Hi peeps! So like I'm legit going to try updating once a week from now on, I won't really have a set schedule of updating, but I'm going to try to aim for either Wednesdays or Thursdays, but if I don't follow through...well consider this my disclaimer notice :P So anyways umm...sorry to throw you guys a curveball, but this chapter is pretty dark, like it has dark themes so...DON'T SAY I DIDN'T WARN YA FOLKS!

Lyla rang the doorbell of her house at exactly 9:31 p.m.

She wasn't on time.

She wasn't on time.

Lyla's eyes dart around the house, racking her pathetic excuse of a brain for any other way to get in. How dare she forget the keys to the front door. Sarah would be so disappointed at her for losing her wits at such a pivotal time.

The door creaked open, and standing about three feet in front of her was her sister, who was already peaking around Lyla, searching the dark for something, and if Lyla wasn't mistaken, someone.

"He went home didn't he."

She said it as a statement, with an undertone of defeat in her voice.

"You expected him to come back? They even waved goodbye Divya, what did you expect?" "Chechi, stop ok? He just said he would come back, and I thought he meant now."

Lyla's lips stretched wide, and slowly she started to part her lips, enough to let a small gleam of white light reflect off her iridescent teeth. "I see you've made a-" Lyla made a small noise in the back of her throat, "-friend."

Divya's nose flared, and she haughtily stomped up the staircase. "I'm not stupid you know, and I know what you mean by "friend." And no, I don't like him, and he says he knows someone who knows someone with the cheesetouch, so we're not even friends." She harshly blew out air from her nostrils so that even Lyla, at the bottom of the staircase could hear her.

Her sister's loud stomps however, gave Lyla's position away. There was another set of footsteps running towards her, and it was not one she could escape as easily as she wanted to: her father's.

Her mother may run the house on a day to day basis, but it was her father who laid down the law, and when he did, he made sure everyone remembered who was boss.

Lyla absolutely loathed that aspect of her father. He always made sure he was king - just when he was the only male around. It was nauseating, and demeaning, no matter which way she looked at it.

She didn't want to have to listen to someone who knew how to beat her black and blue - but she did. She always did. And she hated herself for that.

"IDIOT - YOU IDIOT, who do you think you are to be so important that you could just go to their house at night?" He came over and grab her ear, pinched it till a warm, heavy substance started to trickle slowly down her earlobe. Her father started to twist her ear. She made sure not a single sound left her lips.

She closed her eyes.

"Do you know who they are?"

Silence.

"TELL ME, TELL ME!" he screamed, in the ear that was currently numbing itself from the torturous length of his nails. Lyla slowly clenched her fists, one behind her back, the other at her side.

Divya started to scream at the sight of the blood, but she didn't realize the quiet shadow of their mom waiting in the doorway.

She didn't know that her mother had trailed their father all the way the their front porch, just to look on with horror of her eldest daughter's suffering.

But at Divya's screams, her mother woke up.

Her eyes flashed.

And she started to create a shadow of her own, by stepping into the light.

"Joseph! Joseph, stop!" She rushed to his side and tried pulling his arm off of Lyla's ear with little to no strength, but then she started to rejuvenate her efforts. With more and more strength she continued to tug at his arm until he looked away from Lyla, and gave a murderous look at his wife.

"I'm not even done with you, bitch, so don't you dare take a step in the middle of this. You're a fucker, you know that Mariam? You are one hell of a fucker - don't forget it."

Whatever fear was in her mother's eyes had disappeared, and it was replaced with something much better.

Anger.

Anger Lyla knew.

Anger Lyla could deal with.

Anger Lyla could manipulate.

And so she did.

She started crying.

Its desired effect occurred: her mother started to kick and scream at her father, her sister ran to pull her mother away from her father, and of course, her father forgot to continue to latch on to his eldest daughter's ear with a vice-like grip.

When he let go, Lyla took it upon her to wrench her mother away from his grasp, something which proved to be rather difficult. Lyla inspected the scene before her. Her mother was on the ground, her hair being pulled in every which way by her father. Her father's other hand was being used to clutch the ends of her sister's hair that connected to the surface of her scalp. Divya was a banshee with the most unearthly scream, while her mother's body was racked with otherworldly sobs; her cries of pain were too loud to be heard by the common man.

But Lyla could hear her. She used to be able to feel it too; the feeling of a never-ending pain that wouldn't leave your body no matter how much you thrashed and fought against the source. But Lyla had numbed herself. Lyla knew how to shield herself from the pain. And so she started to hammer at her father's fist, with every last ounce of strength she had, and her father immediately let go of her mother. She then started to squeeze the other fist that had a tight grip on Divya's scalp until she heard the crack of a knuckle. He quickly released Divya, who scrambled over to Lyla and clutched onto her cardigan with wide eyes. Glistening tears coated her sister's enviably long lashes, and the red capillaries of her eyes started to make themselves known.

