Twisted Mercy

The memory stream flickered, seamlessly leaving behind the brief illusion of care. Maude’s grip on Cordelia’s chin tightened. Her greedy eyes roamed over the small face, devouring the striking beauty no longer hidden beneath the courtyard mud.

"Two escapes in three days," Maude warned, her voice dropping to a harsh, grating rasp. Her thick, unyielding fingers dug deeper into the child’s delicate jawbone. "Try a stunt like that again, and I will make you wish for the filthy cattle pen."

Cordelia instinctively shrank back from the heavy, predatory gaze. That small, terrified movement brought a sharp, stinging slap across her cheek. The crack echoed in the cramped room.

"Still defiant?" Maude spat, her false mercy vanishing.

"No! I will be good," the four-year-old begged. Her voice shook uncontrollably as tears carved fresh tracks down her cheeks. "Just please tell my parents where I am. They must be looking for me."

A second slap sent her sprawling into the hard dirt floor.

"Parents?" Maude sneered, looming over the trembling girl like a nightmare. "I am your mother now. You listen to me. Someone paid thirty thousand dollars to end your life. You should get on your knees and thank me for keeping you breathing. Forget your family. They are nothing but a dead dream."

Cordelia curled tightly into a small ball on the floor. Her innocent, traumatized mind could not begin to comprehend the concept of a hit placed on her life. Thirty thousand dollars meant nothing to a four-year-old. Instead, she latched onto the only explanation her brain could find. She remembered her older brother’s casual, past warnings whenever she refused to go to sleep. *Bad children get taken away.*

She squeezed her eyes shut. Through silent tears, she whispered to the empty air. "Declan... you promised. You promised if I listened to you, bad people would not come."

Inside the present-day penthouse studio, those innocent, heartbreaking words struck Declan like a devastating physical blow. He staggered back, his breathing ragged. He used to throw those threats around just to make her behave. Now, his thoughtless past words mutated into a heavy, suffocating burden of immense guilt. He had made his baby sister believe this nightmare was her own fault.

The chilling revelation of the assassination plot sent a deep, icy shock through the entire audience. Gideon gripped the armrests of his chair. He squeezed the leather so hard his knuckles turned a stark, bone-white. Blood vessels visibly bulged in his eyes as the horrifying realization set in. This was never a botched ransom demand. It was a deliberate, thirty-thousand-dollar murder plot.

Any lingering, misguided hope for the traffickers' so-called mercy was brutally severed. Maude’s calculated voice echoed from the screen, solidifying her true intentions.

"Cannot sell her yet," Maude mused, pacing around the cramped room and eyeing the huddled child. "Her face is plastered across every news station. Better wait until she is older. With striking looks like that? Rich men will throw money at us to get their hands on her."

Inside the harrowing memory, the next three days flashed in quick, brutal fragments. Cordelia learned quickly that shedding tears only invited more agonizing abuse. Starving, heavily bruised, and exhausted from the relentless captivity, her small body finally gave out. She collapsed into a pale, icy bundle on the cold floorboards.

Vernon’s heavy work boots stepped into the frame. He stared down at the frail, unconscious child. "Just let her starve to death," his gruff voice suggested. "We got the hit money securely in our pockets anyway. Why waste our food?"

Maude’s insatiable greed prevailed over murder. She shoved Vernon aside with a scoff. "Do not be an idiot," she calculated. "Why settle for a single payday? Feed her some milk. Keep her alive so she can earn her keep working the fields later."

Soft, genuine sobs echoed through the studio. The audience watched the little heiress treated worse than livestock. The suffocating bleakness of her reality settled heavy over the room.

Ronan forced a harsh, callous scoff, suppressing any potential empathy under layers of stubborn denial. He crossed his arms and glared at the screens. "She had ten whole years to escape that hellhole," he stated coldly. "How does a rough childhood excuse what she did later in life? It does not justify how she treated our sister, Bianca."

The hostile viewers in the chat quickly rallied behind his aggressive stance, eager for an excuse to hate her again.

[Ronan is right. A sad past does not give you a free pass to be cruel.]

[She pushed Bianca down the stairs! Do not forget that!]

[My cousin went to school with her. She was a nightmare to the other kids. Evil company breeds evil ways.]

The heated accusations slowly died away as a profoundly new, intimate memory surfaced on the screen.

The stream shifted, jumping forward in time. A barely five-year-old Cordelia stood silently before a cracked, dirt-smudged mirror propped against a wooden wall. She wore oversized rags that hung off her frail, deeply malnourished frame. Her skin stretched tight over fragile collarbones.

Yet, as she raised her thin hands to meticulously braid her own hair, her large, bright eyes and delicate facial features radiated an undeniable, pure beauty. Even the grime and starvation could not hide it.

The chat slowed as viewers stared at the breathtaking child.

[Look at her. She looks like a porcelain doll.]

[Wait, have you seen her recent photos? She is unrecognizable now.]

[Yeah, I saw them. Her face is heavily scarred. You can barely see her eyes anymore.]

The cruel comments harshly contrasted with the innocent reflection on the screen. The audience was forced to watch in a heavy, mournful silence. They stared at the little girl tying off her braid, desperately willing this fragile, fleeting perfection to last before its inevitable, tragic loss.