Daughter of Zeus ✔

13.3

"Is she gone?" Chancelin called from the upstairs landing.

"She's gone!" Darcy chirped on her way back from the sub- garage.

"Oh, thank god."

Chancelin returned to her bedroom. Back in the dining room, Phennell and Moretz were smoking cigars. Darcy asked where her cigar was, pulling a laugh from the two men. They didn't understand she was serious. She tried another question.

"Why did mom stay in her room all night?"

Phennell smirked. "You're joking, right?"

Their father held up his hand to silence them both. "Children, it's been a long day. I'm going to tend to your mother." He put out his cigar.

He makes Mom sound like a sick dog.

After Moretz left the room, Phennell said, "She's not that bad."

She, as in Ada.

Darcy knew her brother was infatuated with Ada, but there seemed to be nothing attractive about her. Attraction was important to her brother, if Phennell's former girlfriends were any indication. Ada didn't compare to the wanna-be actresses and models he let escort him around town. What set her apart was her status as a new member of the family.

Darcy figured Phennell didn't really want Ada; he wanted to piss off his mother. Chancelin and Phennell had hated each other for as long as Darcy could remember, maybe driven by the divorce from his father in favor of Moretz. Whatever his reasons, dating Ada would satisfy the quota for hurting Chancelin.

"You're so predictable," Darcy said.

"What are you talking about?"

"If you want to turn Ada into a rebellion project, you're about four years too late. High school's over for you, Phennell." She flipped her hair, feeling very wise.

Her mother might have said something similar, only in a scarier manner.

"That's not what I've got in mind at all." He raised his brows. "If anything, you hate her, not me."

Darcy didn't hate anyone, least of all her mother. There were times when it seemed Chancelin hated her, and she would ask herself, late at night, why her mother didn't love her. She tucked the thought into a ball and threw it away.

"I do not hate Mom!"

Phennell bopped her on the head with a flower taken off the table. "Not Mom, dumbass. Ada. You hate Ada."

"No," she said slowly. "I don't hate her." The truth sprung up, shifting her state of mind. She didn't hate Ada, but like was very far away. "I just don't know her. I'm not about to open my arms to a stranger claiming to be our sister."

"She wouldn't be a stranger if you got to know her, like I have."

He rose from the dining room table. He was trying to leave the room before Darcy could reply to his argument, like the coward he usually was about confrontation.

"I don't plan on getting to know her on the same level you do, ya perv!"

Phennell looked shocked, not with the shock of an inaccurate statement, but with the shock of being caught.

Eww.

So her brother did plan on sleeping with Ada. Well, Darcy planned to keep Phennell away from Ada. Darcy wouldn't wish the idiotic and hurtful nature of her brother on anyone.