Carlton ✔

49| The Bewildering Embrace

Also because I needed to know why he wanted me back home so urgently these past few weeks.

I walked away from my friends, and I didn't look back. I had no idea what I was walking into, or when I would get to see them again. My childhood horrors seeped back into my mind as I limped into the Bugatti.

My wounds were still fresh, and burned with every movement. Father sat beside me, not shifting his gaze at me even for a second, the smoke of his cigar barricading his face from view. "We'll get you fixed up first."

And then what?

You never knew it with my father. What could happen next ranged from going for a vacation or for a gang war. He had a plethora of undeterminable circumstances.

We stopped by a hospital, where he had a doctor "fix me" as he liked to term it, all the while I had a deep sadness boiling up inside of me from the fear of never seeing my friends ever again.

How long had it been since I ran away from home? One whole year of doing absolutely nothing with my free time?

It was so bizarre to be under his custody again, to listen to everything he ordered, like a puppet.  In all honesty, from the exact moment I left home a year ago, I knew that I'd be coming back. But I never guessed it would be under such pressing situations.

We won over the Bancrofts, but at what cost?

Did it even matter now? Now that we took our Father's help, in exchange for the freedom I had craved for all my life?

I shall admit, I didn't see it coming when the Bugatti rolled up into the airport. I was petrified, gawking at Father's private jet and then at him, with misery.

His responded without looking at me. "Why do you look so surprised? Don't you think you've caused enough nuisance here in New York?"

Here we go again with "nuisance". It was nuisance all over again, just like I had caused him in my teenage years. Everything I ever did was "nuisance" to him, like I was a burden to raise.

I couldn't speak, but I blurted it out anyway. "We're going back to California?" We're going back to that hellish property again? The place where I grew up with nightmares stained with blood? In the gardens where my babysitter killed herself? In the halls that taught me to kill and slaughter without mercy?

"Yes," he said matter-of-factly.

"Why?"

His eyes travelled to mine as the chauffeur opened our car doors, but he didn't answer.

I stood at the car door and watched his back as he scrambled into his private jet, my fingers tightening into a fist. His chauffeur looked at me with pity in his eyes.

Immediately I realised — I didn't want people to feel sorry for me. I deserved this.

I smiled kindly at the chauffeur and straightened my back. Looking behind at the jagged skyline of New York, shimmering under the stars and stretching into the heavens, I said my final goodbye and followed after my father.

*****

I was back again in those wretched gardens, the trees invitingly bowing down at me, its branches eerily shaped like fingers trying to reach for me and grab me. As a kid, this used to freak me out. It still did.

I rushed faster as Father strolled ahead, holding a shotgun in his hand. Several guards were surrounding us as he lead us into an area behind the mansion gardens.

The scorching Californian winds blew, making the hot climate worse under the afternoon sun that was blazing too bright for comfort. The gargantuan mansion loomed over us, almost hauntingly. Its walls slowly dilapidating, the balconies requiring renovation.