Page 153 of Merciless Daddy

I folded my arms around myself. “I don’t know how to stand here while you all suffer for me. I don’t even know where to look.”

Sal came toward me.

He did not touch me immediately. He stopped an arm’s length away, leaving the choice visible between us.

“Do you want Daddy active?” he asked quietly.

The question cut through the library. Through the burning footage. Through the old reflex that told me to solve everything before someone punished me for failing.

I looked down at my hands.

I wanted to argue. I wanted to demand the operational details. I wanted to prove I was useful enough that nobody could decide I was a burden.

Instead, I felt the floor holding me up. I felt Sal waiting.

“Yes,” I said.

His face softened.

“Then listen to me, little one.” His voice stayed low, but it carried. “You are not responsible for repairing damage Gianni chose to cause. You will eat breakfast. You will sit with Kiryl if you want. You will leave strategy to us for two hours.”

My head lifted. “Two?”

“Two.”

I glared at him.

The glare had no real heat. Not now.

Sal held out his hand.

“Breakfast,” he said. “Then we reassess.”

My fingers went into his.

The relief was instant and humiliating and so sweet it made my eyes sting. Someone else was carrying the room. Not taking my mind from me. Not telling me I was too delicate to understand.

Just carrying it while I rested.

“Yes, Daddy,” I said.

He squeezed my hand once.

“Good girl.”

Every feather on the firebird became black beneath my pencil.

I sat on the rug in the sitting room with the coloring book open across my knees. The bird should have been red and gold. Flame and glory. Instead, I shaded its wings charcoal, its tail black, its eye a hard little dot of ink.

Olimpo slept beside the fireplace with one paw over his nose.

The door opened.

Angela came in carrying a box of gel pens and a plate covered in iced biscuits. She wore an oversized cream cardigan, jeans, and socks with tiny blue stars on them.

I looked at the socks.

She noticed.