Scoundrel's birthright

I heard about Dad’s death from the news.

It’s not the way most people hear about that sort of thing, but it’s exactly how I expected to find out.

His face has been staring out from every available screen since then, people thronging around them like flies to honey. I’ve seen tears. Real tears. Tears from people who probably hadn’t even shared the same air with him. Strangers kneeling in the streets and sobbing into jacket sleeves and newspapers as reporters all over the world scramble to write the best coverage of such a miraculous man. 

Those words scratch like needles in my ears every time I catch them. Hero. Inspiration. The man who truly had everything.

Every corner I turn, there he is; picture after picture of his success. His boats, his art, his houses, all smushed together to some god-awful pop song so every soul on the planet can remember this man with his perfect fucking life and his perfect fucking family. Every single one ended exactly the same way-

“Hard to believe this brand worth billions all started from an idea formed in an alley behind his local pub.” 

And you too could be so lucky! Just follow his story and even a random nobody like yourself can have more wealth than a small country and the ability to fly to space if you just really buckle down.

Work hard. Dream harder. I’d seen his twee little catchphrase plastered on everything from t-shirts to bumper stickers. Hell, even I’d done my share of thirteen hour shifts printing those letters when I was really desperate for cash. Every hour on the hour his face would pop up on an automated screen above us, smiling down like some malevolent God and telling us how we were such integral cogs in his machine. People would clap without fail every time, rolling their eyes when I laughed.

“Some people just don’t want to be better.”

I quit on the spot after that.

My own tears for that man had dried up decades ago. The few people that know me properly hadn’t dared ask how I felt after it happened. I know my face hadn’t changed when the details of the accident were released, how some bad winds plummeted his jet taking his wife and children with him. There wasn’t an ounce of feeling I could dredge up, just a black spot in my mind where the sympathy should be. 

The rest of the world seemed to have that covered anyway. Anguish and praise overflowed like the champagne, people messy and drunk on the golden legacy he’d left in the dust of his accident. 

It almost made me laugh at how absurdly perfect it was. A man from nowhere and through nothing but the sweat on his brow he built himself a golden palace of success. And then he died- both young and tragically. 

Frankly, it was genius. Makes me wonder if that bastard planned it somehow. Now there wasn’t a single blemish anyone could ever muster to tarnish his fantasy.

The fantasy that was apparently my duty to keep alive now.

***

I was high when the members of his board finally got to me. I don’t remember the conversation, but a hotel bed sounded a lot better than the tarmac of the playground I’d been crashing on for god-knows how long.

I’ve been pretty much confined to his gaudy suite ever since. If I open my door a crack, I can still hear the suits next door frantically arguing about how they’re going to clean me up enough for the funeral and keep the idea of this ‘family business’ alive.

I fish my last pack of ciggs from my bag and head out the service exit. I can still hear the crowd waiting out the front, desperate to catch a glimpse of his “secret successor.” I cringe at the title, like I was some covert backup plan he’d hidden all along.

I could run out onto the street right now and scream about what a shit he was and it still wouldn’t matter. How he’d erected a wall stronger than any fortress in his mind so he could pretend life before his first success never existed. So much so that he didn’t even dane to show his face at my mother’s funeral.

It’s already dark as I duck into a loading bay round the back. It’s become a bit of a safe haven over the last few days, the mismatched walls and grey faces of the staff a bit more my speed. I instantly regret not bringing my jacket as the chill of the January night bites into my exposed skin. Pulling my shirt tighter around my torso, I sweep a fine layer of snow off an old moving palette and sit down, glad to be out of his hotel for a moment.

No. My hotel?

The thought still makes my head spin. I thought I could just cut myself a cheque and run from this circus, but apparently that wasn’t how it was going to work. 

Now I have to be the good little puppet and play my part for him. 

“Light?”

I flinch at how close the voice is from me. Turning to the side, I see someone else leaning in my dark little corner, holding a small lighter out towards me. 

I blink a few times, very sure I was alone when I sat down. The man doesn’t budge as I silently look around, not a footprint to be seen in the snow around us.

When I look back, he’s moved closer, his face just a fraction too near. I’m not sure if I’m meant to recognise him as one of the countless execs I’d talked to over the past few days, but nothing about him is familiar. His face seems almost impossibly old, the pale sag of his cheeks tracked with dozens of deep lines like the work of an eager cat on a sanded scratching post. A pair of small dark eyes watch me intensely, both shaking like skittering beetles in their sockets as I stay rooted to the palette. 

