Rewriting the Fodder's Fate

When I was one year old, I swallowed a pill and spiked my own fever to 104. On purpose. Because in fortyeight hours, my father was going to lose an eye.

He still thinks it was just a bad cold. I'd been dropped into a novel. As the villain's daughter. And the novel says he doesn't live to see it ten percent finished.

At one, I cooked myself that fever, so he'd skip a shootout he wasn't meant to walk away from.

At three, I threw myself down and snapped my own leg, so he'd miss the day he was supposed to meet her.

At five, I took the man who'd tailed me for two days, the one who meant to trade me for my father's life, and turned him into the reason Dad stood the villain up.

In the book, Dad loses the eye. Then a leg. Then the male lead throws him into the ocean and lets the sharks finish the job. All before the story has really even started.

Right now, both his eyes are fine. He's crouched in front of me, straightening the crooked bow on my princess dress. He has no idea why his kid keeps getting sick.

And I am never going to tell him. Later. My doomed cannonfodder father, shrieking across a crowded room: "Everett, you little shit. Get your son's hand off my daughter's face! Off!

OFF!" Chapter 1 Can you picture a villain, arson and murder and the whole rap sheet, turning into a desperate single dad overnight?

Honestly, calling him a villain is me being generous. Real villains don't lose an eye in act one and wash up as shark food before the story's even warmed up.

The real villain of this book is the pretty one. Gorgeous, vicious, comes for everyone, and doesn't get put down till the very last page. My dad?

My dad's dead before the plot's ten percent done. The other ninety is the two leads falling in tragic love and beating that real villain half to death, over and over.

So let's just call him what he is. Cannon fodder. The disposable bad guy. Isn't that right, Dad? The dad I got stuck with this time around?

Dad had a cigarette hanging off his lip, halfleaning on the windowsill, smoke blurring those sharp, toohandsome features into something lazy and dangerous.

He'd only just turned twenty. None of the softness a twentyyearold should have. All of it burned off somewhere in the blood and the mud he'd clawed his way up out of.

A leadingman face. A nobody's fate. Me: [Gorgeous face, throwaway life.] System: [Eh, tracks. Side characters who fall for the female lead always get the good face first.

Cannon fodder or not.] I'd just turned one, and I was working on walking. Baby bones, no balance yet. One wrong step, my left foot caught my right, and down I went, flat on my face.

My frantic single dad had padded every sharp corner in the house with foam. The coffee table. The cabinets. The windowsill. One by one, wrapped up tight.

All so I wouldn't crack my head open learning to walk. He'd cleared this whole house of every single thing that could ever hurt me. There was just one thing he couldn't pad.

Fortyeight hours out. The sliver of shrapnel that was going to fly into his eye.

Me: [So a few days from now, Dad heads off to a shootout with the villain, and a piece of shrapnel takes his eye and leaves him halfblind?] System: [That's right.

This part's off the page. It happens before the novel even opens.] [He shows up already blind in one eye. That's the fuse.

It's what warps him into something cruel and paranoid.] [Plot node countdown: 47 hours, 20 minutes.] [And one more thing, host.

You don't get to give the plot away.] [Say it out loud, and the Story will mute you.] That's when Dad spotted me wobbling toward him.

He swore under his breath, crushed the cigarette out into the trash, threw the window wide, and waved the smoke out of the air. "I hide in my own room for one smoke and you still hunt me down.

You that clingy? Out, out, go on. Don't breathe this stuff." The smoke hit my nose and I forgot I was supposed to be a baby.

I spun around, clamped both hands over my face, and bolted for the door. "Dada... stinky." So my rejected father had to change his shirt and rinse his mouth out three times before I'd let him pick me up.

Then, the warning: "Next time you catch me smoking, you keep away, understand?

Give me some room." I nodded, one little hand patting that ridiculously handsome face, and nearly drooled on him. Both his eyes crinkled up when he smiled. The left one.

The right one. I stared for a long time. The System counted softly in my ear. [46 hours, 55 minutes.] Chapter 2 Say what you want about my single dad.

Cold as the villain, mean straight through, venom for blood. But that face is the real deal. I patted at him. "Dada... stay.

These few days." A oneyearold's language software is still booting up. No smooth sentences yet. Just one word shoved out at a time.

Dad held me up by the waist, leaning back into the couch, letting me maul his face. Something soft slipped into his smile. "Sure.

These few days, I'm all yours, baby girl." Then his phone rang. He lifted it. "Yeah? Marek?" System: [The villain's calling your dad? Shit.

