13. Kill the Beast
CHAPTER 13
Kill the Beast
Dominic
The man was insufferable.
In the pale whiteness of snow-reflected light that poured through the windows, Orwell’s lines seemed deeper, his face sagging like he had lost all will to go on. He looked at me with such shameless pity that I was tempted to send him into an early retirement.
My impatience with his sorry behavior over the last three days was such that he understood its limits had been reached without us exchanging a word on the subject.
Anger filled me beyond my capacity to hold it in when he tried to ask me how I was.
“How should I be?” I snapped. “Do you want to see a sniveling girl crying into the pages of her diary? Do you want to fix my pigtails?”
Orwell had the nerve to shoot me daggers with his eyes before abandoning me at the breakfast table with less than half of the regular items served. I didn’t see him for the rest of the day, his tasks falling onto a visiting server whose job was to help in the kitchen in the mornings and evenings. His explanation was that Orwell was suffering from a migraine that had plagued him his entire life. I didn’t have the patience to explain to the boy that Orwell was lying. He had never had a migraine, and even if he had, the man was more oak than flesh and blood, and a migraine wouldn’t have stopped him. No. He was proving to me what an insufferable ass I was.
Orwell performed his duties the following morning without a word. He knew how important it was to prepare the house for the visitor, but he refused to speak to me. All I got from the man was a pitiful look that he was more than welcome to keep it to himself.
Why am I the villain? I wanted to ask, but I held back. Even in my anger, I knew I didn’t want some questions answered.
The day dragged on like all the days since that eventful afternoon. I steered clear of remembering it. What would be the point?
I paced the sitting room, which I had refused to enter since then until this morning. Unable to work, I oversaw Orwell’s inspection of the cleanliness, the way he fixed the little details, and suffered the looks I received from him.
When he was nearing the end of his tour, I barked, “I don’t want him to see the folder.”
“Perhaps you should consider hiding it, sir,” Orwell scoffed and left the room.
Whatever had happened on the night Orwell drove Zain home, it had changed the man. He was against me, unlike any other time in our lives. But he was welcome to it. I didn’t depend on the opinions of my employees so long as we all respected the terms of our contracts. His feelings were irrelevant. All feelings were.
I sat down and tapped my foot. I tapped it as the sun rose to the zenith and began to descend. Once, I made a break for lunch, then returned to the sitting room, resumed my place, and gazed into the flames as the seconds and minutes ticked away.
At long last, a car appeared in the distance, driving slowly between the mounds of cleared snow all the way to the main entrance of the house. Orwell didn’t protest. For all his insufferable sulking, he understood when to be professional. He let the visitor inside the house, and I felt the sudden need to employ extra help to scrub the floors before the day was out. The presence of this man in my home, my only place of complete safety and belonging, made me sick.
When the door of the sitting room opened, my valet cleared his throat. “Mr. Hale is here to see you.” He didn’t wait for a reply before he allowed Julian Hale to swagger into my sitting room.
The man was a pompous ass. His blond, windswept hair, his cold-reddened cheeks, and the slight sneer touching his lips and nose were his trademark appearance. It was beneath him to be summoned. He had better things to do than drive here to visit the likes of me.
Oh, but he knew I had his balls in my fist. Even without the hard work of the investigator I had hired, enough of Julian’s fate was in my hands that he obeyed. This contemptuous stare he graced me with was just an act of saving his face, but it wouldn’t last. It was his face I wanted. I wanted to see him ashamed, his dignity in shreds, and his life crashing down in flames around him. And then, I wanted to ask him why it was right for him to enjoy bending for a guy when it had been so wrong for me in college. I wanted to see him stammer and blubber and cry. I wanted to hear him beg.
“Blackthorne,” Julian said, almost as if he were a little surprised to see me here. Perhaps he was implying that he’d expected me to stand up for his self-important entrance.
“Leave us,” I told Orwell. I didn’t want the man witnessing something he was so strongly against. I also enjoyed seeing the look on Julian Hale’s face when he realized he wouldn’t be served a fine drink or something to eat. Oh no. We were going to be alone.
“Sir.” Orwell shut the door on his way out.
Silence settled in the room, disrupted only by the hum of fire in the fireplace when a few dry logs collapsed onto the glowing embers and began burning hotly.
“You are late,” I pointed out.
“I’m a busy guy, Blackthorne,” he replied impatiently.
“Is that so?” I eyed him as he shifted his weight from one leg to the other, looking out the window like he was expecting someone. “I recall making you unemployed.”
He snorted. “Gives me time to spend with my family.”
I bit back the entirety of what I wished to say to him despite such an excellent opening. “You’re welcome,” I said instead.
He bristled and said nothing for a long time. He watched the white blanket of snow stretching into the endless distance. The sky was so pale that it almost blended with the land far away. Scattered trees dotter the horizon, their bare branches twisting in incredible ways.
