Episode One: Look Back in Anger Read Free

acquired the illusion of authority as a skill. As young as he looked, a commanding presence was necessary for survival in the corporate world. Not that this meeting had anything to do with business. It was part pure pleasure, part necessity. “You should be very grateful for the severance package as outlined before you.”
    “Grateful? I built Colfter Industries. Made it what it is. Been running it since before you found your dick, you sniveling little—”
    “Running it right into the ground.” The years and accumulated karma had not been so likewise kind to the man sitting across the desk from Arles. Time hung on his stepfather like a visible account of his crimes, each glaring liver spot a scarlet letter for his corrupt acts and the vile life he’d led because of them. Arles stared into those spots, connecting them in his mind with bitter relish as they began to tremble and quake with Marx’s flaring temper.
    Marx slammed a fist into the desk, sending brutalized paper clips hopping in all directions. “Colfter is mine .”
    “The corporation is Colfter Industries, Father. I’m the only Colfter in this room.”
    “You weaseled it away from me. Don’t expect me to play grateful for the crumbs some spineless little rat leaves me.”
    Arles sighed. His stepfather’s yelling had an unnatural calming effect on his own desires to be hostile. If Marx Donavan wanted to cower, he’d certainly give him something to fear, but if Daddy preferred to lose his cool so early in the negotiations, Arles was more than willing to recline in his overpriced chair and revel in the ease of it. “The only investment you’ve been responsible for that is still in the black is the AnyTown project. And that only because of back-alley dealings you know I’ve never supported. On moral grounds.”
    “What do you know of morality?”
    “I know it’s immoral to steal from a dying woman, Father. I know that . It was my mother’s company, and her father’s before her. I’m the only one here with a moral leg to stand on.” Arles reclined again, ignoring the chair’s whine as he forced it to rock back past its designed limit.
    “You can’t take Colfter from me.”
    “I have. It’s done. Was always just a matter of time. You knew that.”
    Marx slumped, his shoulders hanging heavy in his tailored suit. He shook his head, playing the part of the old man to the very extent of his skills as he buried his face behind age-worn hands. If one didn’t know better—if Arles didn’t know better—it might have inspired a hint of pity or a pang of guilt for putting one so soon to leave this world through such distress.
    Arles had no pity to give the man—was fresh out. He sat forward, his long fingers slipping around the edge of an ornate golden-framed image screen on Marx’s desk. He had no doubt the gold was real, but the excess of it barely reached his notice. Instead he focused a little too longingly on the three young girls in the image trapped within that golden cage. They’d grown up well. “They’re lovely. How are they?”
    “My daughters are no concern of yours.”
    “Why, Father, my sisters are every bit my concern.” He traced a single face with the tip of his finger; the other two figures in the image faded into the background. “They look happy. Well, two of them do, anyway.” Marx made a grab for it, and Arles jerked the frame from the old man’s reach. The motion swiveled his chair again, spinning him until his stepfather was at his back.
    “They are not your sisters.”
    “I’m well aware.” Tears welled in his eyes, blurred his vision. The wet sting obscured the youngest girl in the photo who held the center of his attention, her arms wound tightly around the mangiest mutt he’d ever seen. It had been so long since she would even speak to him.
    “You are no son of mine.” Marx had said as much before. The man could add all the spit and venom to the words that he wanted; it wouldn’t increase the hurt. In