Gant
The lift’s doors shut behind Bart, and he pauses, scanning the fancy parchments scattered across the coffee table and floor.
“You found your mother’s letters.”
“After you opened and raided the vault before my eighteenth birthday, of course.”
“If it’s privacy you’re concerned about, I never bothered to read them.”
I try to arch my brow, but it’s too heavy. Everything’s too heavy right now. My heart’s sunken into my ass that’s embedded into the fucking couch. A pity. It’d just started beating again mere nights ago when I finally had her.
“You haven’t?”
My father always glossed over the mundane, certain that my mother was incapable of saying anything worth listening to.
“The mind-numbing musings of a cunt never interested me.” His black eyes flicker down to the theatre, and he snarls as he coos loudly, “Isn’t that right, darling?”
His taunts don’t work on me. I’m numb to him now.
“Why did you marry her?” I ask, a genuine curiosity overtaking me.
“She was just crowned a prima ballerina. The world was watching. She made me look good until she didn’t,” he says matter-of-factly.
She was always disposable.
“But I couldn’t see the future, not like you can already envision the dead end with that ginger girl. She won’t ever make you look good, . She can never come close to being your equal.”
That girl. After all these years, he still doesn’t know her name. The only woman I’ve ever wanted.
My eyeball ticks…and ticks along with a nerve in my brain that feels like it explodes, releasing a wet warmth behind the socket that I’m surprised doesn’t drip out.
Or maybe it’s all in my mind.
Nothing feels real, not even the massive, dark living room. I know the walls are there, and yet, I don’t. I rub the textured wallpaper beside the armrest faster, as if it can somehow ground and reassure me that this is all tangible. That I’m really here. But it doesn’t.
“But she doesn’t know that yet. Bring her to the penthouse when she’s discharged from the hospital. Introduce her to your new friend. Let them play and get reacquainted.”
I peer into the dark recesses of the cage, my heart, my spirit, rising a fraction at the last word.
Bart smiles a shit-eating grin. “You haven’t gone to the theatre yet, have you?”
He knows I haven’t.
“You weren’t curious about the new installation?”
I follow his gaze to the slim, long black covering on the floor that I can’t figure out. Not that I tried, because I simply don’t care.
“No,” I say bluntly. “I had a lot on my mind.”
“This will help you relax.” He walks to the wall and flips a flushed switch I hadn’t noticed before.
When the smooth cover retracts, it’s like the gates of hell have opened because that’s what I hear rushing manically below. I rise slowly, joining him near the edge of what I can now see is a tank. The penthouse is two floors, partially. Bart bought one of the flats below to create a basement where the tank must be. The pool’s slim, and the sleek black walls are oddly angled and shiny. Too shiny . Impossibly slick.
“An aquarium?” I ask slowly as he rips the cage’s door open, and two crystal pits shine out at me.
“You’ve heard of infinite pools. How about an impossible one?”
I eye him curiously, my heart’s wings fluttering madly as sheer euphoria rushes through my brain.
“What goes in can’t come out. Not on its own.” He stoops to tear the beast out.
The massive splash of ice-cold water doesn’t fall to the ground before I fly down the theatre ramp to watch the show below. But then I trip as my eyes land on her, the feature focus of the room.
My mother gazes at me, too, one eye slashed open, the other piercing through my soul. Her teeth, once perfectly aligned and pearly white, are broken, jagged, blood-stained nubs. Her head’s lulling at an unnatural angle, her neck completely broken, her skin blotched with plum patches from burst blood vessels.
Her glass encasement, or preservation as Bart deemed it, is angled, casting a reflective illusion so that she’s staring at you three-hundred and sixty degrees. I’d tried blocking out the glass, but she still stared at me from the vaulted, reflective ceiling I couldn’t reach with stock ladders. The lights can’t be adjusted to black her out either because this isn’t a traditional theatre. It’s a showcase. A reminder.
Bart had the artistic portrait installed for my arrival home from my mother’s funeral, alone . He’d had a flight to catch. But something draws my attention away from the corpse portrait. I’d never thought it possible to be down here and not look at her. I creep toward the right wall of glass, utterly enthralled by the frenzied whirlpool and the dark shadow swirling inside.
“You think I don’t listen, but I remember every detail of that little story you told me,” Bart’s voice curls around my ears that erupt in goosebumps. “The way she suffered at his hand. I heard your desperation when you urged me to find him, even though I knew exactly where he was. Right beside me.”