He’s wrapped in a black pea coat that looks like it cost more than the room I’m staying in, but it’s doing little to hide the wiry frame underneath. His stance almost reminds me of the house plants my mother stopped watering after everything happened- sad and impossibly fragile. He keeps his hand extended as I eye him, his self-assured smile not faltering. “Just looks like you could really use one,” he continues, eyes flicking down to the cigarette dangling from my lips.

There’s no doubt to the sandpapery rasp of his voice, no award tiptoe to his expression like all the other stuffed shirts had whenever they were forced to talk to me.

I push the cig further into my mouth, leaning forward a little so his face flashes red and orange through the flame. “Uh- sure.”

My nose wrinkles as his wrist brushes closer, the smell from his coat almost overpowering in its intensity- some unsettlingly savoury mix like ash and tanned leather. He leans away after it’s lit, pulling his own pack from the pocket of his coat.

“Should you really be smoking at your age?” I mumble, exhaling a thin cloud of smoke in front of me.

He laughs. It grates like a failing car engine. “Should you?” 

I give a curt smile as he lights his own cigarette, turning away to look at the uneven stonework of the wall. I can almost feel his gaze lingering on me as I inhale again, like a cold hand on the back of my neck. His expression is the same cool smirk as I turn back, the lighter flipping idly between his gloved fingers. 

“Lot of people would kill to be in your position right now, you know?” 

My anger is sharp at the words but I keep still. “I’m am really not in the fucking mood to talk about that,” I mumur, each word spitting out a puff of chilled fog.

The man shakes his head. “Don’t worry. I’m not with that lot out front. I’m just in town for the funeral.” He taps the ash from the end of his cigarette almost rhythmically. “Unlike them I actually knew him.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Old friend?”

“Business partner actually. I’m mainly back to collect something he owes me.” 

I sigh, shifting against the uncomfortable wood of the palette. “Bit late for that I think.”

“Oh no. I’m right on time.”

The soft arrogance of his words shoot an uncomfortable shiver through me, something much colder than the chill seeping through my shoes. I smile awkwardly again as I stand, hoping the alley towards the kitchen would afford me a bit more peace and quiet.

“You know, he was the most insufferable little shit when I met him.” 

I pause at his words. People never had anything bad to say about that world’s golden boy. Even my mother refused, her anger slowly eating her from the inside out until she all but disintegrated like chalk in front of me.

“Pretty sure he was the same when he died,” he continues smoothly. “When I met him, he asked if I could give him the life he was owed.”

I almost choke on the laugh caught in my throat. There’s no humour to it.

“Well he got it,” I say quietly, wincing as my fingernails dig red little crescents into my palm.

A light flashes through a window on the opposite wall, the man’s shadow casting pointed and long for a brief moment. “You really think he was owed it?”

Owed it. Like that fucker was owed anything

I barely remember the life when he was still around. There are moments, pinpricks from my childhood I’ve tried to burn away with as much alcohol as I could get my hands on: the wet smell of the carpet, a dining table that didn’t stand quite right, the feel of my pillow pressed over my face to drown out the voices that raged like a wildfire downstairs. 

After is much more clear.

I’d known it was a good day when I’d wake up to sandwiches in the kitchen. Days like that, Mum would usually be sober enough to drive me to school or to the park, sometimes she’d even press the last of her spare change into my palm for an ice cream so she could lay down in the grass to help with her headaches.

On the bad days though...

I drop my cigarette and smash it firmly under my feet.

“Doesn’t matter. He’s dead now.” I hope the flint in my voices signals clearly enough that the conversation is over

“Well it’s all yours now anyway.” He stands upright from the wall, regarding me with those  manically sparkling eyes. “All that wealth, fame, love. Nice to have, isn’t it?” 

I laugh coldly. “I don’t want anything to do with that piece of shit.”

He shrugs, dropping his own cigarette. “Well then. Burn it all,” he continues casually. “Liquidate everything. Tank his empire and walk away.”

It takes me a second to process his words. I’d never even thought of that as a possibility. Every one of his drones had just pushed the same recycled spiel about the number of zeroes that could add to my bank account if I just read from their little script.

I swallow. “Is that even possible?” 

He pulls a black handkerchief from his pocket and carefully brushes the corner of his mouth. “Oh definitely. And I can help you either way.”

I feel the wind pick up around us as he stares me down, that same pungent ugly scent now fanning coldly into my face.

