Conference room - Vincent 2

Compared to Violet’s case, which I could understand down to the tiniest details, Vincent's felt a lot more alien, maybe because the compatibility between us was worse.

However, that didn’t change the fact that it was creepy, creepy as hell, and judging by Vio’s mirrored expression she had exactly the same thoughts as mine. Neither of us wanted to be subjected to such fierce and breathtaking feelings towards Viktoria ever again. Just a moment ago, the opinion of our brother had barely tried to stand up from the gutter and now it was again lying deep in it.

Well, I can’t fully condemn him for trying to go down the incest path, I must take care not to follow his steps.

Still, there was one critical point that helped me to clear the mind of minor thoughts so I could fully focus on it.

Vincent was an idiot, a huge idiot.

This whole situation was nothing more or nothing less than one of Viktoria’s carefully crafted long-term experiments to satisfy her boundless curiosity. I didn’t know if Vincent played the role of the lab rat consciously or not, but this memory looked exactly like the culminating moment of an attempt to create a one-sided bond of despondency that required nothing in exchange and wouldn’t damage Vincent’s psyche too much.

In other words, she reverse engineered what father did to her, modified it, and tried to test it out on our brother, and Gregory’s next words were like the final nail convincing me of this thesis:

“Nicely done Viki. You allowed Vince to feel special with those sudden strange request of yours. What's more you always asked him to keep it a secret and gave him the feeling that he's placing higher than me in your ranking, this also took the use of the fact that he felt the least important among you siblings and from a long time ago wanted to take part in your and Victor’s play for dominance. You also crafted a special face for yourself and wore it only for him to maximize the positive response, how long it took to find the correct one?”

"Two months to find the correct category, one he liked the most, and four more to adjust the finer details."

“That speed could use some improvements. Anyway, then you took advantage of him growing bored with cheap women, which I bet you were moving behind the scenes accordingly to make sure that they wouldn’t offer him anything more than a pretty face and long hours of boredom.”

“Cheap is a perfect word to describe them, for pennies they followed the script I gave them.”

“Hah, but of course you’ve made yourself appear as unique and impossible to get, yet tempted him with small gestures, allowed to take small peeks, provided with a lot of fun, and used similar baits to pose yourself as the forbidden fruit that he was always weak against.”

“Thank you father, you taught me well how to make use of someone’s weakness against that person.”

“The best of all, now when a chance has presented itself to check how does it feel like to fall in love with you, without a second thought you’ve started pushing him in the direction of that memory. Like that moment when you’ve suddenly started defending him and followed it with words ‘you’re starting to get on my nerves, will you tell our father already about that or do you want me to do it’, then you gave him something to drink and made a psychical contact. You’re a devil of a daughter Viki.”

“I didn’t exactly plan for him to fall in love with me, just wanted to create a healthy siblings relations, something akin to the link I share with you father, but… this was an interesting result, it felt surprisingly pleasant and bitter at the same time. It was also fun to watch myself through the eyes of another person, I’ve learned a lot.”

I felt Vio’s grasp tightening, the scene in front of us was exactly the reason why she didn’t want to stay in the mansion anymore. Father had a calm expression and spoke as if he was discussing the movie he just saw, while Viktoria left the seat next to Vince and went back to her old one, to proudly sit right in front of Gregory. There was still some anger in her voice, but it had been mostly replaced by satisfaction from the positive completion of a project that she was working on for a long time. Vincent’s strong pose was nowhere to be seen as he kept his face hidden in hands and stayed silent. When I had first entered this room, there had been dark clouds above him, now it was a black storm of depression.

The group that he had made two years ago, had spiraled out of his control, had left him as the leader in name only, and had been destroyed by father, which must have been a hard pill to swallow, but not nearly as painful as this.

Even if he knew that his love would never be reciprocated and prepared himself for that, he was most certainly still counting on keeping the bound they had. But... just how much it must have hurt to be so cruelly betrayed without a shred of regret from Viktoria’s side? To be shoved in the face that for her this was just one of the many things that she was curious about.

