CHAPTER TWO: TAUNTING

LUCIAN

The picture in in my mind hadn’t faded, one bit.

Even in ten years, across two continents, through a dozen boarding schools and three university campuses where I’d left pieces of myself scattered, like loosed thread.

I could still see the boy my father had brought home that night, the so called trophy from his bloody hunt, trembling by the corner of the house.

I was eight years old then. Old enough to understand that something terrible had happened, but too young to grasp why my father had returned with someone else’s son.

The memory was still too sharp. I remembered how the boy had stood there in the marble entryway, his clothes too big for his frame, while he just stare at the space his body shaking uncontrollably.

He didn’t speak for three days. Not even a single word. The housekeeper thought he was mute until she heard him crying in the bathroom at two in the morning.

I’d pressed my ear to my bedroom door that night and listened. But not out of sympathy. I was eight, and sympathy at that time was never in my dictionary.

The boy—Ceal, that was his name, the one I kept forgetting and had to depend on Jordan to remind me. He had avoided me badly then.

Whenever I entered a room, he found a corner to press himself into, as if the walls might swallow him if he pushed hard enough. His room, the one my father had assigned him on the third floor, became his coffin. He’d sit on the bed with his knees drawn up to his chest and stare at the door for hours. Waiting for what, I never asked.

I should have asked. Maybe things would be different now.

He had tried the escape all many times, and each one more foolish than the last. The first time, he tried to climb out his window using bedsheets tied together—a trick he’d clearly learned from movies because the knots gave way before he’d descended ten feet, and he hit the shrubbery with a crash that brought four guards running. The second time, he tried the front door in the middle of the night, barefoot and still in his pajamas, as if the security detail might have collectively decided to abandon their posts. The third time, he made it as far as the perimeter wall before one of the dogs cornered him, and after that, something in him seemed to break.

He stopped trying, crying. He stopped doing much of anything except existing.

I wondered, sometimes, why my father kept him. What purpose did a terrified ten-year-old serve in an organization built on fear and leverage? But I never asked that question either. I didn't have to.

Then I was sent away. Ten years in the diaspora—Geneva first, then London, then Milan for the final stretch. The internship at my father’s Milan office taught me how to smile at men who would have slit my throat if the family name didn’t protect me.

And within those years old learned something so many things.

And now, a decade later, my father had finally called me home.

“Sir, we’ll be landing in approximately five minutes, so I’ll need you to return your seat to the upright position and fasten your belt.” The flight attendant’s voice was practiced honey, her head slightly bow. I waved a hand without looking at her.

Five minutes.... The flight had passed faster than I’d expected. Since the beginning of the flight, I had I’d stretched out with my legs propped on the ottoman, scrolling through reports from the Milan office, occasionally staring at the ceiling and letting my mind drift toward the boy I’d left behind in my father’s house.

Not a boy anymore, I reminded myself.

He’d be what—twenty-five now? Same age as me, give or take.

I sat up slowly, and my spine protested with a series of cracks that ran from my lower back all the way to my neck. Sitting still for hours did that. Made the body forget itself.

“Shit,” I muttered, rolling my shoulders to shake the stiffness loose.

Across the cabin, Jordan was still asleep. My personal assistant, hired fresh out of business school with a résumé that promised competence and a face that promised he’d never talk back, he’d proven useful enough to keep around, if only because he absorbed my moods without shattering. Right now he was slumped in his seat. I’d worked him hard since last night, ranging from cancelled flights, rerouted meetings, a dozen last-minute demands that had him running on fumes and espresso—and it showed in the dark circles beneath his eyes.

The plane’s wheels touched down with a jolt that sent Jordan’s head snapping forward. It hit the seat in front of him with a satisfying thunk, and he came awake sputtering, all flailing limbs and confusion.

I didn’t laugh. I smiled, though. Just a little.

“We’re here,” I said, unclipping my belt and rising before the plane had fully made to a stop.

Jordan scrambled to his feet, already reaching for the luggage. Three heavy bags, each one stuffed with heavy items.

The flight attendant straightened her blouse and tried to look presentable, but I’d already dismissed her from my attention. She wasn’t interesting. Most people weren’t.

“Sir, we’re here,” Jordan said, hefting the bags onto his shoulders with a grunt.

“I know, dummy. You were the one sleeping.”

He flushed but didn’t respond. One of the reasons I kept him—he knew when silence was the smarter play.

I walked toward the cabin door, which the flight attendant had already opened. The stairs descended to the tarmac, and as I stepped out, the air hit me. Italy. The nostalgia settled over me.

Behind me, Jordan was struggling with the bags. I didn’t offer to help. He’d slept when I hadn’t, and fair was fair.

“Sir, there are still more bags on the plane,” he called after me, his voice strained.

“Of course. When you load these into the car, you’ll go back and get the rest.”

I heard him mutter something under his breath. It's either a curse or a prayer but I didnt care anymore.

The tarmac stretched toward the private terminal, but my attention snagged on something closer. A flower stand at the far end, near the entrance to the arrivals lounge.

The vendor was an old woman, probably in her lates sixties.

“Do you think I should get flowers?” I asked, pointing toward the stand.

Jordan, still struggling with the bags, followed my gesture. “For Master Adrian?”

“No.” I sucked my teeth. “For his slave.”

“His sl—” Jordan stopped himself mid-syllable as understanding dawned.

“It’s a good idea,” Jordan said, though his tone suggested he thought the opposite.

I changed direction walking towards the stand. “I want to buy him something welcoming. A gesture.”

“How about roses?” Jordan asked, breathing hard now, the bags digging into his shoulders while my hands stayed in my pockets.

“No. That’s boring.” I scanned the buckets, letting my gaze drift across the blossoms until it settled on a cluster of chrysanthemums.

“What about those?”

Jordan squinted. “Chrysanthemums?”

A smile spread across my lips. “Yes. They have a good meaning. And you’ll write the note.”

“The note?”

I turned to face him fully, and something in my expression must have shifted because he took a half-step backward, nearly dropping one of the bags.

“What should the note say?” he asked, his voice carefully neutral.

I plucked the bunch of chrysanthemums from the bucket and handed them to the old woman, who took my cash without meeting my eyes.

“Write this,” I said, watching Jordan fumble for a pen in his jacket pocket while the bags threatened to pull him off balance. “Three words. All caps.”

He uncapped the pen and held it poised over the back of a receipt he’d pulled from his wallet.

I let the smile widen, just enough to show teeth.

“I HOPE YOU DIE.”

The pen hovered. Jordan didn’t write for a long moment, and I saw the question forming behind his lipz. I knew he was probably waiting for me to say am joking, but am not.

I meant everything I say.