Don't tell me he's about to drag your dad off to—] Faint through the phone came a rich, low voice. "Ren... day after tomorrow... the arms deal..." "You and me, together..." "They try to play me, we tear their whole nest down!" The System shrieked in my head: [That's it!

The plot node! 45 hours!] Halfbored a second ago, Dad lit right up at the promise of trouble. "Vince never sits still. You jacked his price up, what, several times over?

You think he's not sitting on a grudge? Mark my words.

A nice clean deal like this turns into an ambush." I smacked my palm against his cheek. "Yah!" Dad peeled my little hand off and gave it a squeeze. "Quit it.

Daddy's working." I glared at him. You call murder and arson and robbing other crooks real work? You're going to lose an eye. Do you even know that?

I opened my mouth and pushed the words out, one at a time, the whole day's worth of them. "Dada." "Day after." "Don't—" The last word caught in my throat and came apart into a sound no one could read.

The Story had muted me. Dad looked down at me, eyes full of laughter, sure I was just trying out a new word. Patient as anything, he said it back, slow and even, teaching me. "Day.

After. That's right, day after tomorrow, Daddy's going out." "Good girl. Say dada again." I looked at him.

One year and two months old, and for the first time I learned what it feels like to open your mouth and have nothing come out. I still remember the first time I met the villain.

He wore a winered suit. That lush, exquisite face looked like some beautiful demon reborn, a soft smile resting on it, a pair of hooked fox eyes above it, cold and loveless.

Too pretty. Not like my dad, all hard edges and bladesharp handsome. My dad is a knife. This man is a flower. A poppy blooming in hell, soaked full of blood.

Beautiful to the extreme, dangerous to the same degree. Sucker for a pretty face that I am, I was gone on the spot, reaching out both arms for a hug.

Then the gorgeous creature opened his mouth. "Rennick, did you adopt a pig? She's so fat I'm shocked the stroller's still holding." Me: [??!] The filter shattered. I'm a girl.

You do not call a girl fat. Not even you. Not even with that face. So when he leaned down for a closer look at me, the arms I'd raised for a hug curled into fists.

Two solid punches, right in his face. And that's how I earned my title. Little Pig. "She can talk now?" the villain drawled through the phone.

Dad scratched under my chin. "Just started, these last few days." Then he lit up, all pride. "You know what her first words were?

She said, 'I love you, dada.' I about passed out from how happy I was." The villain egged me on. "Come on, then. Say uncle.

Let's hear it." Me: "Piggy... pig." Dad was laughing so hard he couldn't stand up straight. On the other end of the line, the villain was cursing his head off.

The whole room was laughing. I was the only one counting. [44 hours, 10 minutes.] The System asked, quiet: [Host... what are you planning to do?] I looked at my dad's two good eyes.

Both still there. I didn't say anything. Chapter 3 Dad: "...I told you she holds a grudge. You wouldn't listen." The villain had nothing to say to that.

Smooth as anything, he changed the subject, ready to get into the bloody stuff with Dad. Who got skinned. Whose legs got crushed. Whose fingers got cut off.

Dad didn't want to scare me, so he set me down and shooed me off to play. Then he wandered out to the balcony, cheerfully working out how to rob other criminals blind.

When they were done, Dad scooped me up onearmed and fixed my bottle. He'd gotten so good at it, it almost hurt to watch. "Baby, I'm sorry. Daddy's got to break his promise.

Something important came up these next few days. You be good and wait home for me, okay?

Anything you want to eat, you tell Yolanda." I hugged the bottle, all sticky, and tipped my face up at him, pitiful. "Dada. Don't... go. Stay home.

With me." Dad crouched down and smoothed my hair. "Can't, baby. This one's important." I stared up at him, mournful. He held my eyes without blinking. The wailing trick.

Back when I was a newborn, I don't even know how many times I'd used it to blow up Dad's plans with the villain. Screaming your head off reads as instinct when you're a newborn.

But I'm one now. Do it again and it's not fussing. It's a tantrum. So I buried my face in his shoulder. "Okay." Where he couldn't see, my eyes stayed open.

A tantrum only softens him up. It doesn't stop him. I needed something that would drag him straight back from the airport. Me: [System.

That shop of yours, you've got an item that spikes a fever, right?] System: [Yep, yep, host, you're thinking—] Me: [I am not sitting here watching my dad get crippled.

