Aveline

Chapter Eighteen

I am due back to my fathers tomorrow.

And it's already the afternoon. I feel helpless. And after last night, I don't know what to think anymore.

Leo is making me weak and I cannot afford to be weak. I cannot afford to be soft or feel like I can lean into his touch.

I cannot afford to be weak for my sake or Inks sake. Ink need someone to be strong for him and I need to be strong for myself.

I don't want to be dealt the same fate as my mother and I do not want to die by the hands of my father. But if accepting my fathers terms and deal instead of Leo's will help me survive and strengthen then that is what I need to do.

I may need to take my fathers deal into acceptance instead of Leo's.

I wrack my brain for any information that I have gathered from Leo's business, anything that Chase or Evan or Lilian may have told me.

I come up short but I remember the docking where I was almost trafficked. I can spare that location because Leo might've turned it into something else that gives him gain.

I also know the location of the warehouse where he took me to torture Louis. If I can show my father where the warehouse is then he will know a place where Leo has most of his meetings.

He will get the names and addresses of some of Leo's men. The location of the warehouse alone could be a lot of information given to my father.

And then in return I wouldn't have to be beat.

If I give him something even if it's a small sliver of information about Leo's business I won't have to be beaten into submission.

Ink won't be forced to watch me bleed and he won't be forced to bleed beside me.

If I can do that then it would mean enough.

I don't like what Leo makes me feel. I don't like that it makes me feel weak and like I need to rely on him. Because I don't need to rely on anybody except myself.

Others are supposed to rely on me not the other way around. Ink is supposed to rely on me.

And if I'm not strong enough to support him and myself. . .

I wonder if Ink would deal the same fate as me at a younger age that I had to experience with my mother.

I set the pencil down since I'm done writing my mothers letter. I close the journal and I hold onto it tightly. I know I said I was going to throw the paper into the fire but I can't seem to part with it.

It's at least two pages long. It has everything I wanted to tell her since the day she died. It has a few confessions and it has a lot about my father in it.

And yet I can't throw it into that fire.

I can't burn it and I can't rip it apart.

So it will stay buried deep inside of this journal and it won't be opened again. Buried with all of my horrible sketches and drawings and plots to murder my father.

I shouldn't even think twice about it anymore.

Now to prepare myself for my father's estate tomorrow.