Alex stared at Olivier over the table in utter shock. "How can you treat father with such insolence? For shame! You've given me no choice!" He ripped off his shirt, tensing for battle. "Understand, sister, I intend to use every ounce of my body and soul against you." She immediately brought up her thin sword with a look of fury that no other woman could pull off the way she did. A look so dark and murderous, that Alex almost flinched in fear.
"Don't patronize me, Alex." She answered scathingly. "Your bloated muscles are worthless without a spine." She raced forward, immediately gaining the upper hand against her brother as their family started packing up for vacation.
She brought up her sword to his chin, cutting thinly into his flesh, only to let a trickle of blood flow down from the wound. "Are you trying to kill me?" He struggled to get out of her chokehold as she continuously suffocated him in the crook of her elbow. "What gave it away, moron?" She answered as their little sister Catherine waved from around the corner of the hall. "Hang in there, Alex!"
This encouragement gave him the much needed energy to flip his sister over his shoulder. "Strike me down to the ground, you know I've seen it before," He challenged as his sister raised her sword with a roar of fury, once again gaining the upper hand and beating the ever-loving hell out of him.
And she did it with a laugh as she tossed the much larger man around like a rag doll. No, not even that could raise a candle to the way she tossed him around with such ease that was so unlike a woman of her stature. Her laugh was not like his in it's overwhelming heroism. It was bitter, cold like the Briggs blizzards she constantly endured. But it was victorious in a way that Alex's almost never was these days. It was calculated and conniving and it was most of all it was comme il faut.
She dragged him screaming and begging from the fountain into the house where, she threw him into the fireplace, sheathing her sword. "And that settles that." Alex slowly crawled out from the fireplace, dusting himself off, careful not to touch any of his new bruises littered across his skin with a pained groan.
"I'm the rightful successor. The family belongs to me," She stated firmly, turning to leave. "Olivier, why have you become so convivial with the senior officers? How can you? The senior staff is-" Alex started before his sister cut him off.
"I can determine their complicity with my own eyes," She answered. "And what have your eyes seen? Have you exiled mother and father to a foreign land so they can't be taken hostage?" She merely smirked at that as she walked away. "Get out, loser. You'll stink up my mansion with your cowardice."
