Vincent Kane's Rise From Ash

4: Repercussions

Everything about the house was different now to Vincent. Even when the stairs still creaked the way they used to and the same way the lights slowly flickered from the double chandeliers, the verandas felt emptied of the warmth that they once used to carry.

The places where their old pictures had hung from had been cleared and dusted, replaced by new faces of the step family. Traces of Emilia Kane had vanished from every picture ledge. 

He wondered where they kept all the photos of her. If at all they were kept. 

He stood, observant, as the maids roamed about, cleaning and making sure they didn't step on anyone's toes- because they didn't know whose feet were more important now.

The Kanes had refused to leave. In fact, after Vincent had given the notice, they stubbornly went back into their rooms as if daring him to make a move.

He would rather tear the place down to dust than have any of them breathe inside its walls for more than those merciful twenty four hours.

“Vince”

He turned to see his sister. She looked stressed and worried, with dark circles under her tired blue eyes. Her upper lip, although partially healed, still showed a bright red dot over the inflicted wound. 

“Did you get enough rest?” He asked.

“If only I could. This place is haunted.”

The silence was their unspoken agreement.

“I heard somebody became a Duke,” a grin slowly formed on her face, replacing the weary look that had settled on it for days. “That sounds like a lot of old money. It might even be enough not to do this.”

He didn't say anything, and Tamar studied his silence. She saw the concealed rage beneath his distant gaze. That thirst for blood and revenge that she herself had once felt. But now, all she wanted was the peace that came with letting go.

“There's no point in all of thi-”

“You don't remember it, do you?” Vince said, voice almost a whisper. “How helpless we were in the wreck. How you screamed for help when you realised mom wasn't breathing. The way she stared blankly, but not at us.”

“I remember it a-”

“I don't think you do, Tamar. She begged them for a space, even if all we had was the attic or the basement. But sending us out into the cold rain was their way of helping.”

He wished he could forget as easily as she did, and that he was as young as she had been when it happened. Maybe then, he wouldn't have had to carry all the bitterness he'd been carrying for years.

Reading his thoughts, Tamar held his hand gently. “Just don't let this rage consume you. You shouldn't have to turn into the monsters you're fighting against.”

She turned to leave, but remembered something and stopped.

“I'll be gone by tomorrow. I only wanted to see you again, Duke Roth. There's nothing here for me anymore.”

*

In the quiet boardroom of the Virexon company, silence greeted each lowered gaze of the underpaid staff and the only thing that could be heard was the hum coming from the AC. 

Richard was eager to finalize the contract with the men his son in law had sent. They all sat across one another- with the men dressed in black tuxedos and shades.

On a piece of paper was Richard's signature, signed and ready to deliver to the devil- fifty percent share of ownership of the entire company.

Except none of it was truly Richard's to sell.

A smile formed at the corner of his thin lips as he lowered his head to them in reverence. The deal was done, and to him it was only a small price to pay in exchange for the millions of debts that had accumulated on his account. Yet, his foresight had been precise when he introduced his daughter to the CEO of Nova Energy.

The gentlemen, with the documents firmly placed into a suitcase and secured to leave the building, stood up to make their exit.

“Hold that thought, gentlemen,” a voice said as a young man strolled in.

Immediately, Richard looked irritable at the sight of his firstborn.

“I'm so sorry sir, I tried to stop him,” said the secretary in a whimper.

“What the he-”

“I heard your boss was making a bid to buy this place,” Vincent said to the men in black. “What if I made him an even better deal?”

The men, with eyebrows raised, looked at themselves with what seemed more like a bruise to their egos than confusion. 

One of them scoffed and spoke. “What makes you think you can make a better deal to the wealthiest tech tycoon in the country?”

“Forgive his foolery.. he doesn't mean a word of what he's saying. Look at him, he's laughable,” Richard blurted.

Without saying a word, Vincent flung a document towards the men. One picked it up slowly and read through the terms of the contract.

His eyes widened suddenly and he began to stutter to his other colleagues. “T..t-that’s half a trillion…”

Richard, being impatient as always, rushed to their sides and yanked the papers from them to see for himself. He read the words carefully and fell back in his chair, holding his chest like he was having a heart attack.

Vincent stared down at him in satisfaction, as if wanting nature to take its course right there and then.

He gave the men a little nod and smiled as he walked out.

“Who is he?” All the staff gasped in utter shock. The men themselves were too stunned to speak.

*

By the time Brian Eastwood had heard of the grand entrance made by a mysterious man offering him more than half his entire net worth, he was already ordering his assistants to put a call through to the man.

“Sir, he left no name or personal contact. All the details of his company are only in the file he left us,” one of them said.

Brian asked to take a look at the contract statement one more time even though he had already gone through it four times before.

The name sitting at the top of the paper wasn't a company or business he had hea

rd of before. According to the papers, what The Obsidian Grid's CEO offered was cold wealth in exchange for the entirety of Nova Energy.