After-Hours Heir

Chapter Twelve #2

Kid: It’s important. If it’s what you think is going to stand between you and your own child, then it’s important.

If it’s what you think is going to stand between you and me.

She didn’t type that.

Baby: I told you when my mother died everything fell apart. It was worse than you can imagine. When my mother died my father lost himself entirely. He fell into a gambling addiction. He was drinking. He was deeply in debt, and he could not care for me. He heard about a man buying boys.

Her hand came up to her mouth. And she watched in horror as he continued to type.

Baby: For hard labor. They took us to different places, had us work in fields, in factories.

The factories were the worst. Hot and inhumane.

People died. Children. Working long hours.

And there was no one to ask after them. No one to investigate their deaths.

I don’t even know where their bodies went.

But not me. I didn’t let it kill me. I didn’t let the long hours kill me.

There was a long pause.

Baby: I didn’t let the loneliness kill me.

A sob rose in her chest, and holding her phone close, she got out of the bed. She walked out of her bedroom. She wasn’t dressed. She didn’t care. She walked through the halls. She didn’t know where anything was in this house. She pushed open one door and found an empty room. Then another.

When she arrived at the end of the hall, she saw light filtering beneath that last door.

She opened it, and there he was, sitting in a chair by the fireplace. “Christos,” she said.

He turned to look at her, his eyes hollow.

“I wanted to be near you,” she said. “We can talk in person.”

“I don’t know how to talk about this,” he said.

“You’ve been through a really terrible thing.”

“It was a long time ago. I survived it. But it did change me. And I don’t think there’s any way to change back. Even if I wanted to.”

“I think you do want to. Otherwise none of this would have affected you the way that it did.”

She moved to where he was sitting, and she slid onto his lap. He was fully dressed now. She was still naked. She looped her arms around his neck, and she made eye contact with him. “Why do you think you can’t change?”

“Because I know how dark it made me. I know it.”

“How? You keep saying things like that. You won’t explain it.”

He closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the chair.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry but I don’t know how to talk about it.

I’m sorry, but I don’t know how to do this.

I don’t know how. I can’t even remember what it was like to love my mother.

I don’t remember her at all. I wasn’t a small child.

I was eleven when she died. I don’t remember her. I don’t remember before.”

Her heart ached for him. He was so painfully sad.

“I had to get rid of every shred of pity inside of me. Because if I stopped and worried about the other boys… They were going to die anyway. I couldn’t stop. If you stop, then you could get beaten. If you got beaten you are at a greater risk.”

“How did you escape?” she asked.

“It was like gladiators. In the arena.” He was silent for a long moment.

“It was a particularly hot day. The machinery in the factory was loud. There was dust in the air. The door was left open. And I decided that I was going to run. I knew exactly where guards were stationed. Mostly, there weren’t guards.

Because at that point, they assumed that we were all broken.

But not me. Because I didn’t let it. I let it make me hard instead.

And so when the boss came through, I attacked him.

We fought, and he wrapped his hands around my throat. ”

He cleared his throat, his eyes intent on the amber liquid in his glass.

“I pushed him. Into the equipment. I could hear him screaming as I ran, I didn’t pause to look back.

He might’ve died, so be it. You should know that.

Because there were conveyor belts and gears, and many boys were lost to the cruelty of that machinery.

So if he did… I want you to know that I’m not sorry. ”

She nodded, her throat feeling tight.

“Then I ran. Into nothing. The factory was in the middle of nowhere. It was in the Midwest. There was nothing, and nowhere to hide, for miles. I crawled on my belly until I was sure no one was coming after me. I ran as much as I could in the dark. At night. Finally, I found a town. I was able to get enough money washing dishes to buy a bus ticket. I ended up going to New York. I was seventeen.”

“Christos…”

“I saved money. And saved it. I ended up investing in an app for short-form videos very early. We made a lot of money. I began to look for other media to put money into. Eventually it became RedMedia. And I would love to tell you that I didn’t care what I did as long as it made money.

As long as it allowed me to win. But the truth is I found something magical in it.

In movies. TV shows. News. We were cut off from everything for so long.

Knowledge is power. Whether it comes in the form of stories or headlines.

I know because I was deprived of that knowledge for a very long time.

It’s part of killing your spirit. If there are no books for you to read, nothing for you to watch, your soul begins to get dry.

They count on that. They wanted it.” He nodded.

“I used it. But I’ve always been glad to make the thing that I feel counteracts it. ”

She moved her hands over his back. Soothing. Holding him.

“I don’t think your soul is dry.”

“How can you say that? After everything I’ve done to you?”

“Well, you need to learn how to use your soul, sometimes. But I have no doubt that it’s there.”

“What if I never learn to use it?”

