After Prison, I Became the Apex of the Stars

CHAPTER 4

 

The villa looked the way abandoned things always look, like something that had been holding its breath for three years and had forgotten how to exhale. 

Dust covered the windowsills in a fine gray layer, and the garden that Eddard's mother had once tended with such careful hands had gone wild with weeds that pushed through the stone path like they were trying to reclaim the place for nature. 

The porch light was dead, the mailbox was rusted shut, and the front door stuck when he turned the key because the wood had swollen in its frame from seasons of rain that nobody had been there to wipe away.

Eddard stood in the doorway and let it all settle over him, the silence of the house mixing with memories that hit harder than he expected.

 His father reading at the kitchen table, his mother humming while she cooked, the sound of their laughter moving through rooms that now held nothing but stale air and dust. 

He had fought wars inside a prison, learned skills that could topple governments, inherited command of the most powerful organization on the planet, and none of it had prepared him for the simple violence of coming home to a place where everyone who had loved him was gone.

His phone rang.

The voice on the other end was female, respectful, and wound tight with the kind of anxiety that comes from someone who has exhausted every other option and is making the call they've been afraid to make.

"Am I speaking to the Medical Saint? The healer who was known three years ago for curing diseases that no doctor in the world could treat?"

Eddard set his bag down on the hallway floor and leaned against the door frame. "That was a title I used a long time ago when I first went out into the world. I haven't practiced in years."

"Please, please don't hang up." The woman's voice cracked on the second please, and Eddard could hear the sound of someone who had been crying recently trying very hard not to cry again. "My name is Agatha Smith. I'm the eldest daughter of the Smith family. Three years ago, you saved my grandfather's life when every hospital in the country had given up on him, and he has never forgotten what you did."

"I remember your grandfather," Eddard said, and he did, a stubborn old man with kind eyes who had refused to die even when his organs were shutting down one by one.

"He's sick again, and this time it's something the hospitals can't even identify. They've run every test, consulted every specialist, flown in doctors from four different countries, and nobody can tell us what's wrong with him. He's getting worse every day and we are running out of time." 

Agatha's breathing was unsteady, and Eddard could tell she was gripping the phone so hard her fingers were probably white. "You're the only person who has ever been able to help him. I'm begging you, please."

"I'll see him," Eddard said calmly. "I'll send you an address. Come pick me up."

The relief that flooded through Agatha's voice was so strong it was almost physical, like a dam breaking on the other end of the line. "Thank you. Thank you so much, Mr. Collins. I'll be there as fast as I can."

Eddard hung up, texted her the villa's address, and then looked around the dusty house and decided that if someone from the first-tier Smith family was about to show up at his door, the least he could do was make sure she didn't have to stand in three years' worth of neglect. 

He found a broom in the hallway closet and spent the next thirty minutes sweeping floors and opening windows and pulling dust covers off furniture that still smelled faintly like his mother's lavender soap.

He was wiping down the kitchen counter when someone knocked on the front door with the kind of aggressive pounding that has nothing to do with politeness and everything to do with someone who believes they own whatever is on the other side.

Eddard dried his hands and walked to the door expecting Agatha, but when he opened it, the faces waiting for him belonged to Gwen and Luigi, and the expressions they wore made it clear they hadn't come to welcome him home.

"What are you two doing here?"

Gwen pushed past him into the foyer without waiting for an invitation, her eyes sweeping across the villa's interior with the greedy assessment of a woman who was already mentally rearranging the furniture. Luigi followed behind her with his chest puffed out and his jaw set in the pose of a man who thinks looking angry is the same thing as being tough.

"I'll make this very simple for you, Eddard, because I know simple is the only language you understand," Gwen said, turning to face him with her hands on her hips and her chin raised so high she was practically looking at the ceiling. "You are not worthy of this villa. A criminal sleeping in a house this beautiful is an insult to the neighborhood, an insult to this city, and an insult to my family."

"Your family," Eddard repeated, and something cold settled behind his eyes. "This house belonged to my parents, Gwen. It has nothing to do with your family."

"Everything in Arya's life has to do with my family, and that includes whatever scraps she left behind for you." Gwen took a step closer, and the contempt rolling off her was so thick it seemed to change the temperature of the room. "My daughter is soft-hearted and sentimental, and that's the only reason you're standing in this house right now instead of sleeping under a bridge where vermin like you belong. But I am not Arya. I don't feel sympathy for parasites, and I certainly don't feel sympathy for a convicted criminal who latched onto my daughter like a leech and sucked the life out of her for years."

"Get out of my house."

"Your house?" Luigi let out a laugh that sounded like something scraping against metal. "You think you deserve a house, you worthless piece of garbage? You can't even afford to keep the lights on in this dump. You're nothing, Eddard, you're lower than nothing, you're the dirt that collects under a snake's belly, and the fact that you're standing here acting like you have any right to anything makes me want to break every bone in your pathetic body."

Luigi cracked his knuckles and took a step forward, and there was something in his eyes that told Eddard this wasn't just talk, that Luigi had been waiting for a reason to swing and now that there were no witnesses except his mother, he felt brave enough to try.

Then Luigi's gaze dropped to Eddard's right hand, and he froze.

"Where did you get that ring?"

Eddard glanced down at the silver band with the black stone, the Zeus Ring, the symbol of supreme authority over the most powerful organization on earth, sitting on his finger like it had always been there.

"That's mine," Luigi said, and his voice had changed from threatening to something almost childlike in its greed, the way a toddler sounds when another child is holding a toy they want. "That ring is mine. I've seen it before, I know I have, and Arya must have taMarcus it from my collection without telling me and given it to you as part of the divorce settlement." He thrust his hand out, palm up, fingers curling. "Give it to me right now."

"You have no idea what you're talking about."

"I said give it to me, you insect." Luigi grabbed Eddard's wrist, and the grip was meant to be forceful but Eddard didn't move, didn't even shift his weight, and the confusion that flickered across Luigi's face when he realized he couldn't budge Eddard's arm was almost worth everything else. "This ring is worth more than your entire miserable life, and I will not let a worm like you walk around wearing something that belongs to my family."

"Take your hand off me, Luigi."

"Or what? What are you going to do, you filthy little cockroach? Hit me? Go ahead, give me a reason to call the police and send you right back to the cell you crawled out of."

The heat behind Eddard's eyes was building into something that had weight and teeth, and his patience, the vast and carefully constructed patience that the old man in Hell Prison had spent three years teaching him, was cracking at the edges like glass about to shatter.

"Who dares disrespect Mr. Collins?"

The voice came from the front door, clear and sharp and carrying the authority of someone who had never once in her life needed to repeat herself. 

Gwen and Luigi turned around at the same time, and what they saw in the doorway made both of them take an involuntary step backward.

A woman stood at the entrance of the villa, tall and striking with the kind of beauty that expensive clothes only complement because the face beneath them doesn't need any help.

 Behind her stood four bodyguards built like concrete walls, each one wearing a black suit and an expression that suggested they would very much enjoy being given a reason to move forward.

Gwen recovered first, because Gwen always recovered first, and the sneer that crawled across her face was slow and deliberate and ugly.

"Well, well, well. So this is why you signed those divorce papers so easily, isn't it, Eddard? You didn't even put up a fight because you already had another woman waiting for you."