Owned by 4

Chapter 61

'Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.' Whoever had said that phrase, we need to talk.

The most potent force available to humanity is words. Words contain energy and power, and they have the ability to help, heal, hurt, injure, humiliate, and humble people. The words we choose and how we use them may either bring people together or break them apart, they can build someone up or tear them down. 

Words can crystallize perceptions that shape our beliefs, drive our behavior, and ultimately, create or change our world. They can break your world too. And Dorian wasn't as unfamiliar with that feeling as she would have liked to be. 

Dorian felt her heart plummet and her stomach turn as the words spoken from the lips of the man in front of her weighed heavily on her heart. The heavy meaning masked behind the simple seven-word statement completely shattered the reality that she had built for herself. 

No.

There was no way. Not them, anyone but them. There was just no way. She refused to believe it.

"You're lying," She said after taking a deep breath, willing her heart to calm down so she could just breathe for once. 

John smirked at her lack of confidence. She wasn't trying to convince him, she was trying to convince herself. "Am I?" he asked mockingly, finding much amusement in the way her mental state was deteriorating right in front of him. 

"Yes," she whispered, looking at a speck of air in front of her, afraid that if she looked up she would break. Her mind was frayed around the edges, the cracks in the center deepened, so she tried to hang on to whatever little sanity she could grasp, whatever little glue she could use to mend the cracks of her fragile mind. "Yes, you are," she repeated, her voice a little stronger this time. "You're a liar. That's all you do. All you do is lie to me"

John chuckled as he watched her shake with determination and a tad bit of insanity. "And what reason would I possibly have to lie to you about this, hmm?"

"Because you want to see me break" she snarled at him. "You want to see me fall apart. You want to be the reason I fall apart and if I've learned anything about you it's that you'd do anything to get what you want"

John laughed at his daughter, his eyes crinkling in amusements, the wrinkles in his face deepening. "Ah, you know me so well" he laughed. "Ah, but this time little Dorian, I am not lying to you"

"Yes, you are!" She yelled at him, her face turning red in anger. "You were in jail when I was adopted! There was no way you could have known them! And-and...they did background checks on them before I was adopted. If they were a part of a gang, surely the agency would have found something suspicious about them" Plus, Caroline seemed too posh to be affiliated with a gang of his sorts anyway. He was lying. He just had to be.

"You do know that we are allowed to contact persons even in prison right?" John raised a brow at her questioningly. "And I never said anything about them being a part of a gang. I have many ties in many places, outside of my gang. When I was in prison, luckily, some of my men remained loyal to me, and through them, I managed to pull some strings and got in touch with Caroline and James who had been living in Dubai at the time. I made a few requests, promised them a few millions and more shares in a business I own, and eventually, I got them to agree to take you in"

Dorian shook her head madly and squinted her eyes shut tightly.  "No. No. You wouldn't have gone through so much trouble to get me adopted. You had no reason to. You had no reason to care where I ended up"

"I made a vow to you that night, do you remember?" Her father spoke as he leaned in closer to her. "I promised that I would find you and I would kill you. I didn't want you to get adopted by unknown persons because that would mean that when I got out, I'd have to search for you, and that would cost me more than it did to have Caroline and James adopt you. I chose the easier way to do things and look how well it paid off! You even got involved with my worst enemies!"

Dorian kept quiet, seemingly mulling over the situation as the reality of it all settled in her mind. John smirked. "Tell me, do you honestly think that them being absent ever since I was released was a mere coincidence?" He asked amusedly. "They were just doing my bidding, giving me better access to all that is you..."

"No" Dorian shook her head again, lips trembling as she tried to keep herself together. "Stop" her voice came out as a mere whisper. Everything had been a lie. He had held everything in his hands from the very beginning.  

"Ah, and don't let me get started on Mason" John added more to her distress. "He was the perfect little spy for me. He had done well, leading my gang for me once he was old enough. He did a fairly decent job keeping me updated on you and your boys" he spat the last word out as if it was acid on his tongue. "That was until he started to question if you both were related" he scoffed with a roll of his eyes. "He was starting to be an annoying little bitch about it until I finally had to put him in his fucking place. You two are really not that different after all"

Dorian realized that her life, her entire life had been a lie, a joke, a circus in which she was unknowingly a willing clown. She had been fooled by everything and everyone around her.  Those who were closest to her were the ones who ended up hurting her in the end. The people who were supposed to love her were the ones who did everything in their power to tear her down. 

"D-did you tell Mason to bully me too? For all those years...was that you who-who forced him to torment me and ruin my life?!" Dorian was damn near hysterical at this point. She felt her sanity falling apart to the point where she had no control over what she did anymore. Her emotions were so chaotic that she didn't even know what to feel anymore. She slowly grew...numb.

"Oh sweetie, I had nothing to do with any of that. He must have just realized what a pathetic excuse of a human being you are. Not that I blame him. At least he wasn't completely useless. I bet he made your life a living hell for you when I couldn't hmm? Like father like son..." John ended with a content smirk as he stood up from his chair with a force strong enough to push it backward, causing it to land with a thud to the ground. He stretched his legs before looking down at Dorian. "Well it was a nice little chat we had there Darling but I must be going. Can't neglect my responsibilities for something so trivial in comparison now can I?" he giggled crazily before fixing his tucked-in shirt in his jeans and heading to the door. "Oh and, expect a visit from your brother," He said as he rested his hand on the knob. "I'm sure you both have a lot of catching up to do" and with that, he left the room.

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Another short chapter, I'm sorry. 

How was it?