discovered five of them were locked and only the bottom one could be slid open. “Keep calm and don’t get frustrated.” He instructed. “Open one of those files and read to me what you see inside, that is gonna tell me what this place is for the most part.”
I nodded my head and quickly did what I was told. “Okay, those files are mostly records of his money from his business, I want you to head to his computer now baby girl.”
“I am doing spy work daddy,” I said as I placed the file back in just how I found it and climbed up onto his computer desk. “Can you at least call me something older and maybe cooler.”
“How about Agent Stowaway?”
I held an annoyed breath back and my face heated up as my daddy chuckled. I shook his mouse a few times and this computer came buzzing to live. “It has a password on it.” I said with a sigh.
“What kind?”
“A number code I think.”
“Try 082310”
I raised an eyebrow at that but typed in that number and sure enough it worked perfectly as I found myself looking at a string of emails that loaded up. “How did you know that number?”
“It is Trinity’s birthday. August 23rd, 2010.”
“How did you know that would work?”
“You would be surprised how many fathers use their kids' birthdays as their passcodes.” I made a small mental note about that, maybe I could remove the parental lock on my computer and TV now. “Alright I need you to go into his emails and I have a few things I want you to type into the search bar.”
“Yes daddy.”
Before I got started in typing in keywords that would hopefully lead us to anything. He wanted me to quickly cheek his first five emails. The newest of the bunch under his important listing. Three of them were boring adult things about his nightclub, something about expanding into LA. The next two were more interesting, both of them had to deal with the docks. More importantly, what to expect on the shipments. While they said important china and silverware for his restaurants as well as new tables and chairs. My daddy had a suspicion that this was just a cover up for something else. Especially about some new and improved. “Salt” As he was calling it.
I then began to type in keywords that would hopefully bring us to certain emails or people he might have been contacting. If anything was interesting, I would snap a picture and send it to my dad. It felt amazing to actually be of use right now, to help maybe send a bad man to jail by the end of this. We had only found a few interesting things, when he finally had me type in the one word on our minds. “Katherine,” and sure enough about a year ago a new email came in.
“Hezekiah Wallace.
Good Morning, I am writing to you to discuss a possible business partnership. Both in your works above and below ground. What if I could promise you success in your dream, protection in your hopes, and more money than you could imagine? I have connections that could get your nightclub fame across this entire nation. As well as connections that could help your other form of trade spread to new locations that you could never get to on your own.
Why be The King of New York, when you could be The King of the United States. If interested contact me in the number in my previous email.
I look forward to talking to the famed Black Lion, the king of the marsh pride.
Sincerely Yours.
The Violet Liger.
Katherine Bloodthorn.
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As soon as I finished reading that email out loud. Aisu let out a small roar in my ears. “Someone is coming down the hall!” As soon as she said that I quickly closed out of his email and turned off his computer. I looked for a way out and luckily he had a large window in his office. One that I didn’t think twice before opening and climbing up on the edge. As soon as I heard the door open up, and I stood as still as I could. Shaking a bit in the chilly night air that seemed to be attacking me from all angles. “I gotta go,” I whispered to my daddy before quickly hanging up. I carefully peered around the corner, very glad for the balance I had been blessed with from Aisu. I could see two short men looking through the large filing cabinet. They looked pretty young, maybe around 22 or older. They unlocked the top cabinet and opened it up. I closed my eyes a bit as I listened to what they were saying, which was hard to do from a closed window and the wind creating a loud bellowing noise.
“Careful with that!”
“Shut…. I am doing what I can.”
“Just get it done… and don’t make too much… you're gonna wake his daughter and we are both screwed.”
“Come on she is what 11 or something”
“Dangerous… can fight… I think she killed those dudes on fourth with Mr. Wallace's new girlfriend.”
“Killed someone?” I thought to myself as I watched them gather some files before placing them in a backpack and closing the drawer, once they had locked it. I waited a few moments after they left, since this window faced the front of the house. I heard the downstair’s door close before seeing those two guys walk out of the front and through the gate. They got into an old looking car before driving off into the night.
“Aisu is the coast?”
I didn’t even finish that statement. As I went to climb back into the room I was hit upside the head knocking me out of the window and crashing into a bush! I had luckily had time to use my protection aura to cushion my fall and when I rolled out of the bush. I found myself looking up at a small figure dressed in all black, a white mask over their face with no sign of any eye holes.
“I suppose Mistress Trinity won’t mind me discipling one of her friends.” The voice was deep but also sounded famine. “Didn’t you ever hear the phrase. Curiosity killed the cat?”
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