Chapter 18 Hollow #2
I slipped away and took in the wealth of Fairview.
It was evident in the chandelier and in the wood trimming, which was adorned with carvings that were both intricate and beautiful.
It was a shame that what lived inside was rotting.
Sebastian Smith was an old, bitter man, and it was written into the wrinkles on his face and the scowl he permanently wore.
When he saw me coming towards him, he raised a single eyebrow and turned, knowing I would follow him. I was a glutton for punishment if nothing else. The self-sabotage I created years ago was starting to smell like the wraith that took my arm.
Two obscenely large doors led down a hall with that tell-tale crimson carpet that was supposed to embody what it meant to be a Smith.
Where the ballroom was bright and gold, the rest of Fairview was a tomb.
Dark oak to excess, and the crest of the house smith carved into every surface.
It was almost hard to fault Sebastian Smith for what he’d become, knowing that narcissism was drilled into him from infancy.
He turned into a doorway, pushing open a large wooden door with a grunt.
I used to worry he would die before I could make the name Sebastian Flynn mean something.
That I would dedicate my life to his ruin, and before I could set it all on fire, he would sleep soundly six feet under. It was certainly in character for him.
The smell of leather and wood shifted in the air the moment I stepped through into what was the library of Fairview.
Countless books filled shelves on every wall with a spiral ladder that went to a second floor filled with the same.
Two rectangular windows on the east wall let in the only natural light, but for the most part, it was as dark as a cave.
A few candles were lit around the room, but the effect was shadows that made me wonder if Fairview was haunted.
Sebastian Smith pulled out two glasses from a corner cabinet and poured amber liquid that was probably a hundred years old or more.
It was what he used to brag about at every opportunity as he sipped his liquor that Henry VIII probably kept stored in his cellar.
The last decade aged him to the point that his once strong jaw sagged and his eyes drooped down into bags.
If I were a betting man, I would say he already had one foot in the grave.
“You’re ill,” I said, cutting through the silence.
Of all the ways I thought I would begin this conversation, this wasn’t it.
He held out the glass to me.
“I believe the doctor referred to it as dying,” he said.
With a long sigh, I took the drink from it and let the liquor coat my throat and drown out my beating heart.
Billy would have called this ironic. Would have said something about how a man could spend his whole life planning just to take one wrong turn and end up dead.
Life was meant to be lived, not planned.
The loss of him came in waves. The only good in me was what I learned from him, and the fact that this man before me lived when Billy didn’t was a damn sin.
If I were ever a believer in a higher power, I would have cursed their name.
My mother was a good woman, but she was buried six feet under while her abuser lived comfortably.
No divinity that allowed that would ever have my prayers.
“Why didn’t you come to Newgate?”
I was a fish out of water and a compass without a point.
It didn’t matter that I’d travelled the world and created a legacy that would long outlive me.
Standing here, even though I was taller, stronger, and bigger than him, I was only a fourteen-year-old boy searching for validation.
It didn’t matter that I hated him; some needs were ingrained into our very marrow.
He took another slow sip, but his hands tremored, and a bit splashed onto his shirt. Seas, he’d seemed so large when I was a boy. A force to be reckoned with. Now he was just a dying old man.
“I thought dying would be a fitting punishment for your petulance,” he said.
And it probably would have been.
“And what- you were just going to let the estate and your title go to the crown?” I asked.
Despite the ocean that raged within me, the words came out calm. It was like the world stilled for a moment, and in this space lived an alternate reality. If I spoke too loudly or made too quick a movement, it would all evaporate, and I’d lose it.
He shrugged and sat down on a high leather-backed seat at the center of the room. His breathing was rough, as if it all cost him a great deal of energy. He gestured to the chair a few feet away that mirrored his own. An order.
Maybe I was still only a fourteen-year-old boy because I sat down, resting my head against the leather and breathing in all the air I could muster. It wasn’t enough. The pressure inside my chest was far too encompassing.
“I was considering giving it to the Allan boy. He is missing a father, and I am missing a son.”
I snorted. A worse heir I couldn’t imagine.
“He’s owned a company for a mere four months and run it into the ground.”
Sebastian Smith nodded his head.
“So he did, but I suspect there was an element of vengeance at play.” he eyed me, weighing my worth within ten seconds. “It’s a shame you ended up wasting your life on revenge. I followed all your exploits. You made a strong name, but you failed to consider that time was a greater adversary.”
“I considered it; however, I was of the mind that evil didn’t die so easily.”
Smith laughed, and it raked across my skin like the tendrils of a kraken.
“Turns out all it takes is a failing heart.”
“I wasn’t aware you had one.” I shot back.
He raised his glass, nodding his head before taking a long sip.
As if he were toasting to his own mortality.
When he finished, he tapped his finger on the glass like a rhythm only he understood.
I tried to steady my breathing, but I hated the mirror that sat across from me.
The habits that followed me across the world were made by him.
“You don’t have to stop hating me to be my heir,” he said.
Of all the things I expected him to say, to call me a whore’s son or laugh at how my life's work was currently in flames, propositioning me into carrying his name wasn’t one of them.
“Less than an hour ago, you informed me you wouldn’t name me heir,” I said, resisting the urge to tap my glass.
I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing any part of him lived in me.
