Ten
Leo
When his father demanded Leo’s presence, he knew straight off the bat that the filthy bastard was up to his old mind games.
Because that was what George Itani did.
Loved to rile the nest, fuck Leo up some more, but at this point in life, Leo wondered what he could possibly have left to ruin. He was…estranged from himself. He felt like a shadow: like he was a visible outline of himself, but nothing solid. You could see him, but you couldn’t touch him.
“He’s in his bedroom,” Shane had told him upon arriving at the estate.
“I’ll wait for him in the foyer,” Leo had responded.
“No,” Shane replied tiredly, glancing at him through the rear-view mirror. “He means for you to see him while he is in there.”
They looked at one another for a long beat, exchanging stares that read: here we fucking go again.
“Remember,” Shane added before he got out, “appear off-guard. He doesn’t know what we know. Let the bastard think he’s one step ahead.”
Leo nodded.
The morning was dark and dreary, and it was pissing down rain. Leo was immediately saturated as he stepped out of the car and strode up the grand, porch steps. It was eerily quiet, not at all lively like it usually was in the warmer months.
No, this giant mansion was usually bursting with guests and functions—don’t get Leo fucking started on the goddamn functions.
Fundraisers.
Meetings.
Business negotiations.
Ridiculous grand parties where booze flowed, and every man of power tried to appear like the most important one in the fucking room.
All things that could have been done in the quiet, but that was the High Table for you. Always looking for ways to flaunt wealth and glamour, and Leo played his part, smiled his charming smiles, did everything he was taught to do—
And—He—Fucking—Hated—It.
This would all be his in due time, he assured himself as he stepped into the house and was immediately led up the spiral staircase by a waiting guard.
This could not go on forever.
Something had to change.
And his plan was set in motion.
He felt wary when the guard took him straight to his father’s master bedroom. The man didn’t stick around, either. He left Leo standing at the door before returning to the bottom floor of the house. Other men patrolled this floor and knowing it wouldn’t be wise to linger—to let them catch on to his hesitancy because he fucking dreaded seeing this cunt—Leo let out a long breath and opened it.
He immediately wished he hadn’t.
Dripping of sweat, his father had just fucked a girl and was fetching a robe from a nearby armchair. The room felt stuffy, the scent thick with his father’s spent arousal. It was nauseating, disgusting, like a closed tomb of musk, cologne and come. Leo glanced fleetingly at the girl, lips pursed with disdain. The girl couldn’t have been older than him. Tall, sickly thin, her dark hair flowed all around her, covering her nude curves as she startled at the sight of Leo. She didn’t hide under the covers—these girls from Madame Prim’s House were taught to always be put on display—but she did look back at George, waiting for her dismissal. More like pleading. She had not enjoyed herself—who the fuck did when George’s tastes had morphed viciously over the years?
None of this was the most unsettling part.
The young girl, the harsh sex, the grotesque scent—they weren’t what made Leo’s stomach churn.
No, it was that his mother—immobile, handicapped, bedridden—was forced in the centre of the room to watch it from her make-shift bed.
George delighted in this, loved to torture his once unfaithful wife.