When Julian Hale turned away from the view, his gaze landed on me. “Why did you need to see me?”
“Why wouldn’t I? We’re old college buddies, aren’t we?” Anger simmered just below the surface, its quality reflecting in my voice.
“We were generally in the same place around the same time,” Julian acknowledged.
The image of him from my early days at Harvard flashed before my eyes. He had been such a dashing guy. He’d been cocky as hell, which hadn’t changed, but also handsome and charming. Receiving a look from him in those days had pressed such new and exciting buttons in my body, and Julian must have realized it. He must have. It had exposed a weakness in me so long ago, and he had jumped at the opportunity to fling his arrows to that soft little spot I had revealed.
“I’m curious. Do you have any regrets?” I asked tactlessly.
He shot me a hateful look. “Regrets?” Something softened in him a little. It was barely noticeable. “Some, perhaps.”
I hated how hopeful it made me. Say it , I heard myself pleading internally. Say you’re sorry .
We eyed one another carefully, the standoff seeming almost ridiculous and unimportant as Julian licked his lips and hesitated. This couldn’t be easy for him. I didn’t want it to be easy, but I could almost sympathize. Asking for forgiveness was the hardest thing there was.
Julian tilted his head a little in thought. “I regret…” He lifted his shoulders and let them fall back resignedly. “I suppose my biggest regret is putting my trust in that moron gambler, Max. I should have known you’re the sort of person who would find a way to use someone’s vice against them.”
His cruel and cold look after uttering those words strengthened my determination. Had I really hoped for an apology? Hoped? What a fucking fool I was. “Use against him?” I demanded. “Do you not understand the nature of vices, Hale? He did it to himself. All three of you did.”
“What does it matter?” he asked in a resigned tone. “It’s over now. You’re forcing the sale of the remaining shares—making Voss and me very rich, I might add—and you win. Is that why I’m here? To say it to your face? You win, Blackthorne.”
“If it were only that simple, you could have sent me a card, and I’d let you go,” I said in a darkening voice.
“You can’t stop me,” Julian said thoughtlessly.
“I can do whatever the hell I want to you,” I said. “You have no idea of the sort of power I have over you, Hale. But I’m going to make all this very clear to you soon.”
“Power? I doubt it,” Julian said. He didn’t care. Here was a man who had played a game and lost. That was all this was to him. We might as well have been playing Monopoly. It was all so clear to me now. He couldn’t care about losing his precious company when he had never lifted a finger to build it. He was a man who walked the Earth believing it was his God-given right to be precisely who he was. Anything else was unfathomable to him. Losing one company only meant he needed to tap into his endless coffers of wealth to create another. He belonged to a club that was hard to be expelled from. Nearly impossible, I would say, except that I held Julian’s ticket to exile and infamy.
I hated that he was able to make his peace with it so quickly. Just over a month ago, he had raved like a madman at the realization that he had been fooled.
“Do you remember our freshman year?” I asked.
“What’s that got to do with anything?” he retorted quickly.
“Everything.” I stared into his eyes as he slowly neared the armchair opposite mine and sat uninvited.
“Are you still butt-hurt about that? Is that why you’re doing this?” He was incredulous, but he kept a check on his temper. Perhaps he did realize I had the upper ground in this battle.
I thought about the old days for a few heartbeats. It was so hard to turn my gaze to the past and skip over the most recent history of my life. When I looked, the path I had walked was littered with heartbreak and disappointments.
“I thought you were so charming,” I admitted carefully. “When I first saw you, you made my pulse quicken. Did you know that?” He stared at me guardedly and said nothing. “You must have. Why else would you have told everyone I was gay?”
His upper lip curled, and he bared his teeth. “You remember it wrong. You never liked me.”
“Fuck off. I did.”
Julian shook his head. “You wanna squabble over some teenage grievances? Fine. All you ever did was sulk and bristle.”
“You made my life hell,” I threw back at him. “And you didn’t stop there. Every door in the city was shut in my face because of you and your friends. You were so full of yourself. It’s pathetic.”
“You’re wrong,” he said simply. “You were the one who was full of himself. You and your little scholarship that made you better than everyone else. Like I was dirty just because we had money. Screw you, Blackthorne. And to say you liked me, now that it’s been fifteen years, is bullshit. I never wanted you to like me. I never wanted to know you.”
“We can agree on that,” I said. “But you had the misfortune of picking on me. All this is your doing.”
Julian leaned back in the armchair and crossed his arms protectively around himself. “Cut to the chase, Blackthorne. What do you have on me? And what do you want?”
So, he knew there was more. There was something so terrified in his eyes when he asked the question despite his best effort to keep it casual.
I had spent more than a decade meeting with people who saw me as less than what I was. All my adult life, I had to watch and understand what went on behind the most minute twitches of people’s facial muscles or the beads of sweat gently breaking on their brows. Without that, I never would have climbed the ladder as swiftly as I had.