“That was before you were engaged to the Bailey girl. I think I would enjoy hearing the story of how you convinced her brother to turn to piracy and then fucked his sister into thinking you loved her.”
The garish words created a fire that burned through me.
He thought he knew something when he couldn’t begin to fathom what it meant to understand people.
Mostly, I hated that he was right. All of it.
Rose willingly tied herself to me because she was, at her core, good and capable of love; that she believed the same of me was a tragedy.
“It would go better for you if you refrained from speaking about her like that.” The words were razor sharp.
I expected him to taunt me for my protectiveness.
To gloat about how I wasn’t any better than him, but instead he tapped his glass and took a long drink before resting his arms on the side of the chair.
The sardonic smile I anticipated was replaced by a solemn frown that reminded me a lot of pity if I thought Sebastian Smith was capable of such an emotion.
“I wondered if you orchestrated it, but I can see you didn’t. You’ve judged me all these years for the way I loved your mother, but maybe now you understand. It’s in our blood, the need to possess,” he said.
My hand clenched around the glass, and for a moment, I knew it would be easy to kill him right then. He was dying and weak. Every breath he took was an insult to my mother’s memory.
“What you did to her wasn’t love. You used her and ruined her.” I said.
My father leaned forward, and as his eyes flashed, I saw the truth of him. He didn’t know the difference between love and ownership. I hated him even more than before.
“She was a whore, Edward. It’s their job to be used. I made it so she didn’t have to sell her body anymore. How many whores can say that they had a roof over their head and food in their belly without having to spread their legs? You are as ungrateful as she was,” he snapped.
“That wasn’t living!” I shouted. “You gave us just enough to survive and made sure we would never have more than that. It was cruel.”
He clicked his tongue and tapped his glass.
“I am not having this conversation again with you. I thought your feelings for the girl would make you finally understand, but I see you are just as willful and stubborn as your mother.”
That he could twist this to seem like I was the one not understanding was a testament to how gnarled the paths of his mind were.
For the first time, a sickening truth landed over me, suppressing everything I was.
It didn’t matter if I ruined his name, his reputation, his fortune, because his mind would never allow him to know that it was because of him it was happening.
It might hurt, but he would be the victim, never at fault.
The suffering he inflicted on others was out of his hands.
At fourteen years old, I knew I’d understood everything.
It was all black and white. The walls I erected around my memories of him were air-tight.
Sitting across from him now, though, they crumbled like sand to the wind.
He wasn’t a force to be reckoned with and brought to his knees because he was just a man.
A broken and sad man at the end of his life, without anything to show for it.
I wished I could tell Billy he was right all along. He wouldn’t have gloated. Instead, he would have hugged me and told me that it was time to start living.
Standing, I set down my glass on a nearby table and turned to leave.
“Where are you going? We aren’t done here,” he stuttered the words as if they cost him.
I studied him for just a minute more. Blue eyes that echoed mine, except they were dull and lifeless, even though he breathed.
God, he’d seemed so large when I was a boy.
Now his shoulders slumped forward, and the vein in his neck gave away his anxiety.
Here was a man who wanted me to see him as he saw himself, and I couldn’t.
For so long, I thought taking everything from him and unmasking him was divine justice, but it turned out all I needed to do was see him for who he truly was.
“You can name me your heir or James Allan. You can even die and let the crown have it all. There is nothing I want from you. I’ve spent fourteen years imagining what it would finally feel like to destroy everything you loved, but I see now there isn’t anything left to take from you.
Even if I did, you wouldn’t comprehend it.
After all that, you are just a lonely man at the end of his life and nothing to show for it. ”
The words were a weight off my chest, and for the first time, the teenage boy who lived in me took his first breath. The stinging skin from the beatings soothed, and the cruelty of the world became a dull ache instead of an all-encompassing pain.
Turning my back on him was everything I imagined ruining him would feel like. It didn’t even cost my life.
My vision swam with the ramifications of a single evening.
Billy used to say that a man like Sebastian Smith didn’t deserve the price of my life, but I called him short-sighted.
That if the price of my life was that he was forced to live in the ashes of his, it was a small price to pay.
The tragedy of it all was that I couldn’t tell Billy he was right.
Though even if I did, he wouldn’t have gloated.
He would have nodded and said it was all right.
Then he would have told me that there was a woman out there who loved me and to get to it.
The smile I felt on my lips was out of place in a place like Fairview, but it was just another reminder that I didn’t belong here.
“She probably thinks you love her, but she doesn’t know that you don’t know how. It’s my blood in your veins, boy. You think you can pass as a gentleman, but all you are is a whore’s son and a pirate. They will see right through you.”
Poison-tipped arrows meant for the heart. They ricocheted all the same, missing their mark.
“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe I’ll never be able to love her the way she deserves. Maybe I’ll fuck it all up. I’ve spent so much time living to die that I think it’s time to try something different.”
“I will make sure you never find peace. That mark on your chest is an inevitability.”
I nodded, reaching for the door.
“For you and for me. We are on the same ship after all.” I said.
“It’ll ruin her, too. Is that what you want?” There was desperation coating the words, and it hit just right.
“I have faith in your need for self-preservation.”
With that, I left him to his rare liquor and rotting heart. A weight I’d carried dutifully for fourteen years slid off my shoulders, and I stood a little taller. I didn’t know who I was without my need for vengeance, but I was willing to find out.