The Radiants Chronicons : Vol. I & II Of The Radiants Duology Series

Defiant (Vol. II) - Chapter thirty one

Chapter thirty one

The whole plan was simple. We needed a reason to stay long enough to spend the night at the manor and we had one advantage. Levi. Despite what Levi refused to admit. He was Vikram Caden's favorite. Levi was the child he adopted since he was a baby. Vikram groomed him. Trained him. Raised him. Odell and Zuri didn't come into his life, until they were much older. The others were old enough to be their own person. Zuri, the spoilt rich child and Odell, the loner orphan. So Vikram knew him the most, out of all his children. He also knew that an angry Levi, was a rare sight. One not to annoy. Obviously, Vikram knew we had no reason to stay the night. So, we purposely came in the evening, so we'd have a reason to stay the night. But we also knew Vikram Caren would try to convince us to stay because of how much he treasured his son, who's mad at him and would try to mend ways. Levi was convinced that his father would be apologetic, after every mean thing he said and would try to make them stay for dinner. It worked. Just as Levi predicted.

Levi frowned. "Step two is the main plan. God, I feel guilty doing this. I feel like I'm manipulating him. I'm turning out just like him and everything people have said about us, would turn out to be true."

Uh-oh. Levi was already rethinking this and I didn't know what to do. I wholeheartedly agreed with him, but I knew why he was doing this. He was afraid. Afraid of what he'd find out. "I know, but this is the time to make a compromise one last time. We need to beat him at his own game. We talked about this. YOU came up with the idea."

Levi scoffed. "Of course, you'll say that. Compromise. Isn't that what you were willing to do when you felt "okay" with your pal killing someone?"

He was bringing THAT up. I thought we had crossed that border. "Oh so torturing someone is okay, but murder is no-no for you?"

"That was for a legit reason." He gritted his teeth.

I growled. "She was my friend."

Levi paced around. "Was. Keyword. Besides, you wanted it more than I did."

"Maybe I did, but that agent was going to kill you. Wale saved your ass. If you're not willing to accept that sacrifice then, you do not value your life enough."

Levi looked me straight in the eye. His face softening. "So you're telling me that you'll do the same if you had the chance."

"In. A. Heartbeat." I said the words slowly, so he would understand how much I hated how they treated us.

Levi shook his head. "You don't mean that."

"I love you, Levi. But you don't know half the pain most of us go through. You've lived your privileged life living in a mansion, going to your father's school, where you're not being treated differently, and being shielded from the outside world, so you don't know the pain every Radiant is carrying. Do you know how it feels to be ripped away from your family? Do you know how it's like, checking the news and hearing how the media portrays you as a hazard to a society? Do you know it's like for people to laugh at you for using tanks to breathe? My family toiled day in day out and I had to be taken away from them because the government—the same government full of people that are NOT like us—think they know what's best for us.  I'm not justifying murder, but I am saying that we're in the losing team of a slowly raging war. We might as well be ready for it."

Levi looked disheartened. His eyes drooped, and I felt the tugging feeling in my heart resurface. I never meant to undermine his life, but the truth was that he would never understand what it was like to see enforcement agents the way I did. He would have no idea the reminder of how their faces rang through the mind of what they thought of us. I still had nightmares on the things the enforcement agents said to my face and it would forever remain as a trauma to me. He didn't experience that, so he had no idea how little they cared for us.