I take a definite step back. “Who… are you?”

“I told you. I’m just a business partner.” His smile lingers on me for a second more before he quickly turns on his heels. “Decide what you want and come find me. Those leeches on the board won’t touch you until I say so.”

His words hover in the air long after he’s disappeared towards the street. I turn them over in my mind as I make my way back to my room until I’m sure I’ve worn them through.

I could do it. I could take every ill-gotten gain that bastard accrued and destroy it right in front of every slack-jawed bootlicker that followed him. I feel myself smile against my pillow a little. No money, no company- sure it would be some kind of cruel act to take all those jobs but somehow it didn’t dull the sweet vision of imagining the torment on my father’s face in whatever corner of hell he’s rotting in.

As I roll over, I feel sharp pain shoot from my back tooth like I’d just touched a live wire. I convulse in pain, grunting in the dark as I root through the bedside drawer for the new bottle of painkillers. I pause for a second as I swallow down two pills raw. The ache had been getting steadily worse for the past few months, only now had I been able to actually get someone to look at them.

Flicking on the lamp, I look at myself in the mirror hanging on the opposite wall. Something about the reflected image just seems all wrong. The duvet is pristine, the wallpaper shining and gold, the flowers on the bedside table fresh. And then there was me right in the middle, as tattered and out of place as a stray dog on a velvet cushion.

I immediately switch off the light and curl into a tighter ball. That money could actually give me a life, a real life. Before yesterday, I can barely remember the last time someone actually looked me in the eye. Now those same people who crossed the street wherever they saw me sleeping are ready to grovel at my feet for acclaim. I can’t deny how sickeningly good that feels too.

I think about the papers that the board had pushed in front of me yesterday with some syrupy but stern words. Not a word about his past. All I’d have to do is roll over and take his name and everything else would be done for me.

The thought is nauseating- but the thought of being treated as an actual person? Not so much.

I haven’t been given a single kindness over the past twenty years, least of all from my father. Was it really so selfish to think I might be owed something? 

“He asked if I could give him the life he was owed.”

I shut my eyes tighter, the pills finally taking the edge of the sharp ache in the mouth as I drift.

What life was I owed? More importantly, what was I willing to do to get it?

***

I turn the printed eulogy over and over in my hands until the paper starts to feather.

The service starts soon, but I’m ducked around the side of the funeral parlour, desperate to get away from the almost comically large group of mourners waiting by the gates. No one had dared to say a word to me, but I can still feel their eyes boring into me loud and hungry. 

If one more person tells me what ‘a great man,’ my father was, then I’m going to break something.

“Ready to send him off?”

The rasp is instantly familiar.

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” I say calmly, looking up to greet the old man standing a few feet away from me. He looks the same, save for the coat now opened to reveal a pristine crimson suit underneath. “Did you get what you came for?” 

He chuckles. “Oh yes.”

“So what was it?.” 

“When we made our business arrangement, I told him I only wanted two things. One then and one I’d collect later.” 

“What was the first?”

He tilts his head, running a gloved finger against his thin bottom lip. “I wanted to hear out of his own mouth that he’d be perfectly okay knowing that thousands of people would crumble so he could climb. And if he said yes, there would never be another person who would ever beat him at his own game.”

I exhale sharply through my nose. “He would have sold his soul for something like that.”

The man’s face twists into a more crooked smile as he shakes his head. “You really think that man had a soul to sell in the first place?”

I laugh softly. It’s a cold sound. “Not while I knew him.”

Bell ringing peels through the air around us, causing the birds to erupt from the bare trees in a shifting black clump behind him. He gestures to the gate behind us, “I think it’s time for you to take your place.”

I turn and watch the gates swing open, throngs of strangers trampling onto the grass with the same gusto as antsy shoppers waiting for Black Friday. I know they aren’t here for the service.

It’s a strange feeling knowing who they’re really here for.

I turn back to the man, my gut twisting a little as I do. “What did you really come back for?”

The man raises a sparse eyebrow. “Tell me what you want to do about your own little predicament and I’ll tell you what it cost him.” The air tastes like ozone around us as he calmly folds his arms.

I want to pretend, to at least try and look conflicted or hum and sigh as I watch the people stomp around the funeral ground with insatiable eyes and clinging hands. I don’t do any of that. 

That man had his empire and I know exactly where that gaudy crown should go now.

“Fine,” I say confidently, screwing the eulogy between my hands and looking straight into those unsettlingly black eyes. “Let’s deal.”