RHO

 

 

One Week After MARCUS Troy’s Funeral

PRESENT DAY

 

The man sitting behind the desk had Adam’s features, but he wasn’t Adam. It couldn’t have been. The boy I knew would be heartbroken by the events of the past week. The boy who used to tell me every secret in his heart was no longer recognizable. The meticulously ironed clothes and the slicked back hair, and an expensive suit made him look like one of those antagonists in movies who propel the plot into the dreary depths of cynicism because of their extreme beauty and extreme cold behavior. What you’d call borderline evil.

He was dressed in a waistcoat that gave bulk to his physique, and his blue eyes looked brighter in the light of the day that poured in from window walls beyond which you could see the whole of Manhattan. He was deeply focused on reading a document and didn’t notice when I came in. “You’re a hard person to pin down,” I said, and I knew my voice was steeped in sarcasm, but I didn’t care.

He looked up and seemed happy to see me. “Stop being so mad. You know how much paperwork there is when you assume the role of acting CEO? I’m drowning here.”

“Certainly, looks like it.”

“Have a seat,” Adam said, and for a moment I saw a flicker of sentimentality in the eyes of the old Adam. I guess that boy was still there, albeit locked away behind a façade. “Can I get you anything?”

I went to sit across from him on the desk. “You’re in his chair,” I said. “Are you sure that’s how you want to do this?”

The expression on his face changed. “Rho, we were practically married. We would have been if he…was still alive.”

“You’re going to use that to your advantage after everything you told me that night? You’re going to keep pretending? For what? So, you can get the biggest raise in the history of raises? For a Swiss bank account?”

“Cayman Islands, actually, and it’s not about the money.”

“But it is about the money! You think just by sitting on that throne, you can be King?”

He reached under and grabbed a file folder and slid it across the desk. I placed my hand on it before it fell to the floor. “Take a look.”

I glanced at the file and saw a lengthy legal document. “What’s this?”

“It’s Marcus’s official will.”

It was awkward, going through the last will and testament of a dead man. I know the funeral should have done it, but somehow a will was a much powerful statement of someone’s demise.

“He left me his property,” Adam explained. “And the business. He’s the one who trained me.”

“Trained you to be a whore,” a voice spoke and we both turned to the door where Ian was standing. He lit a cigarette and started walking up to Adam. He placed his hands on the desk, glaring at Adam, blowing smoke, and smirking. Before Adam could react, I grabbed Ian from behind and pulled him away from the desk. He started to grin. “He still has you as a loyal servant, huh?”

“If I’m Marcus’s servant, what are you, Ian?”

“I didn’t mean Marcus, you dumb shit! I meant him,” he gestured to Adam. “Don’t you see the game he’s playing? When some rogue overthrows the king, he marries the richest, and most important princesses. Not the fucking kings guard!”

“What can I do for you, Ian?” Adam said, to keep Ian from getting angrier. But Ian had come there with a purpose, and he wasn’t about to give up. He looked at me again. “Do you have any idea what they made him do?” he said. “The kind of stuff he did for them?”

Adam stood and looked like he was about to burst. “I’m not going to sit here and listen to this!”

“Good,” Ian responded. “Because, I’m here to let him know.” He looked at me again. “I bet you’re dying to know, aren’t you? What they did to your innocent virgin boy? Rho, I was there. I saw it with my own two eyes. Marcus used to bring people all the time! Outsiders who fucked his whore when he wasn’t around. Adam must have given blow jobs to half the city by now. And if you think he never enjoyed it, you’d be wrong. He liked it. He liked those rich men touching him and making him do those things, and he liked it when Marcus paraded him around in front of everyone! Rho, he’s a fucking whore!”

I saw myself grabbing Ian’s shirt and hitting him, over and over again. It took me some time to realize I was doing it, it wasn’t some fantasy. I couldn’t stop. I kept going. I didn’t even know why! It was almost like I was in a trance. I don’t remember much. I remember Adam trying to get me to stop when I thought I’d killed Ian and was waiting to be arrested for it. “Rho, please stop!”

I finally did. Ian was barely conscious. He was staring at me and I didn’t know what to do. “Don’t you ever use that word again for him, you understand?” Ian was bleeding badly, and he nodded. “If you don’t want me to come finish the job later, you need to butt out of our business.”

