Chapter 9: The Price of Attention
GROAN.
The sound was low and guttural, born of deep irritation. Elijah's nap was not a luxury; it was a necessity, a psychological reset after navigating the low-grade chaos of his existence. To have it broken, and to have it broken by her, was an offense.
Elijah's eyes flew open, blazing with cold fury as he registered the intrusion. The room was dark, lit only by the faint, diffused glow of the streetlights filtering through the cheap blinds. He recognized the shape immediately, Iris. She was standing by the door, her shoulders heaving, the lock clicked shut.
"What the hell do you want?" he hissed, shoving himself up into a sitting position. He was genuinely furious, his voice vibrating with suppressed aggression.
Iris stood frozen for a heartbeat, silhouetted against the dim light bleeding under his door. Her hands trembled at her sides, knuckles clenched white. She launched herself across the room, the raw, suppressed terror of the last few hours finally detonating.
"You need to put your ragtag people in check, Elijah!" she burst out, her voice a desperate, trembling shriek that barely stayed below the soundproofing threshold. "Those thugs you hired—your despicable gang! They murdered a man! And one of them—the brute—he threatened me! He said if you didn't care about me, he'd come back and bone my juicy ass!"
Elijah scoffed, the sound sharp and dismissive in the dark. "So?" He swung his legs over the edge of the bed, his silhouette rigid against the streetlight glare. "People die every day. Did you think they were handing out candy?" His voice dropped, cold and precise.
She stood over him, fists clenched, her whole body shaking, the words spilling out in a rush of fear and accusation. "I think you didn't get what I said," Iris snapped, her voice cracking. "They killed a man! Right in front of me! They smashed his bones in—with a metal! And the brute threatened me!" She practically shouted, the memory sharp and visceral. "He said he'd come back for me! For my...my body! Because you don't care!"
Elijah stared at her, absorbing the torrent of information, but his anger only intensified. He didn't care about the murder, only the interruption.
"Is that it?" he shouted back, grabbing his pillow and slamming it onto the mattress. "Is that why you barged in here, locking the door and interrupting the only goddamn sleep I'll get tonight? Because some street kid made an empty threat over your pathetic moral grandstanding?"
Iris's fury soared, fueled by his callousness. "Empty? They just broke a man's bones with a wrench! You think that's empty, you sociopathic bastard?"
"Yes, it's empty," he enunciated each word with chilling calm. "Sociopaths are efficient," Elijah shot back, unmoved. "You're inefficient, which is why you're here. Now, Zigi wouldn't make a threat like that unless you gave him a valid reason. So tell me, airhead, what did you say to them?" He leaned forward, elbows on knees, forcing Iris into the spotlight. "Did you mouth off? Try to be the hero? Waste their valuable time?"
Forced to tell the truth, Iris stumbled. "I—I just mocked them! I told them they were worthless trash for following a cockroach like you, and that you were grounded! But that doesn't matter! They threatened me!" She wrapped her arms around herself, defensive and trembling. "You need to tell them to leave me alone!"
Elijah's blazing anger cooled, replaced by a devastating, evil smile. "Ungrateful," he whispered. "Someone saved your stupid life, and you mocked them. You have a fascinating talent for turning saviors into predators." He leaned forward, his voice turning low and dangerously inquisitive. "Was it Marcus that tried to assault you?"
Iris froze. The question was a violation. How could he know?
"How—" she started, her voice a shaky squeak.
Elijah smiled, a cold crescent in the darkness. "Hmm, lost your voice?? Good. His attack was a valid crashout. But that's not the interesting part." He paused, his gaze boring into hers, calculating. "I've been watching you, Iris. Not obsessively, but I know my environment. I know your patterns."
"You don't like Marcus. But you never rejected him, did you?" Elijah pressed, his voice soft, almost conversational, making the accusation devastating. "You tolerated the attention. You edged him on—not because you wanted him, but because you needed the validation. The drama. Was it for attention, Iris, or some twisted desire to be pushed to the edge?"
His cruelty was surgical, cutting through her moral armor to expose a hidden truth she hadn't admitted even to herself.
"I waited for you to outright reject him," he continued, completely detached. "If you had clearly said no and he still pushed, Marcus's death would have been more horrific, I assure you. But you didn't. You chose silence and vague protest, so I chose not to care until the situation escalated outside the parameters of your normal, pathetic courting ritual. Now, when some other thugs save your sorry life, you mock them? Frankly, if I'd been there, I would have told them to ignore it."
Iris recoiled as if physically struck, her face draining of color. She stared at Elijah, unable to process the cold, brutal detachment behind his words, he would have ignored it. Her knees buckled slightly, the adrenaline crash leaving her trembling against the bedroom wall.
