4. Cassian
4
Cassian
D ad’s voice droned on as the car glided along rain-soaked streets, cutting through the village toward home. He’d spent the entire journey from Scotland barking instructions to his PR team. I’d tuned out less than five miles from college.
Nothing I said at this point made any difference. I’d fucked up in his eyes. Ruined a huge business deal. Lost him a fuck-ton of money. Yada yada yada .
I didn’t care. We had more money than we could spend in this lifetime or the next. His constant obsession with making more money bored me.
“Keep me posted, Malcolm,” he snapped before ending his call and turning to me. “Get changed and meet me in my office,” he said as the car pulled up outside the entrance to Blackwood Manor.
Two large spruce trees, a gift from the Norwegian PM, stood on either side of the stone steps, each one tastefully decorated with lights and baubles. I knew from experience that the house would be decorated in much the same way.
Dad paid professionals to come in each year and style the house with more bling than fucking Harrods. There was a time when my mother would have been in charge of putting up the Christmas trees, hanging garlands over the mantles, and ensuring the entire house sparkled with festive lights.
When I was small, decorating the tree in the hall was a special treat. Mom always let me hang the best ornaments and decide where to place the sprigs of mistletoe and ivy we’d collected. I wasn’t sure when things changed. Likely around my 7th birthday when she had another late miscarriage and Dad was too busy fucking his latest mistress to answer his phone when she called in floods of tears.
Mom was never quite the same after that. She’d been desperate for another baby after me, but when she lost the last one at 6 months, the doctors advised her not to try again. They said her chances of carrying a successful pregnancy to term were less than 1%.
I left dad giving instructions to the butler and disappeared upstairs. My tux stank of smoke and I couldn’t wait to shower off the stench of this evening. Maybe a hot shower would help me get my head screwed back on the right way. That and a stiff drink or ten.
Even though it was nearly dawn, I knew damn well sleep was not on the cards.
My father was keen to get ahead of the sex tape scandal. His PR team had only just buried the drugs rumor, so this on the back of it was a disaster. We’d barely made it through the media scrum at the gate without Dad keeling over from a coronary.
Not that I would have complained if he had dropped dead.
After showering, I pulled on some clean sweats and a hoodie before trotting back downstairs like a good little pup. Dad was waiting for me in his office, his surly bodyguard, Dominic, leaning against the wall with a blank expression on his face.
Just as Dad was about to snarl something at me, his desk phone rang. With a scowl, he picked it up.
“Lucian speaking…yes, Prime Minister, I have time to talk…”
My brain tuned out the conversation. No doubt the PM was angry about all the bad press, anxious to prevent the scandal from snowballing, and keen to ensure all my dad’s good work fighting organized crime wasn’t pushed off the front pages for too long.
The PM was facing re-election next year, and he was probably hoping this current shit-storm didn’t sway voters away from picking him as their best chance of easing their tax burdens and fixing all the current problems dragging the country down.
Dominic watched me and smirked. Had he seen the sex tape? Of course he fucking had. The asshole had probably screenshot the best bits for his wank bank material.
I fucking hated Dominic. The man was a complete asshole. He’d been with dad for years, and I never quite understood his role. My father had a security detail who followed him around while on government business, but the rest of the time, Dominic stuck to his side like a little bitch. The guy clearly had no life.
He and my father were always sloping off on business unrelated to his job advising the government. I had no clue how he got away with some of his shit, but I guessed he had people working for him in all the key departments.
Money greased a lot of wheels, and my father was nothing if not entrepreneurial. He was all about smoke and mirrors; as long as he did his job, everyone turned a blind eye to his other business dealings.
Rumors sometimes found their way into the public domain, but Malcolm and his PR vultures soon squashed them mercilessly. Journalists were either paid off or they had accidents. The last guy who tried investigating my father ended up dead in a Marrakesh hotel room. The official line was a senseless robbery gone wrong. Wrong place, wrong time.
