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

CHAPTER THREE

The hospital corridor went quiet the moment Solomon Drake walked into it.

Nobody in Esteemed Grace hospital dared to say a word when someone like Solomon Drake walked into the room. Both the ones who knew him and the one who didn’t went knew there was nothing ordinary about the six feet man who just walked into the room. 

He was eighty-three years old, moving through the room like someone who had never needed to announce himself. The staff at the nurses' station saw him first and one of them stood up followed by the one beside her. By the time Solomon reached the reception desk, every person in that corridor was on their feet.

Nobody told them to stand. They just did.

"Take me to my grandson," Solomon said to the nearest doctor in a quiet and controlled voice and the doctor did not ask who he meant. He just turned and led the way.

Back at the Cole mansion, nobody was sleeping.

Gerald stood in the middle of the living room with his jacket still on and his phone in his hand. His whole face was red like he was about to watch everything he had suffered to build burn to the ground. Margaret sat at the dining table, Derek leaned against the wall with his arms crossed and Vivian didn’t bother to leave. She sat in the corner chair and said nothing, which was somehow louder than anything anyone else was doing.

"The president of the country," Margaret said. "The actual sitting president showed up on our front path."

"I heard you the first time," Gerald said.

"Then explain it. Because Ethan has been cleaning our pool for ten years and suddenly the most powerful man in the country arrives at midnight to collect him like he is something precious."

"He saved the president's daughter on the road, she said it herself." Derek said. "That is all it is. They are grateful and they are making a show of it. It will pass."

"It will not pass," Gerald said quietly. His face looked unusually sure which enough to make Margaret go very still.

The room went still as well.

"That ring." He set his phone down on the table. "Before your grandfather died, he told me something. He was ninety-one and I thought he was losing his mind, so I did not take it seriously the way I should have. He told me that if a man ever entered our home wearing a ring with a serpent coiled around a scepter, I should do everything I could to make sure he never became too comfortable there."

Margaret stared at him. "What does that mean, Gerald?"

"It means," he said, picking up his phone again, "that I need to get to that medical center right now. Before anyone starts asking questions we are not prepared to answer."

Derek pushed off the wall. "Do you want me to come?"

"No." Gerald was already moving toward the door. "I will handle this myself."

The room they put Ethan in was the most luxurious room he had ever been in.

It had clean walls, real equipment and a bed that did not smell like anything at all. The nurses spoke to him like he was a person worth speaking to carefully and he did not know how to receive that, so he had been staring at the ceiling since they left.

'This is temporary.' He thought to himself and decided to focus on the small water stain somewhere in the far corner of the ceiling. 'Tomorrow they would move on and you go back to nothing. Don’t let yourself believe that this is something it is not.'

The ring pulsed on his finger and at the edge of his mind, something shifted like a door in a dark room opening just slightly. Information waited on the other side of it, patient and still, like it had always been there.

Then the room door opened.

Solomon Drake looked like someone had taken a full century of living and compressed it into one body and instead of the body to collapse, he held itself with dignity. He stopped when he saw Ethan and his eyes went to the ring first.

Then to Ethan's face.

His jaw worked once silently and his chest rose slowly with a breath that took a long time to come back out. Two tears escaped down his face and he did nothing to stop them. He did not reach up, or look away. He just let them go like a man who had earned the right to them and was not ashamed.

Ethan stared at him. "Who are you?" he asked.

The man crossed the room and pulled a chair close to the bed then he sat down and brought out a handkerchief to clean his tears. 

“So it is really you?” He said tearfully. His voice sounded broken like he had been waiting for this day to come all his life. 

Ethan stared at him with a confused look as he reached out and took Ethan's hand in both of his. He turned it over carefully and looked at the ring still shining on his for a long moment. It was pulsing softly now in recognition and more tears dropped from Solomon’s eyes.

"Who are you?" Ethan asked again.

"My name is Solomon Drake." His voice was low, steady and completely controlled except for the slight roughness beneath it that sounded like a man speaking through something he had been preparing to say for thirty-three years but the tears wouldn’t let him. "You are my grandson."

The room held its breath.

'He is confused, or I’m the one who’s confused here.' Ethan looked at the old man's face carefully. 'Maybe this is something they do to patients here to make them feel less alone.' 

But the ring pulsed hard on his finger and the door at the back of his mind swung wider allowing the information behind it to start moving.

"That is not possible," Ethan said gently, unable to believe what he just heard.