Family Ties (Darkkitten9389/Dbspock)

[dbspock]

Grant was pissed. Which meant everyone knew to stay out of his way.

Granted, it wasn't all Victoria's fault, or even mostly her fault. Second place in a statewide competition would have made most parents proud, but he wasn't most parents. Far from it. He ran the mafia in town, and after that debacle with the FBI, he was now the main contact for the region. Which meant that drug bust in Oregon had happened under his watch. He couldn't take it out on the guys who were actually responsible, they were now in jail or dead, but he COULD take it out on Victoria. So that's exactly what he was going to do. He had no control over Oregon, but he did have control over hsi daughter. Time to remind her of that, and the consequences for failure.

Grant just made one quick stop in the kitchen before he headed to Victoria's room. She wasn't home yet...bad news traveled fast, faster than Sara, who was currently driving the twins back from the competiion, at least. So he had time to take out soem of his frustrations out on her room, which was just as well. If he took his frustrations out directly on her, he might injure her, and he didn't want that. Why mess up such a pretty work of art?

Her room, of course, was another matter. Grant curcled his lip in disgust as he opened her door. White. Delicate. Girly. Ugly, at least in his opinion. Well, it would look a whole lot worse when he was done. First order of business was getting his hands free, which meant he had to drop the bag off, which he did right in the middle of her bed. Said bag consisted of the garbage from the kitchen. None of it was rotten, of course, the maids were too good for that, but it was still garbage. Bloody meat wrappers, apple cores, canned food that was not quite empty. The kitchen staff literally fed a small army, and generated a lot of stinky trash, and said trash was now deposited in the middle of Victoria's bed.

After that, he grabbed the teddy bear. He hadn't been there, but he knew John had given it to Victoria for their 18th birthday and she loved it...which meant he hated it. He shoved the bear agaisnt the wall and impaled it with the knife he'd taken from his pocket. Several times. Soon, the stuffing was all over the floor, and he left the ruined bear there pinned to the wall before he moved to the shelves next to the TV...and speaking of the TV...yeah, that went on the ground as well, quickly followed by the contents of her shelves. Grant began to stalk over to her closet to see if he coudl find that stupid shirt John had given her before he heard the door open again. Grant turned to look, curious if he'd see Victoria entering her room, liek he'd instructed Sara to make sure happened, or if one of his staff was foolish enough to interupt his tirade.

 

[Darkkitten9389]

The drive home from the swim meet seemed to be taking forever as Sara steered the car towards home. Sitting in the back seat was Victoria. Normally the young woman could have easily driven herself, just as her brother could. But their father had given orders for his twins to be escorted home. Something that actually made Victoria a little nervous. What made her even more nervous was the fact that she'd not come in first in the gymnastics competition that she'd just taken part in. Her father demanded absolute perfection from the pretty young woman. In everything she did. And by god did she borderline kill herself to meet those unrealistically high expectations. All of her classes she had straight A's. Her GPA was a 4.0 and she had been sought after by numerous prestigious colleges to join their alumni, of which her father had been the one to choose which school she'd go to. Her social skills were the best, he'd made sure of that with tutors and she excelled at numerous other skills from art to music and sports. Of which gymnastics had been chosen. "To keep you limber... and flexible." had been her fathers reasoning.

Today had been a big competition and the girl had put on a fantastic performance, earning her the highest points yet of the season. However, another girl had higher points yet, forcing the Victoria into second place. Her father was going to be disappointed. He was going to be angry. If she wasn't in first, she was a loser. His daughter was never to be anything but the best. So she sat there in the back seat gnawing on her thumb nail while watching the scenery outside the window as it flew by. Her twin saw opposite of her and she knew that he would probably be worried about how tense she was, but she wouldn't say anything about how nervous she was.

