Page 6 of Love in the Dark
He’s signing paperwork when I march in, clearly unbothered by the nearly thirty minutes I’ve made him wait.
His cold eyes – the same color of clear blue he passed on to me – lift to meet mine but no emotion flickers in their vast emptiness as he takes me in. He looks back down at his desk and finishes signing the remaining documents.
“Sit,” he orders.
“Just tell me what you plan on doing to me so we can get this over with. No need to draw this out like I enjoy being in your company,” I snarl.
A smile curls the corner of his lips as he closes his folder and I know I’m fucked.
“I called in a favor,” he announces, settling his elbows on the armrests of his chair and leaning back to look at me.
He’s going to make me ask him, the asshole.
“From whom?” I bite out through clenched teeth.
“Robert Royal.”
We’ve never met, but I know the name. More importantly, I know the reputation. He’s a certified psychopath and, if the rumors are true, he knows more about the dark art of conjugal violence than even my father does. My back is up just hearing his name in relation to mine.
“He’s on the board of the Royal Crown Academy in Aubonne. You’ve heard of it?”
Of course, I have. In an effort to forcefully mold me into the stuffy businessman he wanted me to be, my father had put me through the British private school system and we often played against RCA.
Back then, I still thought he cared about me, about this family. I’d bent the knee, suffocated my own dreams and passions, and I’d tried. I’d had a successful first year and when I’d come home for the summer, I’d caught my father slapping my mother across the face.
He’d seen me. Instead of apologizing, he’d given me a terrifying smile and told me to “watch and learn because I’d need to discipline my own wife one day.”
Then he’d hit her again.
I was fifteen and I went off the deep end. Drugs, alcohol, parties, limitless access to money, and zero impulse control had become my life. I’d gotten kicked out of three schools before my father eventually threw enough money at the problem that a fourth let me graduate. I graduated from UCL but only because I hid from my family the fact that I took as many art classes as I did business ones.
I’d done anything and everything to rebel, to piss him off, because even then I’d understood that the worst thing I could do to him was ruin his name and plans for succession.
“I’m a little old to go back to secondary school,” I tell him, my tone mocking.
“You’re just old enough to teach,” he declares, delivering his punishment with the swiftness of a gavel on a sound block.
I audibly laugh at that one, but it’s a humorless sound. The smile slips off my face when his remains impassive. “You’re joking.”
Whatever I was expecting, it wasn’t this.
“You start in September.”
“You want me to go teachkids? Me?” I scoff. “How does that help in any way? What am I supposed to learn from this?”
“Responsibility,” he answers, contempt dripping from every word. “Humility. Maturity. How to clean up your act. How to avoid the press. I want you to fucking disappear, Tristan. I don’t want to hear from you for the year you’re there.”
“Ayear?”
“A year,” he repeats, his tone uncompromising. “I’ve had enough of your childish rebellions and I won’t have you destroying the family name or reputation any longer. Your apartment has been sold and your things are being moved out as we speak. I’m also revoking access to your trust. You’ll live out the year on your teacher’s salary.” He pauses, smirking at me. “You should thank me for sending you to a private school instead of a public school where you would have been making minimum wage.”
I shake my head, voicing my refusal. “I won’t do it. If you force me to, last week’s performance will look like child’s play compared to what I’ll do in Switzerland.” I add, my threat clear.
“You’ll do it if you want to see your mother again.”
I stiffen, my gaze slamming into his dead one as the true horror of his chosen punishment slams into me.
“What?”