Please Me Daddy (Gracie) novel Chapter 204

My sister isn’t as weak as you think

Grace

Someone once told me, you can never truly feel the pain of losing someone you have never met. Even if that person is a parent, even if they are blood, if they died before you were born, the grief will never be the same as losing someone you laughed with, spoke to, or held. It isn’t cruel. It’s just how emotions work. You might feel sympathy. You might feel anger on their behalf. You might even feel sadness for what they went through. But you might not feel that deep, hollow pain.

That was exactly how I felt now.

Did I feel bad for what my father and Apollo’s mother went through? Yes. Did I feel sad? Not really.

What I felt was anger. Pure, violent anger that surged through me, so thick I had to consciously slow my breathing just to stay steady. My fingers curled at my side, nails digging into my palm, because every thought in my head screamed the same thing over and over again, I wanted to tear that woman apart.

The woman who started all of this. The woman who hurt Hannah. The woman who murdered my father and Apollo’s mother.

I wanted her to suffer.

Death would be too merciful for what she had done.. I didn’t care what the Reed family or the Jones family might have done to her in the past for her to do something like this, and I didn’t care what drove her to this point. She crossed a line the moment she took innocent lives, the moment she turned people into pieces on a board she thought she controlled.

She took people from me. And for that, she would pay. Even if I had to become someone terrible to make it happen.

My mother was the first one to break.

Her legs gave out beneath her as if all the strength had been ripped from her body at once, and she collapsed onto the floor with a dull sound. Her face went ghostly pale, her lips trembling as she tried to process everything she had just heard.

Apollo’s father stood frozen nearby, his posture stiff, his expression distant, like he was trapped underwater and the world around him was moving too slowly. His eyes widened as he looked at me, disbelief written clearly across his face.

“G–Grace…” he stammered. “What did you just say? What is that woman talking about? Is this some kind of joke?”

I met his gaze calmly, my face unreadable, my heart cold in a way that surprised even me.

I shook my head. “No, Adam, everything you heard is real. This isn’t a joke. Your wife and my father didn’t love each other, and they didn’t commit suicide. It was staged. They were killed.”

Adam staggered backward as if struck, his back hitting the door behind him. The sound echoed softly, but he didn’t seem to notice. His entire body looked lifeless, and hollowed out.

“Ahhhh-!” My mother let out a broken, agonized wail, clutching her chest as if her heart was being crushed

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from the inside. Years of hatred, years of blame, years of resentment toward the man she once

shattered in an instant.

“Oh my God… oh God!” she cried. “Jason… my Jason!”

I watched them both in silence.

all of it

They probably couldn’t accept that the people they loved had been manipulated like pawns, and killed without mercy. They probably couldn’t stand the thought that they failed to protect them, that everything they believed for years had been built on a lie.

Adam shook his head frantically.

“I–Impossible,” he said hoarsely. “That’s impossible. There’s no way she was killed. There’s no way I was played like this. There’s no way my wife went through something like that.”

His gaze snapped back to me, desperate.

“Right, Grace?” he said. “You must be wrong.

“”

I didn’t answer. My silence was enough. When he didn’t get he answer he wanted, his eyes shifted to Apollo, who had remained quiet this entire time, standing there with an unreadable expression.

“Son,” Adam said shakily, “tell me Grace is wrong. I know she’s intelligent, I know she’s sharp, but she has to be mistaken about this. Tell me she’s wrong.”

Apollo didn’t respond. When the seconds stretched on and Apollo still said nothing, Adam turned fully toward him.

“Apollo, why aren’t you—”

He stopped mid–sentence when he saw his son’s face.

That look that said everything without a single word.

Adam’s breath caught in his throat. “Apollo…”

I lifted my gaze to Apollo.

He wasn’t paying attention to anyone else in the room. Not my mother on the floor, not his father frozen in disbelief, not my brothers standing nearby. His eyes were fixed on me, as if I were the only person who existed in that space. The world could have collapsed around us and he still wouldn’t have looked away.

