Ian Stone cuts an imposing figure. Tall and broad, classically handsome in the way of 80s film stars. His eyes are as dark as mine, as dark as pitch. If I were the sort to believe in fuckery such as souls, I'd say his eyes are as dark as his soul. But I don't, so I'll have to settle for thinking he looks like a malevolent son of a bitch.
He did this to me, gave me the blood that runs through my veins in more ways than one. I am his son, but I am also his project. His experiment. Hismistake.
A mistake because making me what I am, hell, making me at all, is going to be the thing that fucks him one day. If it's the last thing I ever do on this earth, I will burn my father's carefully constructed world to the ground and piss on the ashes.
Father watches me for a handful of seconds without expression. He's wearing an outrageously expensive pair of jeans and a black Henley. Unlike his competitors, Ian Stone doesn't dress in the typical style attributed to business moguls. No sharp suits and ties. I've rarely seen him in anything other than jeans and casual shirts. Of course, the clothes themselves are still top-shelf, but if you didn't know that, then he would look deceptively non-threatening. As if he's just another charming billionaire, which is the image he's always played into.
When he finally speaks, it's with the same dryness and lack of inflection I'm used to from him despite our current circumstances. "I see your mother's spirit is still alive and well inside you, son."
I don't react to his mention of the wife he had murdered, but the rage roars inside me until it becomes a bonfire in the pit of my stomach.
"Is that what all this is about?" I scan my eyes around the room, stopping momentarily on the man with the crowbar, before settling back on my father. "Trying to beat the ghosts out of me?"
His mouth slices up on one side, a severe show of amusement that stokes the fire in my belly more than any violence or foul words ever could. He turns to the man with the crowbar and orders, "Leave."
The man shoots me a nasty look, likely at the fact I've managed to escape his attention for the time being. When I blow him a mockingly flirtatious kiss, his hand tightens on the crowbar, much to my satisfaction. His anger drives him to ignore my father's order and step towards me instead, like he's going to take another swing, consequences be damned.
Absolute idiot. As if hitting someone could ever be worth incurring Ian Stone's wrath for disobeying him.
Father catches the movement made in my direction. There's nothing in my father's body language or expression to suggest he's infuriated, but I know him. This man will be lucky to get out of wherever we are alive, let alone with a job.
The idiot notices my father's shift in focus and freezes like a deer in headlights, proving he does have some survival instincts, however late they are to kick in.
Father holds his hand out, indicating towards the crowbar. The man looks wary but seems unwilling to make the mistake of hesitating over another order issued by his boss and gives it up.
There's a pause where my father shifts the crowbar around in his hand, looking down at it and then back up at my torturer, who for his part seems to have gotten with the program and seems mildly terrified of whatever reaction my father is going to have.
When my father jerks his head at the door, my ex-torturer proves his idiocy tenfold by thinking he's been given the chance to book it out of the room. I resist the urge to sigh as the man turns around to leave, and my father uses the opportunity to pull the crowbar back and swing it with brutal efficiency. The crowbar cracks open my ex-torturer’s skull, and he collapses to the ground, still alive.
My father proceeds to beat the man to death without hesitation or a single word uttered. The only sounds he makes are grunts of exertion as he wields the crowbar. The murder is somehow both cruel in how measured he is about it and ruthlessly violent to witness from a third-party perspective.
When he's done, and the man who spent hours trying to break me is nothing more than a bloodied and disfigured lump, a mess smeared across the floor, my father drops the crowbar with a loud clatter. He lets out a deep, slow breath to calm himself after the show of temper.
I hum thoughtfully, tilting my head to study both the dead man and my father for a handful of tense seconds before murmuring into the silence, "Well. That's certainly one way to get out of having to pay a bill. Of course"—I nod my head at the blood splattered across my father's extortionately posh jeans—"now you're going to have to pay a little extra for the dry cleaning. Blood doesnotcome out easily."
I should know. There are only so many times you can bleed on your shirt from a split lip or broken nose before you start learning some shit about stain removal.
"Rohan," my father admonishes, turning to face me again. He isn't angry anymore. I guess murder helps some people simmer down. "Just because you have a sharp tongue doesn't mean you have to use it every single time a thought pops into your head."
So many people are obsessed with the way my mouth chooses to expend its intelligence today.
This is my father, you see, giving me grief about my lack of self-control whilst a man he beat to death with his own beloved crowbar lies right there beside him.
I'd laugh if I thought it would earn me anything but more quiet time strapped to this chair. Not that I'd mind bothering my father, and I'm hardly an impatient man by nature. But. Seriously? I'm getting bored. I hate being bored, more than almost anything.
When I'm bored, all I have to do is let my brain run like a hamster on a wheel, around and around and around at an ever-increasing speed. I need my work. I need the distraction. Otherwise, one day that hamster is going to fucking explode, and then all I'll have inside my head are the remnants of what sanity used to look like smeared across the walls, much like the skull and brain matter of the man my father just murdered.
"Nag, nag, nag," I simper at him, offering a droll smile, blood no doubt still staining my teeth, transforming the smile into a macabre version of itself. "Is that why you've dragged me in here and had your underlings poke me with sticks? So you could berate me for the bitchy personality I inherited from you?"
My father's nose flares, the only sign he's becoming annoyed with me. I won't get any more than that. I never do. He just strikes, like a snake, or a spider resting on the edge of its web, waiting for its prey to stumble into a carefully crafted trap.
"Do you feel like explaining where you've been the past few years?" he throws out at me like it's a counter-argument.
Honestly, I’ve wondered ever since I left if he would find out exactly where I'd run to. It seems he hasn't, which is both very lucky and somewhat disappointing.
Guess I'll have to lie. Fun.
"Decided I'd try my hand at going private."
