FATHER ALWAYS SMILING

Chapter 40 ~~~~~

She closed her eyes. Was that an expression of regret? No, he doubted that was it. Before she finally parted her lips and softly said. "Yes..."

Then silence.

Long suffocating silence.

And when the man looked at Nick, it was the most horrifying thing he had ever seen.

Alastor was smiling, but his smile with his rage-filled eyes as his smile tugged on his features, splitting wide open to show teeth in an almost maniacal grin. He looked more monster than a man. Like a demon. Alastor looked like he wanted to devour Nick in that instance, rip him limb from bloody limb. But he turned his attention back to his little girl, his expression returning to normal the instant he looked at her. His smile never left, not even in his voice.

"I want you to go and wait in the car Amalie," he says. "Elain is already there. No need to worry about her. She's safe, she's in the back seat, still out cold, but no permanent damage was done to her." He then placed a kiss on her forehead. "Go on now." She scampered away, only to stop and look back to her father merely made a motion of his hand, telling her to get going.

As her tiny footsteps echoed in the distance, the man slowly stood, making his way back over to Nick.

"Now then," he said as he knelt to Nick's level, elbows resting on his knees. "I need you to answer my questions, Sir. It'll do no good if you lie to me, understand? I want us to be completely transparent with each other. Alright?"

Another moment of silence.

"Where did you touch my daughter?"

When Nick didn't say a thing, too afraid to answer, he was hauled up to his feet, back pressed against the wall and backhanded across the face.

"Where?"

"H-her chest a-and thigh..." it was barely even that when the other girl tackled him to the floor before attempting to choke him out. The bitch. He didn't even get that much barely even touch of that little brat's skin.

Without a second's hesitation, Alastor dragged the man in a chokehold towards the back exit door, a door that was so heavy and old, Amalie would have no chance of opening it on her own, and slammed him so hard Nick's bones rattled against the old rusted metal. This man was a monster, no normal person had such strength, yet Alastor made it look effortless.

"I should kill you..." he says rather plainly, only to then drop the man, falling to his knees and hands like a dog as Alastor looked down on him as though he were lesser. "Every fibre of my being wishes to do so, so badly. To drain your flesh of blood like the pig that you are. Like with that drain over there."

Nick's eyes flicked to the very drain; it hadn't been used in years.

What made it all the worse was how Nick pictured it, of Alastor dragging him to the drain, forcing him to kneel with his throat exposed as a knife pressed to his exposed flesh as he screamed for bloody mercy at the hands of such a terrifying being as his throat sliced with a knife to be bled like a pig. Was that how Alastor intended to kill him, as Nick had imagined?

"But," Alastor drawled in that singsong voice of his that somehow made it chilling to Nick's ears. "A death for you would be far too quick, too simple. Too easy. After everything you've done, I have half a mind to rid the world of your pathetic existence, yet I cannot help but think of something far better for you, especially after what I was told from an... anonymous source. But with that in mind," He knelt to the man's level, grey-silver eyes wide as if to swallow Nick's soul as his smile was partly covered with his hand as if he were deep in thought. "Would you care to know? My pedophilic friend?"