I knew differently because I’d overheard Dad talking to Dominic. The scales finally lifted from my eyes that night. My father had always been a ruthless psychopath, but I hadn’t grasped how deep the rot went until I heard him discuss a man’s execution in the same tone he used to order a pizza delivery.
It was then I truly understood how fucked I was. There was no way of escaping my father. If I refused to play ball, he’d find a way to hurt me or those I cared for.
The sham of an engagement with Camilla was a good example of how he liked to pull the strings for his own ends. He knew I hated the bitch, but because me marrying Camilla suited his purposes, he ignored my feelings on the matter.
And now the engagement was dead in the water. All thanks to a lying, manipulative whore called Thea.
My fists clenched as I sat down in a soft leather chair and faced the man who’d contributed 50% of my genes. As always, I wondered what my mother ever saw in him. Yes, objectively speaking, he was handsome.
For an old dude.
His hair was darker than mine, more brown than caramel, streaked with silver these days. Unlike other men his age, he hadn’t gone to fat, although he’d lost muscle mass over the last year or so.
Women still loved him. They always had. The asshole had charm in abundance, but it was only ever superficial. Dad wasn’t capable of loving anyone but himself.
I’d watched a documentary on Ted Bundy once. He was charm personified, too. Good looking in a wholesome way. It was partly why he got away with his crimes for so long. Who would suspect a man like Bundy of being a deranged serial killer?
Bundy and my father had a lot in common. Both were narcissists scoring high on the psychopathy scale. It was a wonder I hadn’t turned into a monster like Dad, but that was mostly thanks to my mother’s softer influence.
“Give me your phone, Cassian.” I jumped. Had I zoned out? Shit . Fatigue was catching up with me with no alcohol in my system.
“Why?”
He leaned forward, eyes burning with rage. “Do as you’re fucking told, boy.”
Boy? I almost laughed. I was bigger than him.
“The days of me doing what I’m told are long gone, father. ” To my left, I saw Dominic’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise. He hadn’t expected that. The fucker didn’t move a muscle, though.
Dad sat back in his leather chair and smiled, but the anger remained.
“Really? You think so little of your mother that you’d dare defy me?”
Ice trickled through my veins. “What’s mom got to do with this?”
We stared at each other for a few seconds, and then he grinned.
“Her doctor says she needs in-patient treatment for her issues. If she doesn’t show signs of improvement over the holidays, then I’ll be forced to commit her for a few weeks, maybe longer. The treatment regimen at the Highgate Clinic is second-to-none. Your mother will be safe there.”
I fought the urge to leap from my chair and beat him to death with the iron poker resting next to the fireplace. The only thing that stopped me was Dominic’s presence and the thought of spending the next 100 years in prison.
Dad’s reckoning was coming, but I needed to be smart about this. So I took a few deep breaths and ignored his smirk. He knew damned well that threatening Mom was the best way to keep me in line.
“She was a wreck the last time you sent her there.” Highgate masqueraded as a psychiatric facility for the rich and dissolute, but in reality, it functioned as the playground for a sadist called Dr Lassitor. I’d met him twice, and both times, he reminded me of a corpse.
Dad scoffed. “Dr Lassitor does wonderful, ground-breaking things for the mentally ill. His research is second-to-none. I spoke with him earlier. He wants to try an experimental new drug on your mother. Thinks it will be the push she needs to break free of her demons.”
“The only demon she needs to break free of is you!” The words fell from my lips before I could prevent them. It was stupid. I could see that now from the way he openly grinned.
“Tut tut, Cassian. You always did have a soft spot for your mother. I thought I’d beaten it out of you, but never mind.” He sighed like I’d disappointed him in some way. “Now, hand over your phone.”
It was pointless arguing. He had me over a barrel, and he knew it. I pulled my phone from my pocket and threw it at him. His sharp growl of irritation let me know he didn’t appreciate my attitude, but I ignored it.
I watched as he locked it in his safe. “I took the liberty of removing all your tech devices. Consider this a time out for bad behavior.” What the actual fuck? He was treating me like a 10-year-old!
“I have schoolwork to do.”