How long does it last?] System: [Three days. Zero side effects!] Me: [That'll do.] Just as Dad geared up, itching to go flip tables and put people in the ground with the villain.

I already had the System's pill. And I swallowed it. The System dropped it into my hand. White. Bigger than my fingernail. This hand of mine was one year old.

It couldn't hold a spoon steady. I counted to three. One. Two. Three. Down it went. One minute later, I slumped to the floor. Five minutes later, the fever came up swinging.

Yolanda had just made me a bowl of oatmeal. She reached to pick me up, and the second she touched my scalding skin, her hand shot back.

She scooped me up in a blind panic and rushed me to the hospital. The driver floored it, and the car tore out. On the way, she took my temperature. Didn't believe it. 104.

The thermometer shook in her hand. The driver had the gas pedal to the floor. Outside the window, the traffic lights slid backward, one by one. 104. A oneyearold.

A 104 she'd swallowed for herself. My whole face was flushed red, everything hurt, and I choked out for my dad. Yolanda called him, frantic. "Mr.

Qi, sir, it's the baby, she's burning up—" His end was loud. Under it, faint, an airport announcement. It hit Dad like a bat to the head. "Say that again!

Neve's got a fever?!" Yolanda's words spilled out in a rush. "I'd just made her oatmeal, I was about to feed her, and she was scorching. I took her temperature, it's 104!

We're on the way to the hospital right now." Dad: "What?!" I squirmed and whimpered, miserable and wronged. "Dada... hot... hnghh... dada..." Dad lost it. "I'm coming right now!

Neve, don't cry, Daddy's here." The villain, still on the line: "Huh? You're just leaving? Then what about me?" Chapter 4 Dad, icecold: "My kid's sick.

I'm staying to take care of her, so I'm out. Handle those people yourself. With your skills, I know you've got it." The villain said nothing.

My whole existence was someone's move against the villain, Marek. Except the one who took the hit was his good brother, Rennick.

One night with my birth mother, and once was all it took. Nine months later, she'd gotten hold of Rennick's DNA.

The day I was born, she left me on the Qi family doorstep with a paternity test to prove whose I was. Burning up, drifting in and out.

Across town, at the airport, my dad was running back.

The System reported in my head: [Node shifting...] [The plot is losing him.] I dreamed about when I first got dumped on my cannonfodder father.

The dad from before he ever held me: Nothing money can't fix.

He handpicked three baby nurses, paid them five figures a month each, and figured that shipped the problem off, freeing him up to go do terrible things with Marek, thick as thieves.

Except. I cried a lot. Cried when I wet the bed. Cried when I filled my diaper. Cried after I'd been cleaned up. Cried when they held me. Cried when they didn't.

Cried when I was hungry. Ate my fill, got my strength back, kept crying. Screaming fit to bring the roof down, the whole mansion drowning in the sound of a wailing baby.

The only time I stopped was when Dad shook a little rattle at me. The seasoned nurses ran out of tricks. Every pleading look turned to the baby's biological father.

Dad met their eyes and said nothing. Nothing worked.

And he couldn't just stand there and watch me cry myself to death, so he came over and, coached by the nurses, clumsily picked me up. And wouldn't you know it.

The second the baby landed in his arms, the screaming stopped. She even opened her little hands, looked up at her father, and started babbling and laughing.

One nurse said, flattering, "Looks like the little miss just adores you, sir." She didn't know. I wasn't adoring him. I was making sure. He was still here.

Dad stared flatly at my face, all tears and snot, disgust written all over him. "Don't smile. You're ugly enough already.

Smiling makes it worse." Me: [ . . . ] Then I dropped a big one. The stink rose up, slow and thorough, into the nose of every single person near me. Dad's face went green.

The nurse's smile froze. He glared at me through gritted teeth. "You little gremlin. You did that on purpose, didn't you?!" I looked up at him, innocent. Beats me.

I'm just a baby who can't control her own plumbing. Dad's germaphobia kicked in. He felt like he'd gotten it on himself too, like there were roaches crawling over his skin.

Without a second thought, he moved to hand me back to the nurse and go change. I reached out one tiny hand, caught his index finger, gave it a shake, and babbled twice.

Dad, testing it: "You want me to wipe you down and change your diaper?!" I blinked up at him. His brows knotted. "No chance. Who do you think you are, my boss?

I hired professionals to raise you. Don't push your luck." One minute later, Dad, sourfaced, was learning from the nurse how to handle a baby who'd messed herself.

