: THEY MOCKED THE GODFATHERS SON OR “FROM MOCKED TO GOD”.

Ethan brushed every single spot and stain off the pool. He had been scraping along the tile for the past three hours and Ethan didn’t stop even though his knuckles were raw and his shirt was soaked. 

None of it mattered because today was a special day.

"Ethan." Margaret's voice drifted from the kitchen window dripping with pure disgust. "You still want the leftovers from Sunday's dinner? I am about to throw them out."

Sunday was three days ago yet she said it like she was doing him a favor.

"I am fine," he said without looking up.

"Suit yourself." She said and shut the window close.

'She will never change.' He thought to himself and continued scrubbing. 'But in a few hours, none of this will matter.'

Ethan finished cleaning the pool, and returned back to the closet under the stairs which he called his room while Derek stayed in a room with a private bathroom and a balcony view. He changed into his best shirt which he had the least stain. The one he had ironed until the edges were crisp.

Ethan grabbed the white lily flowers with pink edges which was Vivian's favorite, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a ring with a sheepish smile.

The gold caught the light perfectly. He had spent weeks polishing it till it was no longer dirty and rusty. This old ring was the most important thing he owned and tonight it would belong to the only person who deserved to have it.

'Tonight, everything changes.' He smiled and put the ring back in his pocket.

He drove his truck to Vivian’s house and spent the entire time rehearsing his proposal. He imagined her face when he got down on one knee and how she would be surprised and happy while trying so hard not to cry. 

He parked outside her building and picked the flowers with shaky hands. He brought it up to his nose inhaling them with a deep breath while his heart did that stupid fluttering thing they did only when it came to her.

The moment he stepped on her front porch, he noticed something was wrong. 

Her apartment door was open.

Ethan frowned. 'She never leaves her door open. Not ever.'

He pushed it wider. "Vivian?"

No answer came back.

The living room looked exactly the way it always did. Her shoes were lined up near the door, her jacket was on the hook and the lavender candle was still on the windowsill. Everything was normal, exactly as it should be.

Then the sounds reached him from down the hall. 

A woman’s voice, low and rhythmic but not talking.

Ethan went still.

'That is not the television so there has to be a reason for this. A completely normal reason.' His hand closed around the flower stems until the petals bent. 'Walk down the hall and see the normal reason.'

He walked down the hall and the bedroom door was cracked just enough to see what was happening inside.

His brain tried to rearrange the picture into something else. Vivian, his Vivian. The same woman he pulled out of a pool eighteen months ago and breathed air back into. The same one who he sat beside in the hospital for three days without sleeping and donated a kidney to because the doctors said it was the only way and he said yes before they finished the sentence.

She was with someone else.

The man's watch caught the light from the window. The expensive kind that cost more than Ethan made in a year. He didn’t need to see the face to know who it was. He already knew it was Derek.

His step-brother. 

The man who sat at the head of the dinner table while Ethan ate in the kitchen, the man whose name was on the Cole Corp CEO door. The man who had never once looked at Ethan like he was worth looking at.

The flowers hit the floor and Ethan didn’t notice.

Derek saw him first and did not bother to move. He didn’t look surprised, rather, he looked entertained, like he had been waiting for this moment all his life.

"Well." He settled back like a man getting comfortable. "Look who showed up early."

Vivian turned. She froze for half a second, then rearranged herself and reached for the robe on the chair and tied it around herself like she was getting ready for a regular Tuesday morning.

"Ethan." She said like a forgotten appointment. "I thought you would take longer."

"What is this?" his voice cracked.

"What does it look like?" Derek said.

"Get out of my girlfriend's apartment." Ethan's hands were shaking. He pushed them into his pockets so neither of them could see. "Right now."

"Your girlfriend." Derek laughed, short and genuine. "Is that still what you are calling her?"

"Ethan." Vivian sat on the edge of the bed and crossed her legs. "I need you to hear me clearly. I am not your girlfriend. I have not been your girlfriend for a long time. I have just been too occupied to say it out loud until now."

