Chapter 4 - The Sound of Weight
At 3:00 AM, the mansion was buried in deep, suffocating darkness.
I walked quietly down the carpeted hallway of the West Wing, my slippers making no sound against the Persian rugs. I reached the heavy mahogany door of Grace's bedroom and turned the handle gently, slipping inside.
The nightlight cast a soft amber glow across the vast room. Soft plush toys, braille books, and a grand piano sat in the corner, unused.
Grace wasn't in her bed.
My heart instantly skipped a beat, my right hand reflexively dropping to the small of my back where my piece rested. "Grace?" I whispered into the quiet room.
"I'm over here, Dad."
She was sitting on the wide marble windowsill, her knees pulled up to her chest, looking out through the reinforced glass into the rain-swept gardens below. She was holding her wooden baton across her lap, her thumb tracing the grain of the polished oak.
I let out a slow breath and walked over, leaning against the wall beside her window seat. "You should be sleeping."
"I can't," she said, her voice small, stripped of the fierce anger she had shown in the cellar. "My forearm hurts."
I reached out, gently touching the deep purple bruise forming on her pale skin. "That's what happens when you try to block a weapon with bare flesh and wood."
"Evelyn said bruises are just memory marks," Grace murmured. "She said every bruise teaches you where you were standing when you should have been moving."
I stared at my daughter's side profile. In the dim light, she looked so much like her mother—the same delicate nose, the same soft curve of her chin. Clara had died giving birth to Grace, leaving me with a fragile, beautiful piece of her soul wrapped in an empire made of violence and fear.
"I built this house to keep you safe, Grace," I said softly, my voice breaking slightly. "When the doctors told me you'd never see the light, I swore to God I'd build a world where you'd never need to see a threat coming. I hired fifty men. I bought armored cars. I made sure every person who touched your life was vetted ten times over."
"You built a castle, Dad," Grace turned her clouded eyes toward me, tears glistening on her eyelashes. "But you forgot to give me a key to the front door. Every time you lock me in here, you're telling me that I'm useless. That if something happens to you, I'm just supposed to sit on the floor and wait for whoever breaks through that door to do whatever they want to me."
"You're a child—"
"I'm twelve!" she cried out softly, wiping her cheek with the back of her sleeve. "When you were twelve, your father had already taught you how to shoot a gun! You told me that story yourself! Why do you get to be a survivor, but I'm only allowed to be a victim?"
Her words slammed into my ribs harder than Valeria's wooden baton ever could.
I stood there in the silent, dark nursery, realizing for the first time that my protection hadn't been an act of love—it had been an act of cowardice. I was so terrified of losing Clara's daughter that I had rendered her completely helpless in a world that was waiting to devour her whole.
"Does Valeria hurt you during training?" I asked quietly.
Grace shook her head. "No. She pushes me. She makes me listen to the sound of her breath, the rustle of her jacket, the way her weight shifts on the floorboards before she swings. She taught me that being blind isn't a disability, Dad. It's an environment. Everyone else relies on their eyes. But eyes lie. Sound doesn't."
I closed my eyes, taking a deep, shuddering breath. "Tomorrow morning at six," I said.
May you like
Grace blinked, confused. "What?"
"Six AM," I repeated, reaching out to stroke her soft hair. "In the wine cellar. If you're going to train in my house, you're not doing it with wooden sticks anymore. And you're not doing it without me."