I swallow. It’d been a raged-fuelled moment of weakness that sent me to my father. I wanted who hurt my dove. I wanted to gut them from their soft, pink insides outward.
“You think my moves and calculations are because I don’t care, , but I do. I just understand the long form. You must learn to be patient. Everything in due time, and haven’t I come just in time?”
He’s right because the corners of my lips touch the crinkled corners of my eyes as an unnatural smile that shows all my teeth transforms my features in the shiny glass’ reflection.
I watch, utterly transfixed as the shadow tries to scamper out, as it throws itself onto those impossibly smooth walls just to fall again and again into the black water. Into the churning abyss.
Bart’s fingers curl onto my shoulders like they did when I was a little boy, and a rare surge of pride overcame him. It’s the only form of physical contact I can remember, barring the occasional handshake.
I feel like a little boy, too giddy to be a man. My head’s floating up into the fucking stratosphere as euphoria saturates my blood. This is the best gift I’ve ever received, besides my baby’s pretty pussy that choked my cock with each aftershock.
My eyes flutter shut for a half second as I drink in the moment because the visual is that overstimulating. The guttural gasps, the feeling of sheer helplessness, the same helplessness my doll felt when she was shoved in at nine years old by the only man meant to protect her back then.
Sight. Sound. All I’m missing is a taste. I lick the freezing glass with one slow broad lick as the beast looks for mercy.
“Are you pleased?” Bart coos.
My heart flutters faster, my soul shooting from my eye sockets. “ No . I’m downright delighted. Jubilant even.”
“I love to see that cruel smile. It’s like looking in a mirror.”
His smug smile matches mine in the glass of my new tank, and we both know how much he loves himself.
Is that why it took my mother so long to fall in love with me, unlike her firstborn? I’m Bart’s carbon copy. It must have felt impossible to love someone who resembles the person you despise.
When I was born, was she shattered for a second time? To see this face all over again? To see it even when he was never around? A constant reminder.
Not a prince. A memento.
“You were never her baby, ,” Bart says, his eyes trailing to the death portrait. “But you were always my son. You only became hers later.”
He said he hadn’t read the letters, or was it just an observation I hadn’t realised until now? That my mother only became my mother later. It’s not normal to remember your childhood starting at age eight, or so my old therapist said.
Another canine yelp draws me back to the tank, followed by a gluttonous gasp for air, then a gurgling gulp of water. Splash after splash is like a symphony to my eardrums.
“You say it’s endless? An impossible pool?”
“Not unless you show mercy.” He pushes a button on the wall, making me realise it’s not one massive tank but three. The side tanks fill as the central tank empties, and the thing thuds to the black bottom. The light of the living room above shines down like a spotlight.
“Let her get reacclimated. Comfortable. Take the information we need, then get rid of them both.”
I snort. “You think she’s that easy? After everything?”
“It is that easy. Ask the host you crawled out of.”
The corpse portrait catches my peripheral vision. “She hated you too, you know.”
I hate you.
“She loved this more.” He gestures to the penthouse. “There’s always something they love more than they hate you, and you’re Auclair. You can give a girl like her anything. So give her anything. Give her everything . An offer she can’t refuse because I can assure you that whatever she could possibly want is nothing greater than what we could lose.”
He doesn’t want to need me, but he does. And the fact that it’s solely because of Elle makes it obvious that he’s hit a dead end. It's not a pretence either, so he can pull out a wildcard to throw in my face later. No, he’s… desperate.
I rip my eyes from his reflection and face him head-on. I can’t see the desperation, but I feel it radiating from his pristine suit. If only he’d read the mind-numbing musings of a cunt, he’d find the clues.
“How much of Auclair Enterprises did you gift her to marry you?”
“Twelve per cent.”
Seems small until you realise the company is worth over twenty billion.
“I consented because her will ensured that her firstborn would inherit it. I thought I put her firstborn inside her. If only I’d known she’d let some worthless loser cum in her first, I would’ve never married her.”
You would’ve never had me. But that’s of no consequence. Any able-bodied male heir would’ve done. It’s not me my father cares about. I just happen to be in the correct package.
“And you think that worthless cumshoooter is Jarett Crewly of all people?”
“That’s what you and your little Cayenne cunt are going to find out. I can admit when I need help. So do what I couldn’t and finish it.”
I turn to the tank, to the heaving form.
I’ll take it a step further than that.
I’ll take it to hell.