Fucking madhouse. Who would have thought that I would feel sorry for my brother.

This development made me really glad that from the very first moment I had opened eyes in my old room I thought of myself purely as Victor as I was scared of making any mistakes. Luckily, thanks to the different body I didn’t have to copy-

- stop, I’m Victor. There’s no reason for me to think otherwise. I’m Victor, I don’t have to worry about anyone falsely accusing me of anything. I’m Victor.

I tripled the attempts on focusing on the memory that I didn’t want father to know about the most which was, of course, the bounding me geas. Viktoria had proved that it was possible to affect Nero’s power.

The only remaining question is, will it take my consciousness or subconsciousness into the account more?

“Onee-chan, don’t make such face, it will be alright. If anything goes wrong, let’s set fire to this place and run away during the following confusion.”

Whispered Vio with a mischievous smile to make it seem like a joke, but the look in her eyes was serious. She was prepared to do that. I tried to return her smile but failed. Luna was still in my room and we would have to retrieve her first, not to mention the maids, security, and dogs that we would have to avoid on the way out. Chances to run away were null, but I had two emergency plans. One was random as fuck, the other not much better.

“Sorry everyone, I’m a bit too biased towards Viki, talking with her is always fun, but there’s enough love in me for each of my three daughters and one precious son.”

“IF I’M SO PRECIOUS THEN WHAT ELSE DO YOU WANT FROM ME?! HUH?!”

Vincent was unable to take father’s sudden attempt at making a joke and erupted. I noticed that my twin took out a syringe from her pocket, ready to calm him down by force if needed.

“959,000$ that’s the price for bribing various people and making them close an eye to your pranks, the house you’ve burned was expensive. 538,000$ that’s how much two years of covering for your friends cost. 250,000$ that’s the total amount of cash I gave you when you’ve asked for extra money. 425,000$ that’s how much I’ve paid to the girls you’ve got pregnant to remove it and forget about the whole situation. 92,000$ that’s the price for the things you took from the mansion without permission. I will skip less important expenses. In other words, I want you to repay me 2,264,000$ then we can forget about everything. Oh, right! I almost forgot that I’m a good father. Each of you is receiving the same monthly allowance so I won’t count it. Other than that… since I gave Vic his own flat, that’s 380,000$, and I promised you a favor for not disturbing our lovely twin girls life so I will subtract an additional 84,000$ to make it a nice, round amount of 1,800,000. How much time do you need to gather it? A year? Two? I can’t wait any longer as you will turn eighteen after two years and then it will become a serious matter with interest.”

Like a match that suddenly burst into flame only to burn out a few seconds later, Vincent’s bright anger ended. He only punched a nearby chair a few times, to the point that its thin metal frame bent - it probably wasn’t a coincidence that it was the same chair on which Viktoria had been sitting.

“I see, paying it off may be a problem, but that’s why you’re going through all this pain right now. A precious ticket craftsman, or as they call them a natural gatemaker, like you can easily earn this amount by working for TET.”

The thing that didn’t fully register in my brain earlier came back with double force.

“Vincent’s a Gatemaker like Aura?!”

I didn’t manage to bit myself in the tongue fast enough and spilled some extra information to which Viktoria reacted curiously, but it was father who asked genuinely surprised by my outburst:

“You didn’t know? Hmm… I should probably explain this topic first as it will be important during the second part of our discussion.”

Viktoria was aiming at me like a hungry tiger, Vincent just turned himself off and was sitting motionlessly watching the ceiling, while Violet would have probably said it herself if I wasn’t faster than her.

“Greg wait, that’s my part. I will explain it.”

Interrupted Nero after finally eating his full, for a moment I saw a dark shadow on father’s face, but it was quickly gone. On the other hand, Viktoria was way worse at hiding her hostility when someone disrespected her dear father.

At least, she took me off the hook for now.

“Of course, go on.”

After receiving father’s encouragement, Nero went to the platform to stand behind the rostrum, took out a small memo pad from his pocket and began to read.