Page 31 of Kings of Lust
‘What do you know about Ferris?’ Brax asked, placing a cigarette in his mouth and lighting it.
‘That he’s usually isolated, a loner... I don’t even know where to start. It’s like he’s constantly in agony.’
‘That’s because he probably is,’ a deep sigh escaped him. A sign of weakness so unusual from a man like him.
I could tell from the intonation of his words and, the crisp pain reflected in his pupils, that he was living Ferris’s pain alongside him. ‘I’ve known Ferris for as long as I’ve known myself. I can’t put a date to when we first met. Maybe in preschool. Maybe even before that. He didn’t use to be like this... like he is now. But life changed him. What happened to his family changed him.’
I had a feeling that the tragedy that contributed to his anguish didn’t involve only Ferris, and as Brax began speaking about it, a coil of fear for what he was about to say crossed my body.
‘They say money brings misery. I guess sometimes that’s true, and I carry a part of the guilt for everything that happened. Call it family heritage. You see, there are people that always want more. So much more that they never know when to stop. It’s in their nature. Human nature in general. Except that some of them push that nature to its absolute limits. Someone such as my father. He was never a bad man, but his ambitions often clouded his judgment.
I don’t know if you are aware of how things work around here, but Echo City is divided into several areas. Unofficially of course. More like street territories.
My family doesn’t own all of those territories, but we do own the majority. Fuck, I’m ram-bling. What family!? I...Iown the majority of that turf.’
‘What happened to your father?’
‘He died. Had a stroke. I’ll get to that. Anyway, my father wanted to team up with some big shot from another city. Some kind of alliance to secure us with enough manpower to take over the whole of Echo City. But he made a mistake, in choosing the worst possible person to team up with, Benjamin West. My father thought he would get into the man’s good books if he would provide different information to him. As to who’s who and how much dope they have in their bank accounts. Ferris’s family was one of his slip-ups. He bragged about being friends with the Ayers, and how their international company branches will shortly raise the city’s value. Therefore, helping him take full control of the Pit was a project worth investing in. Only Benjamin wasn’t interested in my father. He wanted toinvestdirectly in the company. Or better said, make it his own.
He made the Ayers an offer to sell at a price that seemed like a joke. They refused, of course, so he got to a few board members from the company, who didn’t turn out to be as hard to be convinced as Ferris’s parents were. With that being settled, he only needed the Ayers gone. Benjamin ordered a hit on them. Ferris’s entire family was killed and he-’
‘He got two bullets in the chest. That’s why he has the scars.’ The flashback of the two silvery marks on his chest exploded in my mind, freeing an overwhelming grief to flood my soul.
‘You know about those. How could you not?’ He let out a smile that was implying he already realized how I got to see the marks, but his thick lips quickly turned into a thin line as he was preparing to continue the story. ‘It was a miracle he survived. A miracle that fucked up Benji’s plans since Ferris ended up inheriting the company. I also helped bring Benji’s chances to zero after I disposed of the members of the board that had made deals with him.
You know what’s worse? I don’t think Ferris really survived, at least not the old Ferris.
I went to see him every single day. At the hospital and the house. He was so changed that I couldn’t recognize him any longer. It was like every single fucking time I was trying to get close he was building his walls higher and higher around him. Then one day, he asked me to kill him. He couldn’t handle the nightmares anymore, always dreaming of the night his family died.
I saw it in his eyes, he was going to do it if I wouldn’t. I felt needed to get him committed into a fancy recovery institution. He was there for six fucking months. They said they fixed him, as much as he could be fixed, but when he returned, he didn’t want to see me. He denied me access at the main gate, as I guess he had the right to do. My family was responsible for what happened to him, and I was responsible for not seeing what my father was doing.’
‘It wasn’t your fault.’
‘If I had only stopped wasting all that time partying and trying to prove myself on the streets, maybe I would have learned something sooner. Maybe I would have seen it coming. I could have prevented it somehow. Ferris is the way he is because of me, and nothing is going to change that. I bear the weight of his tragedy.’
‘No, you don’t. And not even your father does. How could he know?’
‘We’re fucking trained to know! One piece of missing information could mean death. My father was just desperate. Too greedy to see things clearly. The rush for power also accelerated his death. He died a few weeks after Ferris’s parents. We kept fighting during that whole time. Maybe that’s on me too...I don’t know...’
‘Why do you take everything upon yourself? You’re not responsible for everyone else, you know?’
‘Look who’s speaking. The last person qualified to give advice on taking things personally. Not that I asked for any advice from you.’
‘I never felt responsible for my father. I loathed the man and had nothing to do with his actions.’
But for some reason, even Brax doubted me about that ‘Really!?’
Ok... Maybe I felt a little responsible for something ‘I don’t feel I should be held accountable for his actions. But I do feel responsible for you getting shot. I sent you there, indirectly.’
‘Do you want to kiss it and make it all better?’ He was changing his approach, reviving the Brax he loved to show to the world, masking somehow any kind of emotion that may have slipped the night.
Though I wasn’t going to fall for his game ‘I can’t kiss it all better. You would spasm with excitement and your muscles would contract. I’m pretty sure I would be breaking the doctor’s orders.’
‘I just fired my doctor,’ he downed the contents of his glass in a sip.
‘Well, I should hire him back then. I need you alive. That brings me to my next question. Have you thought about the decision?’
‘I was expecting you to be asking me about that ever since you arrived. But I thought we agreed we’d talk about our decisions tomorrow,’ Brax took a long drag out of what must’ve been the third cigarette since I got there.
