Gerald stares at me from across the room as I sit on the pristine couch on top of a fluffy towel that had been spread on it so that I won’t accidentally stain it with blood.That is still steadily dripping from the various cuts on my person.Coraline sits next to me, dabbing a ball of cotton to the deepest ones on my face, specifically my forehead and cheeks. There is a small dustbin on the ground next to her, half filled with used, red-stained cotton. On her lap is a first aid kid, haphazardly put together by Gerald who’d run to the pharmacy nearest to the hotel after Coraline and I came crashing into his hotel room, her shocked and trying to support my weight while I tried to stay upright.“What the hell happened?” Gerald questions, still panting a bit from his run to the pharmacy.“A bar fight,” I answer with a wince, and Coraline tsks.“Don’t move your head,” she advises, discarding the pink-stained cotton ball and taking another from the packet in her other hand, “I just got this
“Hey, I was wondering if you had two college-aged kids, a girl and a boy stowed away in here. They got in a barfight at my workplace, and I just want to see if they got into even more trouble after I snuck them out!” A familiar voice word-vomits right in front of Gerald, who is frozen at the door, and the abject fear I felt of seeing the NYPD at the door vanishes into an exhale of relief. “Lemon!” Coraline crows and the man himself pokes his head around Gerald to give us a grin. Lemon is still in his work clothes, but his apron had been ditched, and there was a hair band keeping the scarlet strands from compromising his vision.“Hey there, you two. I was just dropping in to check if you made it back alright. I wondered if you ran into the cops or went to a hospital.”“How did you find where we are?” Gerald questions, his expression shady. He looks at Lemon with confusion marring his features. I don’t blame him; Lemon is a metaphorical human hurricane. His exuberant energy is almost
Lemon is right. The next day, the bruises become nasty, purple swellings, and everyone stares. It’s horrible and I feel like a show pony. But hey, I made this bed, so I am going to have to lie on it. People come up to me to ask what the hell happened to me, but in more polite terms, and leave me with their sympathetic remarks after I lie to them that I got mugged the night before. That is what Gerald ordered me to say because he did not want any potential clients of our company to get the wrong idea that the COO of Zelt Tech was an adrenaline junkie who went out of his way to get involved in barfights with frat boys. “Whatever you do, do not let them know that you actually hit someone else. Make yourself to be the victim, they dig things like that.” Gerald had told me, and I had stared at him because a.) he said ‘dig’ and b.) that made no sense. “I was under the impression that strength and endurance are important assets for an executing officer,” I’d pointed out, and Gerald had sco
For a moment, silence dawns. I wonder if I had heard him wrong.And then…“You graduated high school at fifteen?” Coraline questions at the same time I exclaim, “you’ve been traveling around since you were fifteen?!”“Yes, I did. But no, not really. That started later,” he chirps in answer to both the questions, “could’ve gotten out at fourteen if the teachers had let me skip another year, but noooo, they had to argue that I needed positive childhood experiences. What the hell is positive about high school, huh? The bullies? The snotty cheerleaders and too-good-for-you nerds? All those awfully stereotypes that unfortunately exist, along with teachers who could not care less! School was so boring, so I got done with it as soon as I could! Mom wanted me to go to college, and I wanted to study more too, so I did. Got a bachelor’s done, but as I was getting ready to start graduate school something happened that I absolutely refuse to talk about because of childhood trauma and whatever, so
The trip back to Clandestine city is uneventful at best. We miss the plane at the airport because of, embarrassingly, traffic, so we have to take a train. But after that, it’s all smooth sailing, and by nighttime, we have arrived at Clandestine city.I have to admit that after the blur that was New York, Clandestine city feels calm, and serene like a breath of fresh air. The clock strikes midnight by the time we arrive home, and I ask Gerald and Coraline just to crash at my father’s house rather than brave a trip to their respective homes this late at night. Besides, there is plenty of space to accommodate anyone in the big estate, and the prospect of not being alone for the night is soothing.The sleep that night is dreamless, but it takes some time for it to come. I find myself lying in bed, thinking about everything that has happened in the last few days in detail. I think of the bar fight, and the eclectic bartender we’d met. I wonder if he will seriously come to Clandestine city
The relationship between me and my father is not the best. They aren’t the worse either, because we do talk from time to time, and I know plenty of children estranged from their fathers who never talk with one another. Heck, even I was like that just months ago.Compared to then, our relationship had made leaps and bounds at the present.But there is still an awkwardness in our interactions. I have a feeling that my father doesn’t really know how to deal with being a father, and honestly, I can’t blame the guy for it. He didn’t raise me, at all. Maybe that was my mother's fault. In her anger, she barred my father from even seeing me in my younger days, and walking in her footsteps, I refused to meet him. I feel guilty about it now whenever I see him.That is until he opens his mouth and raves about how he wants me to be his heir. In those moments, I feel like the only reason he even wants me around is just to be a mini-him and take over the company. And because those kinds of topics d
“News?” I blink at him. What kind of news did he have for me? The last time he had news for me, I ended up the COO of his company, and that is something I’m still miffed about because of the sheer havoc it wreaked on my schedule. But that is beside the point, so I focus on the present and give him an expectant look.“Yes.” He nods to emphasize his point, “while I believe that none of my alleged enemies are behind the recent shootings, I don’t know exactly who is behind it. But there is a pattern in their shootings and the victims. I realized as soon as I landed and read the reports that almost all of them are related to Zelt Tech one way or another, hence, it can be concluded that the shooters are specifically targeting employees of Zelt Tech.”“An astute observation, father.” I can’t help but provide. It’s not like I had been telling him about the exact same thing for the last few minutes. No, he came to that conclusion all by himself.Unbelievable. How on earth are we even related?
I tried to deny my father. I tried to hold my foot down and demand him to take his favors elsewhere and leave me alone here to deal with my actual job and enjoy the summer for god’s sake. I was not his puppet. I could not just drop everything in my life here and haul ass to the freaking middle of nowhere Montana to oversee building a hotel. I’m not a contractor, I knew next to nothing about building stuff. I studied business, not hotel building!And on top of it all, Gerald would not be coming with me.“I can’t let one of my CEOs follow you to babysit you,” my father tells me when I ask if he will be coming with me, “Gerald got enough work to do here than follow you around the country.”“I’m the freaking COO of the company Gerald is CEO in. Last I checked the chief of operations in a company should be there to witness the said operations!”“Someone else will take that position until you return.”“What?!”“I got plenty of people under my employment capable of taking over you for a smal