Her mother was sitting upright near them. There was still an ounce of fear in their eyes. She continued to look at her father, who was slowly getting up and was and was sneering at his family with an absolute hate.

He pulled himself off the ground, and his right hand grabbed the first thing he could find, which just so happened to be a vase. A vase decorated with elephants, with traditional indian designs in orange and red painted all over it.

There was little Lyla could have done to prevent what happened next - The vase went soaring through the air; it was directed towards her. She dodged the vase, but she could still hear the cracking of porcelain still ringing through her ears.

She turned to Divya, and started urgently whispering to her, "Divya, go, quick, run upstairs and lock yourself in your room, go!" Divya just stared up at her with her large, milk chocolate eyes, but she stayed where she was. Lyla decided to give her a push, and Divya finally comprehended the message her older sister was trying to send her.

She scrambled to her feet, quickly, albeit unsteadily, but she held Lyla's shoulder, and then, instead of running up the stairs, she went to her mother who was still getting up, and she grabbed her hand and pulled her up.

"Mama, mama, let's go mama!" Her mother started briskly walking towards the end of the hallway, but before she turned into her bedroom, she looked back.

She knew, she had always known.

There was not a secret that Lyla could have kept from her, except for her latest one. But she'd find out soon. It wasn't a question of faulty morals - it was a question of survival.

Her mother knew that, and now she was experiencing the consequences of letting her daughter carry out her job. Lyla knew she hated it, but she had to let it slide.

She heard the quiet click of the door. She was alone, aside from her father. Her father just looked at her. He immediately stalked over to her, and grabbed her by the roots of her hair, threw her to the ground, and then he left, walking away with balled up fists.

She could hear his footsteps fade away, because in the wake of his path to the guest bedroom, he had managed to leave a trail of broken plates. When Lyla had finally heard him slam the door, she looked at the mess she had created. She should've been more careful about going to the Blackwell's house. She should've been more wary. Ten years had passed since she had started training, but she still hadn't learned her lesson.

Sarah. She would go talk to Sarah.

After she was done cleaning up the mess her father had made, she went to the closet, took out the bottle of neosporin, and went up to the bathroom to clean her ear. Every time she touched her ear there was a sharp pain that shot out from the tear in her skin, but she didn't wince. She calmly went about her business, trying to impose her will on herself to stop the pain of her ear and her scalp from reaching her brain, but it didn't work as well as she wanted it to.

Lyla cupped her hands to make a makeshift bowl for the water to be held in, and she slowly dipped her ear in and kept it there for approximately 15 sec. She took her ear out of the water and looked at the translucent red swirls of blood in the water. She parted her hands and let the water drop back into the sink, washed her hands, and applied the neosporin.

The second she applied the salve on her ear, a burning sensation shot through her entire body; it was freeing, in a sense. It was better to feel something instead of nothing.

Lyla quickly went to her room, and pulled out her specialized phone. She went inside her room, locked the door, and started to dial Sarah. After a couple of rings, a confident, feminine voice asked, "Agent? Is something wrong? Any new developments?"

Lyla responded saying, "I planted all six of them" "-I know" "-but that's not the reason why I'm calling." "I figured."

Lyla sighed. "My dad - he had another one of his fits."

"And let me guess - you did nothing."

"Apparently not."

There was an empty silence from Sarah's end.

"Agent, I don't-I don't know what to tell you, I mean I've helped give you the tools you needed to eliminate him - but you have never rose to the challenge of actually using your knowledge, at least on him."

Lyla almost felt foolish after what Sarah had told her, but she didn't, couldn't say anything against her father. 

"I know."

"Agent, go practice your hand-to-hand combat, or work on your project that's due September 8th, it'll take your mind off of things. Plus, there's a lot more you can do with your skill set, and your position, aside from bugging their house - that's just a start."

"Any suggestions?" "Go to Notre Dame and try to become friends with Evans; we know you've researched him and we know what you've found, but now you need to fill in the backstory about him, and find out the level of connection him and Grant have. The high school is a great place for gossip and who knows, you might just find something out about Evans. Listen while you can.Oh, and by the way, I cancelled Samuel's second flight to UAE - he's stuck in a layover at LAX."

Lyla tightened the corner of her lips and then she relaxed them and let out a breath.

"Thanks Sarah, I'm going to go get ready for tomorrow. I still have some homework I have to do anyway too." She didn't actually have any homework yet, since it had only been the first day of school, but extending the phone call would not be beneficial for either her or Sarah, they would only waste their energy on useless words.

She ended the call, and got ready for bed. She needed to get ready for tomorrow, because tomorrow, she was joining a sport. 

Picture: Evans Knight (Just imagine blonde curls falling all over his face though:)

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