Page 129 of Dishonored

He found none of that.

Instead, she stared at him silent and resolved—calm, yet still empathetic. The other shit, he might have known how to deal with.

Not this.

“Why did you do that?” he asked quietly.

It was the only thing he could think to say.

“Did you hear her?” Aria asked back. “Did you hear the things she said, and how she spoke about you like it was nothing at all? Didn’t you hear her?”

Caesar blinked.

His step-mother, she meant.

And yes, he had. But this was his whole life in a nutshell. This was the kind of thing he had learned to deal with, or punch back hard when it happened. That was how he dealt with this kind of problem.

But damn.

How he wished for years that he could have done what Aria just had. That somehow, the shame he constantly felt would lift just enough for him to speak the fuck up, and do something. That it wouldn’t terrify him more than anything in life ever had just to point at the bitch who molested him for years and say what she did.

Except he couldn’t.

He didn’t want to be weak.

Didn’t want to be shamed.

Could not be disbelieved.

“I’m not going to apologize for that,” Aria said when Caesar stayed silent. “She deserved a hell of a lot more than what I did tonight.”

“She does,” he agreed.

Aria’s brow furrowed. “I …”

“What?”

“You don’t seem angry. I’m not sure where to go from here.”

Caesar managed a smile, as faint as it was. “Was that what you were expecting—my anger? Is that why you did it … to piss me off?”

Aria’s head snapped up at that statement. “No.”

“Don’t act like it would be a far stretch for me to think that, Aria. We both know you’re willing to use whatever you have at your disposal to get what you want from someone.”

“Except that’s not what this was.”

Yeah, he could tell.

“And yet, you’re still going to get something you want,” Caesar said dryly.

And he would be left dealing with the aftermath here.

Something he’d been dreading for a lifetime.

“What is it that you think I want?” Aria asked.

Wasn’t it obvious?