Your Family

Iris's feet were already hurting and they hadn't gotten out of the colossal mansion. Calixto was walking briskly and her small feet had a hard time catching up. She was almost half-running next to him who didn't seem to notice that she was having a hard time.

A huge sigh escaped her lips when she saw a huge door in the distance and in her relief, she groaned.

"Are you tired?"

Iris scoffed and rolled her eyes at Calixto. He had the audacity to ask her when he could see her sweat falling like waterfalls from her temples. She didn't know because of the distance that they walked or because of the man whose stare seemed to still linger at the back of her head.

Calixto stopped walking and held her shoulder, making her halt her steps.

"If you're tired, you have to tell me," he said in a scolding tone.

Iris wanted to answer back but the concern that she could hear in Calixto's voice made her stop.

"Yes, I am tired," she breathed in her reply. "But you can't blame me, your father's mansion was just too big that I thought it would take us a day to get out of here."

Calixto stared at her as if he could not understand what she was saying.

Iris had to stop herself from rolling her eyes at him. "You know that I'm not like you, right?"

Calixto blinked his long lashes and Iris could swear that a shadow of a smile crossed his handsome face.

"Don't worry. I'll make sure that this is the first and the last time that you'd set foot in this stupid mansion," he said, pulling her to continue walking to the double door where another manservant was waiting for them.

Iris quietly followed Calixto but she was wondering what had happened in this mansion in the past for Calixto to talk about this place with so much bitterness.

However, just like before her questions were stuck at the back of her mind because Calixto deposited her in the passenger seat as he positioned himself behind the steering wheel and drove out of the driveway that seemed to stretch for eternity.

"Your family is really rich," she said, breaking the silence between the two of them.

They were now cruising the highway at the speed limit that made Iris arch her brow mockingly. When Monette was driving, Calixto didn't care about the speed limit. He even forced Monette to drive faster, completely ignoring the traffic laws.

Monette sucked in her breath more than twice because of Calixto's order, but now, Iris wondered what changed. Why Calixto was following traffic rules like he cared about those traffic laws that he called so many times as something stupid and a waste of time.

"They had been alive for so many years, it's not something surprising for them to be that rich," he replied to Iris's comment.

He was glad that she was talking to him despite what happened to her. He was worried that she would be withdrawn but it seemed that the opposite had happened. She became talkative.

"And even before, they are already rich."

Iris kept her eyes on Calixto. She still could not get over the idea that she was able to meet his father and that they were filthy rich.

"Is that the reason why you also have a lot of money?"

"I don't have a lot of money because I trusted the wrong person." He answered her, thinking how Theo's family had used his money for their own consumption. Now that he needed a lot of them, he was having a hard time, hence, they deserved to be denoted in their position in his household.

They should be glad that he didn't throw them in the street or worse turned them into food.

"Papa…I mean," she corrected herself. "Monette's father has a lot of business but he wasn't a very good businessman, I think," she added, thinking that she didn't want Calixto to be really angry at Monette's family.

"Do you want to find your real family?"

She choked on saliva with the sudden change of question. She had thought about her biological family ever since she accidentally found out that the family she had known all her life wasn't her blood relatives. But now that Calixto was asking her, she wasn't so sure if she wanted to find her real family.

She closed her eyes and tried to imagine the idea of having her own family and she exhaled a deep breath. The image in her head was blurry and seemed to be fragmented like they were a memory that wasn't her own.

"I don't know," she muttered confused.

"I can find them and if my father would cooperate, I think you have a huge family," he said, recalling the time when Fleur would come visit him in the library. She sometimes brought a bunch of kids because there was no one to take care of them. The adults were all busy fulfilling their duty to his family with their never-ending thirst for blood.

"My family is huge?" she whispered. Her eyes were widening. If Calixto will help her find her family maybe she didn't have to run away from the mansion. "Do you think—"

"But I don't think they would like you to return to them."

"What do you mean?" The warmth caressing Iris's chest while she was trying to picture her huge family dissipated in the thin air with what Calixto said. "Why they will not like me?"

"You know what's your use–, I mean, purpose…" He cleared his throat. "Sorry Iris, but your family has one and only one purpose in the Stocker family since I can remember." He glanced over his shoulder, checking if she had understood what he had said.

"You mean, food…"

Calixto bit the inside of his cheeks. "Yes."

The brief and cold reply from Calixto burst the hope in Iris's chest.

"But it still doesn't explain why they will not like me back," she said with a smile.

"I have a feeling that you are thrown away."