Elegance with Expense

45. Vincent

The world is a broken one, I knew it, I have always known it. I only accepted it when I saw what it could do to the most innocent amongst us.

Cruelty was what Alessa was exposed to, she handled it as if it were the only thing exposed to her. I knew that it was the only thing she was used to, it became normalized. She deserved everything that we would have given to her if she lived with us, she did not deserve what she rather underwent.

It has been a favoured idea for so long that I am heartless, I don't find comfort in showing my emotions so I don't, a man without a soul. I rarely show my humanity to clients, nor to those who I am unfamiliar with personally.

Exercising ideas which will naturally set forth a vulnerable emotion only discloses a possible weakness to the enemy.

The enemy will take the information that they have and incorporate it within a diabolical scheme. Smart business is what assisted me in becoming so successful, it is also the only occupation that can make any man unprotected.

Never have I been exposed to such hell, but I have seen many, once overly confident men, falling to their knees as they begged for hope. I work in an intelligent way, I have built a platform so high and stable that there is no way I could fall.

I amassed a prominence founded with a balance between respect and fear.

A girl to take after my heart, my own sister; I saw it the moment she opened up. Not only is she a valiant fighter, and a naturally strong hearted girl; but she thinks rationally and fairly, she gives a hope to be something much greater than people in London expected her to be.

Not only a reminder of myself, but she is also a scarily similar version of our grandfather. 

His words echoed in her mind, and his technique showed in all that she did.

Just like the men in our family, the same misogynistic men who strongly believed that a woman could never earn herself a living without the hefty endorsement of a man, she shows similar qualities. I could not be prouder.

She never will hear it enough, she will never be praised enough, and she will never understand it in the way that it should be understood.

Now that I have seen the world as she did, I know her struggles. My patience ran dangerously thin when I saw the videos, and when I saw the state that she was living in, it made my blood boil. It made me angry.

There was never a plan to tell the relatives about Alessa's past life, it was clear that she preferred to keep such nightmares private and hidden.

Standing with everyone this evening was like a breath of metaphorical fresh air, realistically strongly perfumed air.

A glass of aged champagne in my hand, the other hand in my pocket as I spoke with a relative. The grand foyer was practically the entire ground level, stretching back for a few hundred meters.

Mid-conversation, I causally checked the watch on my wrist, noticing that my sister should have arrived by now. There could have been traffic, maybe even a set back with the schedule. Worry didn't arouse in me as I continued to listen to my converser's hopeless words about another side business. His ideologies didn't interest me, work in general didn't grant my attention at this moment.

Instead, the large hard-wood double doors that moved grabbed my empirical notice.

Only one side opened ever so slightly and my little sister stepped in through the gap. Nobody had noticed her presence as of yet, I was only keeping a close eye on the time to ensure that nothing suspicious was happening.