I knew people. That was my curse. I saw into their souls and found every vile intention laid bare. But Julian…
Julian was scared.
To me, he looked like a terrified kitten who was about to hiss as his last resort, but we both knew it was a harmless act. He couldn’t do anything to me. All he could hope for was to appear brave.
“Huh?” he demanded. “There’s got to be something, Dominic. Why else would you want to meet me? So let’s stop beating around the bush, and you tell me what you think you know. We can bargain later.”
The corners of my lips curled into an unpleasant smile. “What I think I know?”
“I’ve done nothing wrong,” Julian said. “Nothing a million others hadn’t done as well.”
“I’m sure you believe that.”
He waved his hand off impatiently. “Spill it.”
He almost sounded like a captured general waiting for the sword to fall on his neck. Go on. Do it. Get it over with already .
My heart lurched. Julian’s eyes flicked left and right nervously. The muscles in his face tensed as he gritted his teeth and lifted his chin in a small act of defiance.
I know your dirty little secret , I thought, forming the words in my mouth. I know you have a lover, a sweet guy in Colorado, and I know you fuck him every third weekend. I could see his expression crumbling. I could see him fumbling for explanations and lies to cover it up. I could even see him flinging terrible insults at me in desperate self-defense.
But I couldn’t say it.
Julian’s mouth was pinched in frightened hatred. He stared at me without breaking eye contact, waiting for the blow that would land any moment now. His eyes went from hard to soft, melting in sorrow, and I wondered who the young man was. How had I not sent my investigator to find out more about him? Who was his family? Were they dangerously conservative? Were they a threat?
And Julian himself could be a target if I didn’t think this through.
My fingers trembled, and I threaded them on my stomach, holding my hands as still as I could.
Were there factors I hadn’t considered that made their affair so dangerous that Julian would lower himself so far as to give me a fearful, pleading look like this? Did Julian love him? Did he love Julian more?
I grasped for these questions, unable to find answers, and I squeezed my eyes shut. A minute had passed, silent and vibrating with electricity between us. I was cold despite the fire. When I looked at him again, Julian wore a grotesque expression of expectation and fear.
He couldn’t take my silence anymore. The words ripped from him before I said a thing. “I’m sorry, Dominic,” he said hoarsely. “I’m sorry. Alright?”
I gritted my teeth and held my breath. It wasn’t alright. It would never be alright. He had stripped my humanity away from me, and he barely knew he had done it. He had made me into a man who would send the one good thing in his life away out of nothing more than spite.
A shudder passed through my chest, and I struggled to remain seated and still.
“I shouldn’t have been that way,” Julian said. “Not to you or anyone. I was a stupid kid. I’m not that person anymore. I grew up and changed. Not all of it is for the better, but some things are, dammit, and I’m still trying.”
I managed to drag a breath of air into my burning lungs.
“And maybe I deserve it…whatever dirt you have on me. Maybe you should go ahead and punish me,” he said, but I could hear the nearly silent crack of his voice. He was afraid of that, but I couldn’t be certain he was afraid for his own skin. “Speak, dammit. This is the moment when you blackmail me. What do you want?”
“Nothing,” I said quietly. “Nothing at all.”
Julian’s eyes widened. He grasped for something, deciding between relief that was evident on his face and faking offense so he would save some dignity in this. But it was all the same to me. “What was the point of this, Dominic?” he asked.
I shook my head. “You can go, Hale. I doubt we’ll speak again.”
He moved his jaw left and right, thinking. “Maybe it’s better that way for both of us.”
I nodded my agreement.
As Julian slowly got up, part of him still clearly anticipating an attack, he watched me warily. When I didn’t stop him, he turned away from me and began to retreat toward the door.
“Julian,” I said softly, barely louder than a whisper.
He halted immediately, his muscles tensing all over. He looked at me over his shoulder.
I regretted speaking his name. It was none of my business how he lived his life. Whatever I said, he would take as a threat, but it was a piece of advice I had only just understood. I burned with desire to speak the words and hear the truth in them. I considered the best way to say this and decided to be open for once. “The battle’s over. Whatever you do next, I won’t cause trouble. But if the person is right, the price of being true to yourself should never be too high. And in the end, he’ll be worth it.”
The stillness in Julian’s face when I spoke those words told me that he had understood the stakes all along. It was just as I had suspected. Only the direst need would have brought him here to answer my call.
He loved him.
“Someday.” It was a clipped whisper. “Maybe.” The pain in Julian’s eyes reflected that of my own, but we didn’t seek a sense of camaraderie between us. Julian pinched his mouth before he turned away from me and walked out.
I sank into my chair and exhaled a long breath of air, releasing the anxiety that had held me trapped with it. And when I could breathe slightly more freely, I got up, dug out the folder, and tossed it into the fire.
My own words returned to me, and I knew just how true they were.
It was a lesson for sure, but I learned it much too late.