Chapter 3
3
BENNETT
I t’s dark outside.
As you stare out, you can’t see where anything starts or ends.
The only light is coming from the house sitting behind us. Even the police car coming up the driveway has the lights off, making it seem like it’s hidden in the darkness until it’s only few feet away.
Why is the police here?
We didn’t do anything wrong.
We didn’t break any rules, at least I don’t think we did.
Did mom and dad call the police to stop Robert from sneaking out of the house again? Is that why there is a police car here almost at midnight?
If this were about teaching Robert a lesson, mom and dad would be here though, but they haven’t come back from whatever party they went to earlier.
I should have told them to stay.
It was raining when they left and it continues to rain now. Bad things happen when it rains. I should have told them that, but I didn’t want to seem like a baby. I’m eight years old and rain shouldn’t scare me.
But right now, it does.
Right now, it’s raining and a police man is walking over to where Henry is, but is looking at me and Robert as we stand a few feet away.
I want run to Henry and tell him that I’m scared but I don’t. I stay next to my brother and try to concentrate on his hand on my shoulder. I try but he’s squeezing my shoulder a little too hard and it’s starting to hurt.
I’m about to say something but the police man says my parents names.
“I’m here in regards to Thomas and Catharine.”
“What about them? They are not home at the moment.” Henry sounds mad almost, but I don’t know why.
The police man looks at Henry but then moves his eyes over to me and Robert again. He almost looks sad. Like he wants to cry, but why though?
“I’m sorry,” the police man says, looking between the three of us. “There was a car accident. Both Thomas and Cathrine did not make it.”
I don’t need to be a grown up to know what didn’t make it means.
I know what those words mean as soon as the police offer says them.
I know my parents aren’t coming home.
Bad things happen when it rains.
And this time, it took my parents.
I don’t know what it was, but something shakes me awake causing my eyes to pop open as if there was a terrifying monster behind my closed lids and I needed to look into the light. But there’s no light to look into, just the typical darkness.
It takes a few seconds to find myself again and to bring my breathing down to a normal speed. My eyes stay open the entire time because it feels that if I close my eyes again the nightmare will drag me back in.
Nightmare or memory? At this stage in life, I don’t know the difference between the two anymore. They both feel as equally as terrifying.
A deep breath flows through my body.
Months.
It has been months since a nightmare, or a memory of that faithful night, has hit me this hard. I think back to when the last one I had was and all I can remember is that it was around my mother’s birthday. Which was over seven months ago.
For a solid minute, I try to think what might have triggered tonights sleep destress, but nothing comes to mind.
It’s not my father’s birthday.
Or the anniversary of their death.
There is nothing significant about today’s date, so why did the memories decided to hit me like a truck filled with a ton of bricks?
Because no matter how much time has passed, the death of my parents still haunts me to this very day and there is no amount of therapy that will change that. Not even the most expensive kind.
A soft snoring sounds from somewhere next to me and I instantly jerk towards it.
I sleep alone, so the only snoring that should be sounding through the room is mine, and well, I’m wide awake.
My eyes squint through the darkness, and focus on a lump a few inches away from me, covered in all the blankets that I’m sure are in the house.
I don’t need to move the covers off the lump to know that the ten year old made it to my bed sometime between putting him to bed and now.
A sigh escapes me.
It has also been months since he has snuck in here in the middle of the night and I can’t help but to wonder if the same thing that triggered my nightmare, triggered his.
Not moving to wake the kid, I shift instead and reach for my phone on the night stand.
Five in the morning. Might as well get up because there is no chance I’m falling back asleep now. Especially when the nightmare is still haunting me and I know that a snorlax is sleeping next me.
We should really make a doctor’s appointment to get his snoring checked out. There’s no way that the noises coming out of his small body are normal.
I’ll have Henry call later today to make an appointment.
As I get out of bed, the lump tosses and thrashes, and I take a minute to calm him down and get him settled again before standing up and heading downstairs to start the fucking day.
If someone has asked me ten years ago if I was willingly going to get out of bed at five in the morning to start my day, instead of ending it at the time, I would have laughed in their face, but here I am.
As I make my way down to the kitchen, the house has this quietness to it that is sort of comforting and creepy at the same time.
Before ten years ago, the house being silent was a normal thing, since it was only Henry and me here the majority of the time and other times it was empty, but when the kids arrived, it became a space of never ending noice. To some it would have been a nuance, but to me, it was like fucking music.
It was what the place needed, after it being silent for nearly fourteen years, and I wasn’t going to keep it from happening. Part of me wishes that I could bring all that sound back right about now.