Laid me on the changing pad. Peeled the dirty diaper off, tossed it.

Those hands that could fieldstrip any gun you put in them were now wiping my bottom with a warm, soft wipe, then rinsing me clean with warm water. ...

He patted me dry, smoothed on the cream, and fumbled a fresh diaper onto me. Those hands could take a gun apart. Right now they were working the tabs on my diaper. Missed twice.

Couldn't get them straight. Back in the hospital room. Burning at 104, deep in the dream, I mumbled out a "dada." A hand closed around mine, instantly. That same pair of hands.

The System murmured through the datastream: [Blindeye crisis: under a day left.] He didn't know a thing. He just held my hand, and didn't let go all night.

Chapter 5 The dream wasn't finished with me yet. He glared at me a long moment. "You really are my little tyrant." I hugged his finger and giggled, high and delighted.

Something knocked against that cold, indifferent heart of his, and it went soft without warning. He poked my cheek. One poke, one little dimple.

He scoffed. "Gremlin." Me: "Ah~" Dad: "You don't look as dumb as I figured.

Kind of cute, actually." Me: [ . . . ] After that day, Dad kicked off the long, soulcrushing career of raising a kid.

When Marek videocalled and got a look at him, he flinched. "Rennick... what happened to you? You look wrecked." Dad's face was pale.

Those sharp, cocky features carried a halfdead grudge now. Dark circles under his eyes, hair sticking up every which way, even stubble coming in along his jaw.

Clothes that had fit him perfectly a few months back hung loose off him.

Worse, he was shaking a rattle to get me to sleep with one hand and working through a stack of company paperwork with the other.

An underworld thug who ran both sides of the law, hardrebooted into a bitter, putupon dad.

Meanwhile, there I sat in my crib, round and rosy, cheeks all healthy and soft, babbling away in a language nobody could follow.

Marek needled him. "I seem to remember you taking a bullet to the chest, nearly dying, flat on your back in a hospital for months. And even then you didn't drop this much weight.

Is raising a kid really this brutal?" Dad snapped. "If I hadn't taken that hit for you, would I be going through any of this?!" Marek clicked his tongue, not the least bit sorry.

His eyes swept over my face, empty of anything, half appraisal, half contempt. His voice came out cold and thin. "If you really don't want her, just dump her on a nanny.

Or ship her off to some nice family. She's a scrap of a girl. You really need to do it all yourself?" I made a note of it. The first mark against his name.

Men like them had walked in the dark for years. Killed their own brothers, their own fathers, hands drenched in blood. They were born cold. They didn't even love themselves.

Never mind a baby who was nothing but trouble. Dad cut him a sideways look, not liking his tone.

He reached for a cigarette, then remembered I was right there and forced his hand still. "Scrap of a girl? That's my daughter.

I raise her because I want to." Marek drawled, "Suit yourself. Not my headache either way. I came to talk about our deal.

That project on the west side—" "WAAAH!" The quiet baby detonated into a screaming fit loud enough to bring the whole mansion down.

Dad jolted. "Okay, okay, my little tyrant—" He dropped the paperwork, scrambled to scoop me up, patted my back with practiced ease, and soothed, gentle now, "You hungry, sweet pea?

Daddy'll go make you a bottle." Marek: [ . . . ] He stared, dumbstruck, at his good brother, normally icecold and lethal, the kind of man who could drop an ox with one punch, now glowing with the holy light of a devoted dad.

Marek: "The deal—" Dad, impatient: "You not hearing my daughter cry? She's crying. I've got to make her bottle. I've spent months raising a kid and working myself half to death.

The deal can wait." He hung up with a click.

Marek stared at the dead screen. "...Wow." Chapter 6 The next day, Marek showed up in person, dialed way down, hauling two cases of formula and a pile of baby toys.

Dad had just finished feeding me, so he let it slide and sat down to hash out the deal. Once it was locked in, Marek finally lowered himself to look at me. He gave my cheek a pinch.

I beamed up at him, all milk and softness, sweet and warm, my big wet eyes round, lips pink, babbling, arms up for a hug.

A villain with a body count like his probably hadn't held many babies like me. My smile threw him for a second, and he lifted me up, exactly like I wanted. So cute.

Maybe human cubs had their upsides after all.

Something in him softened for a beat. "You..." The last time he'd held me and talked, what he said was "ship her off." In my head, I crossed that first mark out. The next moment.

Marek went rigid. Something warm, it seemed, maybe, was spreading out, soaking into his hand and his suit