Ian spit out blood and I let go of him and stood, and I felt Adam’s trembling hands trying to find mine. We watched Ian make it out the door and when he was gone I locked it.

“Everything he said was the truth,” Adam said.

I grabbed him and hugged him. “What they forced you to, is not your fault. And if you ended up liking it, that’s okay too. You can’t judge yourself for the way your mind decided to deal with the torture.”

“If I was...compliant they would hurt me less.”

I broke away from him. “How bad was it?”

There was a faraway look in his eyes. “Do you really want to know?”

I didn’t know if I could go on without knowing. “I have to know, Adam. I need to know. I need to understand.”

He looked like he was no longer with me. Those memories were haunting him again, I could feel it. “It was just torture,” Adam began. “They wouldn’t let me sleep for days, so my defenses were low, and so I’d be more, subdued I guess. Keep me locked up in a room for days, without human interaction. He would decide the time I could have a meal, or go to the bathroom. This one time, Marcus started choking me until I passed out, and then he let me gain consciousness only to do it again. Sometimes, they would just beat me, and I kept begging him to stop, but he would keep going. Sometimes, they all...they all joined in. And that would be so much worse,” he had tears in his eyes. His voice was heavy, choked up. “I went through this for months. Not weeks, not days, months. All because Marcus wanted me to stop thinking about you. He wanted to hear me say you were nothing, and I belonged to him. I knew he couldn’t control what was in my heart, but he wanted control of my mind. My body. That’s all that mattered to him.

“I tried, Rho, I tried holding on to you, your memories; I tried to fight him, but it was too much. I just wanted the suffering to end. I couldn’t take it anymore, so I accepted defeat. I told him what he wanted to hear. I kept telling him, for the next few months. He didn’t stop torturing me, but at least he stopped sending me to the others. And the torture must have been cut down by half. In my situation, that was a win.”

There was silence again. I struggled to find words.

“Sometimes I don’t have words to console you. What could I possibly say that wouldn’t sound like platitude?”

“You don’t have to say anything.”

“This is all my fault. No matter how you look at it, I can’t stop thinking about it. I feel like I don’t have the right to say anything in my defense. I don’t have the right to ask you for forgiveness.”

“Rho, I never blamed you. Not even for a day.”

“Why?”

“This is all on Marcus. He did this, he broke us apart.”

“Ian really saw everything?”

He smiled morosely. “To be fair, he frequently used to help. I don’t know what came over him. Why he’s so angry?”

“Grief makes people do weird things.”

“I guess.”

“Adam, you realize if Ian continues to spew bullshit about you, it might be harder to convince everyone you’re not the enemy here.”

He was lost in thought.

I couldn’t stop myself. “Did you really kill him?”

He was quiet. No expression on his face, nothing that could give me insight.

“Do you want to know because you’re afraid of me? Or because you think I’m not worthy of you?”

“Adam you’ll always be worthy. And I’m not afraid of you.”

“You say that now—”

“Adam, for fuck sake! I know you didn’t do it. You didn’t kill Marcus, but you know who did. And maybe they threatened you, or maybe you went along with some bullshit plan some conspirator came up with, and now it’s fucking you up.”

He spoke up after a long pause. “You know what was the worst part of what happened?” he said. “It’s not the beatings, or the pain, or the nightmares. It was the humiliation. The shame of being treated like a lesser being. You don’t get over it. For as long as I’ll live, I will feel their cruelty, I will go through it a million times in my head, the helplessness and the shock of finding myself in the hands of the man who was supposed to be my father.” He was still looking away. “I feel like I will never get away from them. I hate that! I just want to forget, Rho! But I can’t!”

It bugged me to no end, I didn’t even know how to help him. How do you help someone who is still trapped in a prison of their past? How do you free someone whose heart has been shattered? I couldn’t even comprehend the loneliness and pain he still had to go through. The more I saw Adam in pain, the less guilty I felt about beating up that bastard Ian. “Is this why you want revenge so bad?” I said. “Because you think you’ll get closure?” 

“I don’t know,” he said truthfully. “It’s worth a shot, isn’t it?”

The pain in his eyes broke my heart.