But times are different, no matter how much I wish they weren’t.
With the kids on my mind, I quickly wake my phone screen one as I reach the stairs to the first floor and do the one thing that I’ve been doing for the last ten years.
Quickly search for my brother.
When nothing new comes up, same thing as yesterday, and the day before and the day, week, month, year and year before that, I slide the device into the pocket of my pajama pants pocket.
Disappointment runs through my body, just like it always does when I look for Robert and nothing comes up, but when I get to the kitchen, I try to bury it as best as I can. Since I’m not the only occupant of this house that is awake this early in the morning, something that I’m not surprised to see
Henry, the house caretaker and the man that raised me after the death of my parents, my pseudo father, sits at the kitchen island, with a cup of coffee in his hand.
“You’re up earlier than usual,” I voice walking over to the coffee pot that smells like it has been brewing for a bit now.
Henry doesn’t even jump at the sound of my voice. He just lifts up his coffee cup at me in a way of a greeting.
“I have a feeling today is going to be a bit chaotic, so I figured I’d get an early start. Get things settled just in case they go off the wire.”
His words stop me mid pour and make me think for a second as to why today of all days would be a chaotic one.
Then I remember.
That has to be why the nightmares decided to come back. There’s no other explanation.
“I forgot about my meeting with Gerald today,” I say as I pour the remainder of my coffee.
How I was able to forget that small piece of information is beyond me.
I’ve been waiting for Gerald to call me into his office for a “serious meeting” for almost two years now. So when he finally scheduled one for today, it felt like all my efforts were finally working.
Gerald Goldman is one of the Lane Enterprises, my family’s company, oldest employee. Not only is he the oldest employee and longest serving, having started at the company during the first few years of its inauguration, he is also the man that the board of executives placed in the role of CEO about nine years ago.
Did he know anything about running the company? Fuck no. Sure some his business acquisitions were phenomenal but nothing he did warranted making him the head of the company.
The only reason that the old man was given the job was because I finally had expressed interest in not only working at the company that my grandfather built and my father maintained, but also running it one day. My life had changed drastically, for what felt like the millionth time in my life, and I needed to get my shit together, so I did the one thing that Henry had been telling me for years to do. Try at the very least to work at my father’s company and help build it up in way only a Lane could.
Did I expect to be named CEO right away, because I had finally come to my senses? No, but I also didn’t think that the board would hate me so damn much and give someone an executive seat that had been vacant for close to fifteen years, just because they didn’t want me to walk in and claim the title as mine.
Which isn’t something that I could have done anyways since it was stated in my father’s will that neither of his sons could be named CEO before the age of thirty if anything were to happen to him. Something that the idiot board would have known if they had actually done their homework, but they have their heads so far up their asses with over inflated egos that they don’t do the proper research that is needed.
How the fuck they run a company of this magnitude is beyond fucking me.
At least they won’t be running it for much longer. Thank fuck for that. I can taste the sweetness of having the company in my hands and away from theirs.
“I’m surprised that it even went over your head. You know, since this has been something that you’ve been planning for the last two years.”
There is nothing stopping the smirk that forms on my face.
“Henry, I would never plan for a man to come to his senses, call me into a meeting and have him announce that he is leaving a position that he has held for almost ten years,” I say right before taking a sip of my coffee and facing him head on, sarcasm heavily on my voice. I’m sure my smirk is still very well defined even with a mug covering half of it. “I simply made a few suggestions to our friend Gerald. Suggestions that he hopefully took too heart and made the decision to retire on his own.”
And they really were suggestions. Strongly worded ones but suggestions nonetheless. Suggestions that have started to come out periodically from the day I turned thirty and I realized that it didn’t matter what my father’s will had stated, the board of executives at Lane Enterprises weren’t going to give me the role of CEO, no matter how hard I worked for the title.
As long as there was someone occupying the seat, I was going to be a step further from what I wanted. So I’ve been doing what I have to do to get Gerald out of his position.
Henry shakes his head at me before responding. “I’m surprised that nobody has caught on to your little game, but apparently I’m the only one that finds it odd that a thirty-two year old man would become friends with someone almost eighty years old.”
“Nobody has found it surprising because they know I spend most of my free time with you.”
“Are you calling me as old as Gerald, Mr. Lane? That man is a walking casket.” Henry lets out with scoff, sounding offended by the whole thing.
I shake my head. “You’re old, old man. I think it’s time to get used to it.”