When Sarah pulled up to the front of the house, Victoria stepped out of the car with her sports bag over her shoulder and she headed into the house. "Your father wants to see you upstairs." Came Sara's voice, making her pause at the front door before she nodded. Already she could hear the commotion that was happening upstairs and the brunette took a deep breath, steeling herself for her fathers wrath. So adjusting the strap over her shoulder, Victoria began the trek up the steps and turned down the hall to where her bedroom was. All the noise was coming from her room and she paused outside, sighing to herself before she reached out and twisted the doorknob, pushing the door open.

What greeted her inside was... well, it was like a hurricane had swept through. Her normally pristine, clean bedroom, was trashed. She chose white and purple for her room. Purple because it was her favorite color and white because it symbolized clean and purity. Victoria's gaze landed first on the pile of trash on her bedspread, meat wrappers, apple cores and other refuse that had clearly come from the kitchen. Looking away, her gaze moved and she paused when she realized her new stuffed bear from John was not at the foot of her bed where she'd left it. No, instead, it was destroyed with stuffing all over the bear with the remains of the bear pinned to the wall. Seeing that hurt as it was a gift from her twin. Swallowing hard and forcing herself not to cry. Because, 'Crying is for the weak', as her father had said more then one time in the past. She then noticed that her tv was laying on the floor. Probably broken, because why not. She then focused her gaze on her father, seeing him looking at her where she stood in the doorway. "Something has displeased you." she softly said, trying to keep her voice soft and even. The girl wondered if his attack on her room was about something pertaining to his business, or if he already knew about her coming in second.

But something told her his anger wasn't about the championship. Not yet at least. That was anger that would probably come later.

 

[dbspock]

"You did good, Tori. I think the judges were nuts." John told his sister. Truthfully he had no idea if the other girl had done better or not, though he couldn't have pointed out any mistakes his sister had made. But then, she could have fallen flat on her ass and he still would have thought she did great. She was his big sister, even if he was a bit taller, and could do no wrong in his eyes. He also didn't think it unusual to have Sara drive them. John was certainly capable of driving, Dad hadn't left such a large hole in his education, he just thought it was a waste of time. Sara was going to be with him anyway...the older girl had been around as long as he could remember, even before she'd had the training and gained the skills to be his official bodyguard. So if Sara was there...why not let her drive? She had to pay attention to the roads for threats and stuff, at least from what she'd told John, so it made sense.

It was almost physically painful for John to watch his sister. Of course he knew her well enough to tell she was nervous, and it wasn't hard to guess about what. But the anger of her father...well, there wasn't a hell of a lot John could do about that. He knew better than to try and stand up to the man. All John could do was stay out of the way, which wasn't hard. Father didn't pay a lot of attention to him. Tori had always received that. John had his suspicions why, but he'd never asked his sister. Part of him didn't want to know.

When they pulled up, John glanced over at Sara as she revealed additional instructions for his sister. A light shrug from the blonde indicated that, as usual, Dad didn't really care what he did, so John trailed after his sister. After Father punished her, John had an idea Tori could use some comfort, and he wanted to be there for her.

What the hell? John wondered as he followed Tori upstairs, and they both heard the racket. John had an idea what it was, but he pushed the idea to the back of his head until he couldn't ignore it anymore. The sight of his sisters normally pristine room, now literally trashed, was hard to ignore.

Grant's eyes blazed with fury as the door opened and he heard his daughters voice. "Oh, really? What was your first clue, LOSER?" He almost literally spat at her, and he proabbbly would have if she hadn't been far enough away he would have missed. he took a few steps towards her, though not in a direct line...he wanted to stomp on the bottle of perfume her Aunt had given her first. The sweet odor that soon entered the room made it clear he'd accomplished his mission and smashed the bottle with his foot.

"What the HELL happened?" He demanded, and as soon as he was close enough to her, he lashed out with his hand, fully intending to backhand her across the face unless she was foolish enough to duck or something. If Grant saw John tensing up as John saw the blow coming towards his sister, Grant gave no sign of it. As usual, he didn't acknowledge his son at all. Of course, he knew very well what had happened at the tournament, Sara's repport had been quite detailed. What he really wanted to know was what had happened in Oregon. Victoria didn't have those answers, of course, but that didn't stop him from taking his anger out on her.