I bit my lip lightly.

I knew he already knew all of this. I knew it the moment I spoke earlier and saw that look on his face. What I didn’t know, what I still couldn’t fully understand, was why he hid it. Apollo never did anything without reason. Every move he made, every silence he kept, every truth he buried was calculated. But that was also the flaw in him. He planned too far ahead, thought too deeply about outcomes, and often forgot how much damage silence could do to the people caught in between.

Maybe he hid the truth because it fit into his plan. But what about the people who were forced to live in the dark because of it?

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My sister isn’t as weak on you think

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Were they supposed to just keep swallowing the pain, blaming the wrong people, hating the while being blind to what really happened?

emies, all

Even if revealing the truth ruined his plan, I didn’t regret it. Everyone in this room deserved to know what really happened to the people they loved. And if Apollo’s carefully built trap collapsed because of that, then I would simply build another one myself, one that would still catch the mouse.

For a brief moment, I braced myself. I thought he would be angry. I thought he would look at me with that cold, unreadable expression he used when things didn’t go his way, but he didn’t.

Apollo, who had been leaning silently against the wall this entire time, pushed himself upright and walked toward me. His steps were unhurried, and calm. He stopped directly in front of me, close enough that I could feel his presence without him touching me. I looked up at him, my heart beating a little faster, unsure of what he was about to do. But then, unexpectedly, he lowered himself onto one knee.

I blinked in surprise.

Before I could react, he reached up and gently brushed a loose strand of hair away from my face, his touch careful, and reverent. His eyes searched mine in a way that felt dangerously intimate given everything happening around us.

“You’re trembling, and pale” he said, his voice deep.

My eyes widened.

That wasn’t what I expected.

Wasn’t he supposed to be angry? Wasn’t this the moment he confronted me, questioned me, or corrected me? But as I stared into his eyes, I saw no anger there, only concern for me, the same softness I had grown used to seeing when it came to me.

My lips parted, but no words came out.

This was chaos. People were breaking down, truths were coming out, the past was unraveling right in front of us. And yet, here he was, kneeling in front of me, worried about whether I was shaking.

As if reading my thoughts, a lazy, amused voice broke through the tension.

“You could’ve at least tried to act surprised, Apollo.”

I flinched and looked past him.

Ryan stood there, arms relaxed, expression calm, his sharp eyes flicking between me and Apollo with obvious interest. He tilted his head slightly, lips curving into something that wasn’t quite a smile.

“And also,” he added casually, “my sister isn’t as weak as you think. A weak person wouldn’t have figured out everything we’ve been working so hard to uncover for years in just a few hours.”

Theodore let out a low chuckle beside him. His expression openly proud of me. “Tell me about it.”

I froze. Slowly, my gaze moved between Ryan and Theodore.

They knew.

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All of them knew.

I looked down at Apollo again, meeting those dangerous, intelligent eyes that had never once truly left me. And in that moment, everything crashed down on me at once, the realization hitting so hard it almost stole my

breath.

Apollo and my brothers never truly hated each other.

The hostility. The rivalry. The tension everyone believed in.

It was all a facade.

A performance they put on for the world, and more importantly, for the killer.

I lifted my head, staring at all three of them, my voice coming out unsteady despite myself.

“A–all along…” I said slowly, “you were working together?”

Theodore winked at me, completely unapologetic.

“Bingo.”

I opened my mouth, then closed it again.

I had underestimated them. All of them. These men were far more dangerous than I had ever imagined, especially when they worked together. They had fooled everyone. They had even fooled me.

Apollo’s father finally found his voice, his confusion breaking through the shock.

“Apollo,” he said hoarsely, “what is going on?”

Apollo looked at me one last time, something unreadable passing through his gaze, before finally standing up. He turned toward his father and the rest of the room, his presence instantly commanding attention.

“Grace is right,” he said calmly. “They were both killed.”

The room went silent.

“And, just as the killer believes she’s close to getting what she wants, we’re close to getting her.”

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