"Two years." The words came out louder than he meant them to. "We have been together for two years. I gave you a kidney. I sat in that hospital and prayed for six hours that you would wake up. I donated blood every three months after that because your body needed it. Do you understand what that cost me? My immune system has not recovered. The doctors told me my lifespan is half of what it should be. Half, Vivian. Because of you."

"Are you done?" Her voice did not rise. It cut cleanly through everything he said. "Because I need you to hear me now. When the doctors first told me I needed a donor, I searched. I did my research and found an article from twenty years ago about a child put up for adoption and his extraordinary blood type which is very rare and compatible with anyone." She paused. 

"The article had your name in it, Ethan and I knew you would say yes because you were the same person who jumped into the pool to save me without thinking. I decided to make you feel loved enough." She said without blinking. "Dating you for two years was the price I paid for my surgery and I think I’ve done more than enough."

The room tilted and Ethan put one hand on the doorframe.

"You are lying."

"I have no reason to lie to you anymore. That is the whole point."

Her mother appeared in the hallway behind him. Then her brother and her sister. Like they had been waiting just out of earshot this whole time.

Her mother looked at him with an expression amusement and cruelty wrapped into one. "You should be grateful, Ethan. My daughter kept you company for two years. What exactly where you expecting? A wedding?” 

She laughed. Actually laughed. The same woman who had treated him with nothing more than gratitude and kindness now looked at him like he was a charity case.

“A man who cleans other people's pools and eats three-day-old leftovers does not get to expect things like that." Her younger sister laughed.

Ethan looked at Derek, his whole body going red from embarrassment. His fingers curled into a ball of fist. “Derek, you told them?”

Derek stood up and began buttoning his shirt. Unhurried like this was just another meeting wrapping up. "You put your hands on me first. Remember that when you think about what happens next."

He grabbed Ethan's collar and hit him twice before Ethan could get his arms up. His post-surgery body could barely return the attack. He landed completely on the ground, his ribs cracked from the impact. He went down hard and the ring dug into his palm where his fist was closed around it on the way down.

They kicked him out and shut the door behind him.

The drive back to the Cole mansion was painfully long and excruciating. 

The mansion was lit when he pulled up. Gerald was waiting at the door before Ethan reached the top step. Gerald kicked his stomach without a word of warning. 

"Attacking my son in a woman’s home." Gerald's voice was completely level, raining more kicks on Ethan. "I always knew you would embarrass this family before the end."

'Of course Derek called ahead.' Ethan groaned in pain. His broken ribs was killing him already. 'He would have picked up the phone the moment I walked out of that door.'

"Gerald, please, I just need to clean up and then I will…"

"Margaret." Gerald turned to his wife. "Look at this charity case we’ve been putting up with him for so long, his time comes to an end now."

The whole family lined the hallway. Margaret, three aunts, cousins who only visited when there was something interesting about to happen. They all laughed and watched as Ethan was being disgraced before the whole estate.

"Pack your things tonight," Margaret said, her voice loud enough to carry. "You leave with exactly what you came with. Guards, make sure he doesn’t steal anything."

“yes ma.” The two guards replied.

"I have nowhere to go." Ethan voice came out small. “This is the only place I know.”

"Then that is your problem to solve." She turned to her husband. "Let’s go."

He went to the closet under the stairs and packed everything he owned into one duffel bag with the supervision of the guards. At the top of the staircase, Gerald's elderly father stood at the railing looking down at everything happening below. 

His face was the tight, old expression of a man who disapproved everything that was going on below. He did not speak, and he did not step forward. He just shook his head and returned back to his room as Ethan walked past all of them and out into the dark without looking back.

The road stretched empty in both directions and the city sat in the distance like noise with no meaning. The ring in his pocket sat very warm.

It pulsed once, slow and steady like a heartbeat that was not his own.

Ethan stopped walking.

He had no reason to go anywhere in particular and he had nowhere to go at all. But the warmth moved through his hand and up his arm before it settled into his chest like a direction, certain and quiet, pulling him toward the industrial stretch of the city that was two blocks east.

He had nothing left to lose so he went.