“You can use the laptop I left in your room. It has filters in place to prevent access to unauthorized sites.”
“You do know I’m legally an adult, right?”
Dad’s lip curled up in disgust. “When you learn to do as you’re told, boy, then I’ll treat you as an adult. In the meantime, the only people you’ll be talking to are people vetted by me.”
“And Camilla?” I nearly laughed but managed to bite my lip just in time.
“Unfortunately, thanks to your monumental fuck-up, that’s no longer an option.” He ground his teeth.
From the few news stories I’d had a chance to scan, John Bale-Lyon was on the warpath, accusing me of taking advantage of his sweet daughter. It was fucking laughable. He and Camilla both knew the whole engagement charade was a sham, one that I had never agreed to willingly.
No doubt Camilla would be popping up in the society pages for the next few weeks, papped on the arms of every eligible bachelor in the Northern Hemisphere to prove it wasn’t her fault I’d had to seek sex elsewhere.
“The official line we’re trotting out is sex addiction.”
My mouth fell open. “Huh?”
“Yes, Malcolm thinks it’s our best chance of rehabilitating your reputation. We say you are a sex addict. You’ve been struggling for years but fell off the wagon thanks to the influence of your friend.”
“I’m 21. It’s perfectly normal to have lots of sex at my age,” I pointed out. “Pretty sure you were banging everything with a pulse when you were 21.” And still are , I added silently.
He slammed his hand down on his desk in fury. “The only person you should have been fucking was Camilla!”
“There weren’t enough drugs on hand to make me go there,” I pointed out. Dominic snorted, but covered it with a cough. Dad threw him a scathing look, although I noted he didn’t disagree.
Camilla was a troll. Even Dad wasn’t interested, and he was not at all discerning.
“You’ll stay out of sight over the holiday under the guise of completing a sex addicts’ program at an exclusive clinic in Switzerland. Then, in the New Year, we’ll run a story about how you’ve seen the error of your ways and rediscovered your faith.”
“Faith? In what, exactly?”
“God, Cassian.” I burst out laughing in shock. Dad liked to pretend he was a Christian, typically around the holidays when being photographed at church services made for good optics. In reality, the only deity he worshiped had horns and a tail.
“Good luck with that.” I rolled my eyes and yawned.
“I suggest you take me seriously, Cassian, or I’ll have no choice but to send your mother away for an extended stay.”
That hit home. The bastard wasn’t fucking around. He’d like nothing better than to get rid of Mom for a few weeks or months.
The press loved his tragic backstory of a sick wife and how he’d fought hard to get her the best possible treatment for her mental health issues. The fucker was even the patron of several mental health charities, which was fucking laughable, given all my mom’s problems related to his mistreatment.
“Fine.” I gritted my teeth and pasted a smile on my face. “Quiet Christmas, no socializing. Got it.”
Dad relaxed in his chair. “Good. I’m pleased we’re on the same page. Now get out of my sight while I clean up this mess you’ve caused. I have a meeting with the PM this afternoon, so I’ll be gone this evening.”
“No family meal?” I pretended to look disappointed. Dad’s eyes narrowed, knowing full well I was taking the piss.
“Careful, Cassian. One phone call is all it will take.” The smug smile on his face told me he wasn’t messing about.
“Enjoy your night in London.” Fucking whatever unlucky woman is your current floozy .
I stood and left, eager to get the hell out of his presence and into my personal space, where I could relax my guard. Dominic could have installed cameras in my suite since I last came home, but I doubted it. He wasn’t technically minded. Dad employed him for his brawn, not his brain.
Once I’d locked my bedroom door, I headed into the bathroom and removed the ceiling vent above the shower. The burner phone I stashed in there, protected in a ziplock bag, was dead, but it didn’t take long to charge enough for me to message our group chat.
Me: Dad has my phone. Any messages from it are not me.
Milo: OK. We need to talk.
Me: What about? I need to sleep.
Milo: Thea.
I took one look at his message and swore softly before tossing the phone on my bed. Not a fucking chance. That bitch was dead to me.