“I would take those words back if I were you. Just because you are in your thirties doesn’t mean that I’m not allowed to punish you anymore.” He gives me the same eye roll I get from the teenagers that occupy the house. I guess I know where they get it from. “Gerald isn’t able to run or play football with a ten year old, now can he? How about learn how to ice skate or shoot a puck because one of the other kids wants to play ice hockey? The poor bastard is prone to break a hip coming down the stairs. I still have all my hand eye coordination still intact, thank you very much.”
Jesus. This is not a tangent that I was expecting at five in the morning.
I wonder if I tell the man that the reason he can still do those things and Gerald can’t, is because of his military background and the fact that he still occasionally works out outside of running behind a bunch of kids. Gerald just sits behind a desk.
“You seem offended.” I throw out, my smirk growing even more.
“I’m no such thing. I’m simply pointing out a few facts.”
“Of course you are.” I finish my coffee before giving him my full attention. “Speaking of the ten year old, can you call and make Drake a doctor’s appointment? His snoring doesn’t seem normal.”
The subject of Gerald and Henry being offended are instantly dropped at the mention of Drake. “I’ll call as soon as they open. Were you able to hear him from down the hall?”
I shake my head. “No. He ended up making it to my room sometime last night and I heard the snoring when I woke up.”
Right away, I notice the concern in Henry’s face when I mention that Drake, my ten year old nephew, came to my room.
“Do you think the nightmares back?”
I let out a sigh, wishing I had an answer at the moment. I won’t know until I talk to Drake, that is if he even tells me. Every time I ask him about having nightmares he closes up and tells me he doesn’t remember them.
“If they are, then that would make two of us.”
My nightmares are understandable. I experienced a lot as a kid. What with my parents dying and my brother walking out my life a month later, my abandonment issues know how to make the dark stuff come out.
But when it comes to Drake and his nightmares, I continue to scratch my head as they come with more questions than they do answers.
When he came to live with me, he was too young to possibly remember anything that he might have witnessed or experienced. He was just a baby. But I guess nightmares come at every age because he had just turned one when I experienced his first nightmare and it scared the living shit out of me. So much so that I rushed him to the emergency room because of how much and how badly he was screaming. Thankfully nothing was wrong with him physically, but the nightmares have persisted through out the years.
Maybe his issues are similar to mine.
He was abandoned after all.
Ten years ago, at the bright age of twenty-two, I became the sole guardian to four kids that I had no idea existed the day before.
My older brother, Robert, the very one that decided that he decided needed to go live out his life god knows where, at the age of sixteen and leave me behind to never see or talk to again when I was eight years old, showed up one day on the doorstep of our childhood home with his four kids in tow.
He was in crisis. Something had happened back in Mexico, where he and his family called home, and he needed to get the kids out of there before things got to point that one of them got hurt.
It’s to protect them.
If they stay there, Bennett, something could happened and I won’t be able to live with myself if it does.
I promise, it won’t be a permanent thing. I will be back. It will just be until things with the cartel settles down.
Please. Do this for them, if not for me. Do this for them. I’m begging you, brother. Please.
At the time, it had been fourteen years since I last saw my brother. He had walked out one night about a month after our parents died and he had never looked back, no matter how hard I had wished he had. I didn’t know the man that was standing in front of me. I wanted to be mad at him for thinking it was okay to come back to the home he left so out of the blue, but the kids, even though I didn’t know a single thing about them, had me pushing the anger down.
But I did try to make him see reason. I did try to make him stay. But as much as I fought with him to not leave his kids like he left me, other things took president for him apparently, and he left anyways. Leaving me to take care of his four kids.
Ten year old Elliot, seven year old Samantha, four year old Grayson and ten month old Drake.
I didn’t know the first thing about taking care of kids. Hell, that very morning Henry was giving me a lecture about how I needed to stop with the partying and drinking and at the very least try with the company that was left to me by my parents.
If I couldn’t get my shit together, how the hell was I going to make sure four kids stayed alive? They didn’t even know me and Henry. We were literal strangers to them, and yet we were all that they had at the moment.
It was a hard fucking road, but with Henry’s help, we were able to pull it off. And when my brother broke his promise about coming back, the second time he had broken it in his life, taking care of the kids became top priority.
I may not have been a dad, but I was going to act like a damn good one since the one that the kids knew never came back for them. All contact was lost that day. To this fucking day, I don’t know where my brother is. I have all the resources in the damn world, and I can’t find the one singular person that I need to find. For all I know he’s dead, but until I have confirmation of that, I’m going to keep looking.