Her entire argument and sense of moral superiority shattered by the revelation of his surveillance and his accusation of her complicity, made her collapse into raw, flustered insults. "You're sick! You're a monster! A psychopath! You deserve to rot!" Her voice cracked, shrill and impotent against the cold weight of Elijah's logic.
Elijah didn't flinch. He simply shrugged, the motion dismissive. "Inefficient insults, Iris," he remarked coolly, his eyes scanning her trembling form as if assessing a malfunctioning piece of equipment. "Wasted energy."
Iris spat a venomous stream of curses, her voice escalating into a ragged, tear-choked shriek. "Filth! Rotting maggot! You're dead inside! You deserve to choke on your own blood! That's why your mother abandoned you, she saw the monster you'd become!" The insult landed like a blade twisted, raw, vicious and tailored to wound.
Elijah was off the bed in a flash. He moved with sudden, startling speed, reaching her before she could react. His hand swung out and delivered a sharp, open-handed smack across her cheek. The sound was flat and shocking in the quiet room. He grabbed her by the shoulders, fingers digging into the soft flesh above her collarbones, propelling her backwards until her spine slammed against the locked door, pinning her there.
"Behave," he commanded, his voice a low snarl, pinning her with a glare of pure, lethal dominance. "Your airheaded personality and need for validation will get you killed, not just assaulted. You are stupid, Iris. That is your primary problem."
He leaned in close enough for her to feel his breath, hot and controlled against her face. "And you will never," he hissed, the words precise and sharp as glass, "mention my bitch of a biological mother again. Now, fuck off with your tirade so I can get some peaceful sleep."
He released his grip abruptly, stepping back as if she were contaminated. The sudden distance felt colder than his touch.
Iris gasped, raising a trembling hand to her stinging cheek. The physical shock compounded the emotional breakdown. Tears, hot and genuine, streamed down her face. She sank to the floor, sobbing uncontrollably.
Elijah, seeing the wet trail of tears, felt a sharp, unfamiliar twinge of something—not regret, but annoyance at the lingering, messy consequences. He huffed and sauntered back toward the bed.
Through her tears and curled on the floor, Iris's voice came out in a broken mumble. "Why, Eli? How did you change so much? You weren't like this before... what happened to you? I remember..."
Elijah paused mid-stride, his silhouette freezing against the dim window light. "What happened?" His laugh was short, brittle, hollow. "Stupidity ended. Survival started." He turned, eyes cold chips in the gloom. "Remember Dad's 'accident'? That trucker paid off? Insurance called it mechanical failure." The words hung, sharp as shrapnel. "I learned the world eats decent people alive." He tapped his temple. "This? It's not a change but it's an upgrade."
Iris choked on a sob, her fingers digging into the carpet pile. "But... Dad loved us," she whispered, the words thick with grief and confusion. "He was a good—"
"He was weak." Elijah cut her off, the finality in his voice colder. "Weakness gets you crushed. That trucker walked away laughing while Dad choked on his own blood in that ditch." He turned his back fully, the line of his shoulders rigid against the faint streetlight. "Sentimentality is a luxury for people who haven't tasted pavement."
He lay back down, pulling the sheet up to his chest. "Life happened, Iris," he snickered, his voice muffled by the pillow. "And you should fuck off."
Iris remained there, a broken knot of sorrow and fury, sobbing until the tremors subsided into dull exhaustion. The room was silent now, save for the deep, steady rhythm of Elijah's breathing. He was already asleep.
Trauma and despair were powerful physical forces. Iris couldn't go back to her room; Akari was there and asleep, and Iris didn't want to wake her or explain the chaos clinging to her. She looked at Elijah's prone form, the sight of his deep, untroubled sleep inexplicably drawing her in. He was the source of the chaos, the monster who had just struck her, but he was also the only brother in this terrifying reality.
She crawled silently off the floor, slipping beneath the covers behind Elijah's still form, seeking the warmth radiating from his back. The mattress dipped slightly, but he didn't stir—his breathing remained deep and even.
She pressed her forehead tentatively against his shoulder blade, seeking the twisted, familiar comfort she had known since childhood, the same solidity that had once shielded her in thunderstorms but now poisoned by his cruelty.
Her arm slid tentatively over his waist, fingers curling lightly into the fabric of his shirt. Elijah shifted slightly at the contact, a low murmur escaping his lips, not protest, but the heavy sigh of deep sleep. Iris froze, waiting, but he settled deeper into the pillow, his rhythmic breathing undisturbed.
Iris pressed closer, burying her nose against his spine, letting the solid warmth of his presence drown out the echoes. Exhaustion pulled her eyelids shut, the adrenaline finally bleeding away into the quiet dark.
In the middle of the night, step siblings slept side-by-side, one deeply asleep in the cold certainty of his logic, the other, trembling and clinging to the enemy who was also one of two things that felt like home.