The Lustful Villain: Every Milfs and Gilfs are Mine!-Chapter 283. He’s Already Cooked Enough, and Now Time to Have a Taste of His Grandma
He hadn’t stood up. He had simply moved, which represented a different action—the specific movement of someone whose gap between noticing and responding is so small that it remains unclear to others.
His hand went up and grabbed Theo’s wrist just before the swing finished. The grip he used wasn’t aggressive, but it was strong enough that it wouldn’t hurt unless the person being held pulled against it.
"Don’t you fucking touch me!" Theo pulled against it.
But Rex held it.
They both stood there for one second, then two seconds. Theo’s arm was still in the air between them, and Rex’s face showed nothing but the focused attention of someone who was watching a situation and hadn’t yet decided it needed more than what he was already doing.
’This guy gets easily ragebaited, and it’s entertaining to watch him react like that all of a sudden.’ Rex wore a smug smile as he looked at Theo.
Diana had not moved from her seat.
She was looking at Theo’s face with an expression that wasn’t scared. It was a look that said the end of a question she had been asking for a long time, and the answer had just come in, confirming her fears.
"Let me go," Theo said.
Rex did not let go. "No... I don’t think I will."
Therion stood up.
He did not do it quickly. He rose with the calculated deliberateness of someone who possesses all the authority in the room, fully aware that rushing is what people do when they are uncertain of their power.
He walked around the table. And then he stopped beside Theo.
He looked at his grandson’s raised arm, at Rex’s hand around his wrist, and at Diana sitting untouched in her chair.
He stood there for three full seconds, taking in the complete picture.
Then he said, "Rex."
Rex released Theo’s wrist and stepped back. The manner in which he did so made it evident that he was complying with Therion’s request, rather than acting out of his own volition.
Therion looked at Theo.
The look was not angry. It was something considerably worse than angry. It was the look of someone who had just witnessed an event that they could not fully reconcile with their previous perception of the person responsible.
"You raised your hand," Therion said.
Theo said nothing when his grandpa said that. His arm was still partially raised, but then he lowered it slowly.
"At a guest," Therion said. "Even at a woman like Diana... in this house."
The dining room had no sound in it now, and it was all full of silence.
"I have spent this week," Therion said, quietly and with great precision, "repairing what you damaged in that market district."
"I have spent today standing in a courtyard to address a problem you created with your hands."
"And tonight, in my own dining room, at my own table, you have done it again."
"But now... I get to see it myself."
He held Theo’s gaze with the look of someone who is not going to look away and is not going to soften what they are saying.
"Now get the fuck out my sight and go to your room," Therion said. "You are going to stay there tonight and tomorrow."
"You are not going to attend meals."
"You are not going to receive visitors. And when Aurelia returns at the end of the week, I am going to have a very specific conversation with her about the standard she has failed to maintain in raising you."
Theo’s face displayed a jumble of emotions that defied easy description.
"Grandfather," he started.
"I am not finished," Therion said. "When you come out of your room, you are going to sit down and think about what it means to be a Nightwing."
"Not what it means to merely possess the name, but what it means to embody it. Because tonight, you have clearly shown me that you do not yet grasp the distinction."
He stepped aside.
"Go," he said.
Theo looked at Diana one more time.
Diana returned his gaze, embodying the demeanor of someone who had exhausted all necessary words and had nothing more to contribute.
He looked at Rex.
Rex looked back at him as if he were a problem he had already solved. He wore another smug smile, but this time, it seemed like he was laughing right at his face.
And then Theo left without giving any words.
The sound of his footsteps going up the stairs was slower this time than before. Not controlled. It was just slow, like the way a person walks when they have nothing left to hurry toward.
Therion stood at the head of the table and let the silence run for a moment.
Then he sat back down.
He picked up his cup, looked at what was in it, and drank.
Elaris looked at Rex.
Rex looked at his plate.
Diana smoothed her napkin across her lap with the careful motion of someone who is making sure their hands have something to do.
"More wine," Elaris announced to the group.
And no one disagreed.
...
The dinner continued, and the night settled in the way nights do after significant conversations, like how a room feels different when a window is opened and then closed again.
After the fourth course, Therion announced he needed to leave due to the hour and the particular recovery a man of his age required after an engagement that had been tiring in a pleasant way.
Diana excused herself shortly after, embodying the quality of someone who had expressed all she needed to say and felt satisfied to stop speaking for the remainder of the evening.
Rex assisted Elaris in escorting them both to the guest quarters, employing the particular expertise she had in managing individuals who had consumed enough wine to be beyond self-management.
By the time she came back to the dining room, it was down to the two of them.
And the wine.
Elaris sat across from Rex, her expression entirely genuine and unfiltered by the expectations of others or the formalities of the household event.
"You planned most of that," she said, sounding like someone who was making a valid point.
"Some of it," Rex said, which was also true.
"The rules of the contest," she said. "The deal between the families."
"Diana made her own choice," Rex said. "I just created the conditions where she could say it in front of the people who needed to hear it."
Elaris gave him a warm, thoughtful look.
"That’s a very specific type of care," she said.
Rex agreed, "It is."
She poured more wine, which Rex noticed was her third glass. The wine from the Nightwing household cellar had the special quality of being chosen by people who really liked wine instead of people who just wanted to show off how much money they had.
Elaris said, "What I saw today on the training ground."
Rex was patient.
"I’ve seen my husband work for thirty years," she said. "I can tell when he’s really being challenged."
"And I also can tell when he changes his mind, when he gives in, and when he realizes that the engagement has worked."
She looked at Rex through the glass.
"I’ve never watched him produce all four of those sequences in a single engagement," she said. "Not against anyone who was not his equal or his senior."
"He’s exceptional," Rex said.
"He is," Elaris said. "Which is why what I watched today was interesting."
Rex gave her a look.
She said, "You’re not what you seem to be," and the way she said it wasn’t accusatory but specific, like someone who had spent decades watching people and learned to see the difference between what they said and what they did.
Rex said, "Everyone puts something out there."
"That’s true," she said. "Most people present upward, which means they show something a little more than what they are."
She tilted her head. "You present sideways, which is more interesting and a lot less common."
Rex looked at her with the look he gave people when he was genuinely interested in them. This was a look he didn’t use frequently, and when he did, it meant that he was paying full attention.
"Why sideways?" he asked.
"Because you’re not trying to look better than you are," she said. "You want people to judge you on the level you choose, not the one that would provide them more information."
"You want to look like you’re more capable than you really are."
She put her glass down.
"That’s not something people learn," she said. "That’s something people are built with and then spend years refining."
For a moment, Rex looked at her.
He said, "You really have a good eye."
"I’m old," she said. "It’s the only advantage that comes reliably with age."
The corner of her mouth moved in a way that indicates genuine amusement rather than mere pretense.
Her eyes looked like they did when she had had too much wine and a long day and a conversation that was more interesting than she thought it would be.
Rex looked at her with all of his attention and felt the special quality of the moment, which was like being in a room with two people who were both fully aware of the room and who were in it in their own way.
’Now this is the perfect chance to actually taste her...’ Rex thought. ’She’s drunk for sure, and I will take that as my signal to corner her.’
"You know," Rex said, "in my previous life, we had a very easy way to settle things honestly between two people."
Elaris was interested in what he had to say. "Oh?"
"No magical contests," Rex said. "No formal challenges, but just a simple hand game."
She said again, "A hand game...?"
"Three options," he said. "You make one of three shapes with your hand."
"Your opponent makes one. The outcome of the shapes determines the outcome of the question."