“I think you want to. And I think that matters. I think it might matter most of all.”

“How would you know?” He wasn’t actually being rude. He was really asking.

“I suppose I don’t know for sure. I don’t know anything about this. I feel like you didn’t totally believe me, but you’re the only lover that I’ve ever had. So I can’t say for sure whether or not we are on the right track. Whether or not this will work. I don’t have experience to draw from.”

“I’ve never been in a relationship. I’ve had sex.

Obviously. But it’s never meant anything.

No one has ever stayed with me. No one has ever come for me.

I used to dream about my father realizing that he had done the wrong thing by selling me.

I used to dream of him coming to find me.

Saying that he loved me. Saying he was going to take me away from it. ” He got a faraway look in his eye.

And she felt a tear roll down her cheek.

“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry that you were failed by the person who should’ve taken care of you.”

“It’s okay. I need you to hear the rest of this.

Because I need you to understand who I am.

I need you to understand… My father did come for me.

Five years ago. He came to me because he was destitute.

His gambling debts sky-high. Selling his son didn’t pay his bills for very long.

I don’t know what else he’d done in the intervening years to try and feed his habits.

I don’t care. But he recognized me. When I achieved my success.

He came all the way from Greece to throw himself at my mercy. Like I was a king. Like I was a god.”

“And what happened?”

“I made him beg. I made him weep. And then I gave him his money, and I sent him away. But only after I got to watch him wiggle and struggle like a mouse in a trap. Only after I got to enjoy exerting the power I had over him. Only then.”

She heard it then. The hardness. The ice. “I don’t want my son to look at me that way. I don’t want him to be like me.”

“We will never let our child suffer the way that you did. We can start there.”

She felt a sharp, stark pain in her chest, and she didn’t know what to do with it.

There was a coldness in him that was frightening.

But she didn’t believe that he would ever hurt their child.

She also wanted to believe—so badly—that she was going to be able to reach him.

That she was going to be able to connect with him.

But it was terrifying. Terrifying to believe that she might not.

Maybe he was right. Maybe everything that had happened to him had made him into something other than a man. A gladiator. One that was still fighting for his life every single day.

Maybe there was no coming back from that.

She shook her head and buried her face in his neck.

She didn’t want to live in that world. Where a boy could be sold into hard labor to pay his father’s debts and not be able to come back from it.

Where he would pay for the sins of his father over and over again for the rest of his life.

Where he would pay more than his father ever would.

She couldn’t believe it. Because she was having a child with this man.

“You do care about things,” she whispered.

“Not the right ones.”

“But you do care. It’s not all ice. Or you wouldn’t have enjoyed that.”

She clung to that. It was, oddly, something that gave her hope.

“But I was able to give you the publishing company back because I simply didn’t care about it.

Do you know, you must learn to hold the thing tightly.

And as far as I can tell, loving someone is the act of hanging on to them so nothing can ever tear them from you.

I… I don’t even think I would want to do that if I could. ”

“But what about our child?”

He looked absolutely filled with sorrow. “I don’t know. I don’t know how I’m ever going to… I don’t know how I’m ever going to be the right thing for him.”

“We have to try. Both of us. I didn’t go through what you did.

Being hurt by my parents, it wasn’t the same as the way you were hurt by your father.

My father didn’t mean to hurt me. But he loved the publishing company so much, and he made it very clear that the way to his heart was through the company.

Through my interest in it. Not in a bad way.

It was just what he loved to talk about.

It was what he loved most of all, and I could never compete with it.

And then there was my mother. Her preoccupation with herself.

I have a career that I love, and I have to make sure that I don’t put it before our child. Maybe we can just both learn.”

“The things that you want to learn are good things. It will certainly make our child happier. But you would never destroy him.”

“Neither will you.”

She rested her hand flat on his chest. “Trust yourself.”

“The problem is that I know myself.”

“Come to bed with me.”

“Sylvie, I—”

“Come to bed with me, Christos. Spend the night with me. If we’re going to try this, then we need to. You can’t stay hiding away from me. You can’t hide away from your child. You can’t run when it gets hard. You can’t revert to texting me like a teenager when it’s hard to talk.”

She felt him nod nearly imperceptibly.

Then she stood up from his lap and held out her hand. She led him back to the bedroom, and then it was her turn to hold him. Until his breathing began to deepen. Until it became even.

And once she was certain he was asleep she brushed her lips over his temple. Then she buried her face in her pillow and she wept.

For the boy he had been. And for the man he had become.

No one had ever loved Christos, and it wasn’t fair.

She wanted to love him. With the ferocity he should’ve always had love, but it was terrifying. Because she might end up in love alone.

People die of loneliness.

She clung to him.

Until her breathing matched his.