I knew it was the wrong thing to do but I did it anyway

The Price of Silence

"Name your price." Came a desperate sounding voice from the next room. A pen clicked and hovered above the cheque ready to scribble any sum of money on it.

"Forty thousand pounds. But that's only for this time, I want sixty thousand for the last time and it'll be eighty thousand next." A familiar voice replied with undertones of evil intent. It had been the third time I'd heard words like that today, the only real variation was the sum of money asked for to keep quiet. These occurrences happened on a daily basis and I heard them all. People would give anything to have things kept quiet. Even their loved ones...

"Fine, fine... Any thing to get it sorted out" The first voice said as the cheque was signed, ripped of the chequebook and handed across the desk. It's just like last time, I think to myself, and the time before that and every other time before that. All this talk of money and bribes never gets anywhere good. It takes money out of one pocket and places it firmly in another. My stepfather's to be precise. It also keeps my mother in my stepfather's pocket. That's all she's there for. The money. Now she loves the money he has more than anything else because in this world money is the key to her happiness. The love of money seems to have consumed her once caring self.

I stroll back across to the couch and sit down. My mother sits opposite me engrossed in her latest romance novel.

"Get your father another drink, darling" My mother says in a distant kind of voice, the added 'darling' is meant to make things better, an attempt to make me think she cares about me. But she doesn't. You can hear it in her voice. The lack of care she gives to what she's saying to me. She cares about keeping her husband happy and getting the money to buy herself whatever she likes while she lounges around one her new leather sofa sipping a fizzy fluorescent blueberry juice and talking loudly on the phone to one of her numerous friends deciding on the best dress to wear to her next party.

I stomp loudly toward the drink cabinet get what I need and stomp back toward the office. As I enter my stepfather's office the smell hits me first. The strong smell of cigar smoke and alcohol. I carry in the whisky and a glass on a tray and place it on his desk.