That day not only changed me, but it changed the kids too. I didn’t have to know who they were before to know that their dad leaving them here with me, impacted their life in ways they may never be able to talk about. But I have tried to give them the best life that I could and I think I’ve succeeded.
For the most part.
There has definitely been times in the last ten years where I was told I was hated by one of them.
“The nightmares are back sir?” Henry’s question takes me out of my own head and from chiding myself about the parental mistakes that I have committed these last few years.
“Just tonight. But I wouldn’t call it nightmares. More like memories that can’t seem to be forgotten.”
“Sir.” Henry starts, letting out a sigh before he continues. “What you went through as a child is not a normal thing. That is something that you will never forget. No matter how hard you try or how much therapy you attend. It simply gets easier over time,” Henry states, getting up from his seat and walking over to the sink to dump out the remainder of his coffee.
I take a second to run through his words.
He’s right.
Of course he’s right, he always is.
But just because he is right, doesn’t mean that I’m not going to stop trying to make the nightmares from coming. Or losing hours of the day to the dark memories seeping in.
Hopefully the dream I had tonight is the only one for a while.
“Is there anything else you need from me this morning besides getting Mr. Drake a doctors appointment?” Henry asks, changing the subject.
I give him a nod. “Can you deposit money into Elliot’s account?” because then he will actually answer one of my phone calls or come home “and make sure that Sammie and Grayson have everything they need at school?”
There is a list of other things that need to get done in my head, but those are the most pressing ones that I can remember.
“I’ll get it everything done as soon as I get Mr. Drake off to school.”
“Thank you, Henry.”
“Of course, sir. If there is anything else, just let me know. I will be at the office just in time for the board meeting this afternoon.”
My teeth grind at the mention of the board meeting. This is just your run of the mill board meeting, where we talk about what the quarterly numbers look like and possibly some new thing we should add to the Lane Enterprises line-up. The only reason that I’m attending is because I inherited a seat on my eighteenth birthday. I fucking hate attending them because no matter how many I have attended in the last ten years, they are boring as fuck.
The one board meeting that I will look forward to though is the one where Gerald announces his retirement.
One the day that the acting CEO is going to announce his retirement and officially stepping down from the company, all board members and executives will make their way to our Chicago downtown office for the official announcement. Not only to see Gerald off and wish him well when he actually leaves, but to also hear who Gerald picks to fill his seat either interim or permanently.
And I’m hopeful that the last part is going to be pointed at me.
Not only because I deserve it, but I also did I spend the last two years trying to convince Gerald that it would be a great idea to retire, with planting things in his head like his grandkids would love to spend time with their grandfather and how he should take his wife on a world cruise. Not only that, I also spent that same about of time being the man’s friend, just like Henry said I did.
How else was I going to earn the man’s trust? I needed to do a lot more than treat the man to lunch once a week.
If Gerald wanted to go golfing after his children and grandchildren turned him down on more than one occasion? I took him golfing to the best courses that the country had to offer.
He wanted to take his wife to this new restaurant that opened up down in Boca? I handed over my private jet and paid for their weekend away.
He wanted to talk business and ask me what my opinion was on certain acquisitions? I was his man.
In a short period of time, I not only became the man’s confidant when it came to business but also his friend that he sees almost like a son.
Was it sadistic of me to friend an eighty year old man so that I can take his job? Yes, yes it was and I will be the first to admit that I am in fact an asshole for it, but what Gerald doesn’t now, won’t hurt him.
Besides, there were a lot more genuine moments between us, not everything was a lie, I’m not that fucking cruel.
But if I wanted to make sure that the title of CEO landed on my head and not on some other bastard’s, I had to put in the work to get it done.
I have no doubt in my mind that Gerald won’t name me his replacement. What I do have doubts about is whether or not the board would vote me in.
Because of course this company has the archaic practice of holding a vote for something as big as this. Not only will everyone making a presence at the office for that specific meeting, but they are also would be holding a vote on whether or not they can agree with or veto Gerald’s choice of replacement.
There are twenty members of the board, and in this case only eighteen member would be able to vote and when that vote comes, I need ten to get the seat at the head of the company.
From the top of my head, I know I have six solid votes but that leaves four uncounted four.
Those four can make and break everything.
But what the board doesn’t know, is that I will stop at nothing to be named CEO.
This is my family’s company.
It’s fucking time that all the power goes back to where it belongs.
In the hands of a Lane, where it will stay.
No more of this shit of someone else with a different last name running the company that was so near and dear to my parents’ hearts.
One way or another, I will be CEO.
And if I have to put someone in the ground to do it, then I will.
I don’t mind getting my hands dirty.