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Lucian
Four years ago …
Voices echo around me. Sterile scents invade my senses. I can’t tell if I’m awake or asleep. The incessant beeping in my ear grows louder, until I open my eyes to see white walls and a half-closed white curtain, enveloping me in with two men in white coats.
Am I dead?
A flash of blinding light hits the back of my head, making my eyes instinctively screw shut, and I feel the flames burning my skin.
I jerk awake, but when I try to sit up, my body doesn’t move.
“Relax, Lucian. Your heart sounds as if it might gallop away any minute.” The voice is foreign to me, in this place that feels like a dream.
“Where am I? What is this?” The words arrive stiff and clipped through an ache in my jaw that pulses in my ear.
“I’m Dr. Thames, and this is Dr. Mayer,” he says, gesturing to the shorter, stocky man beside him. “He’s an expert in the field of reconstructive surgery.”
“Wh-what are you talking about?”
“You’ve been in a coma for about a week. In that time, we’ve done some minor patches to your face and jawline, but wanted to wait until you were stable before taking you to the OR.”
“Patches? For what?” A fog swirls inside my head, dancing around the dull throb that beats through my sinuses.
“You were in an accident and sustained some fairly serious injuries, particularly to your jawline, shoulder, arm and thigh. Your shoulder took the brunt of the impact, but you have a number of broken bones in your face, collarbone and ribs. There was quite a bit of head trauma, as well. The coma was induced to reduce some of the swelling on your brain. We placed a drain that, I’m pleased to report, we were able to remove yesterday afternoon, along with weaning you off the vent. You’ve remained stable since.”
My mind replays the last thing I remember. The lights. The fire. Roark holding his teddy bear. “My son. Where’s my son?”
“Your mother tells me there was an accident at home? That was the nature of you hopping on a bike with no helmet.”
“Accident?” I say the word aloud, and the movie reel inside my head rewinds further. Roark sleeping. The pill bottle. No pulse. My chest expands as the panic blooms behind my ribs, until I can’t breathe.
Something beeps inside the room.
“Hey, hey. Calm down, Lucian.”
A hand touches my shoulder, and I want to throw it off me, but can’t. Nothing moves. I can’t feel anything but the agony tearing through me. “He’s dead.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. As difficult as it may be, the best thing you can do right now, Mr. Blackthorne, is focus on your recovery.”
Tears distort his form, as I stare up at this man I don’t even know. One who thinks he knows what’s best for me. “What’s the point?”
Two weeks have passed since the accident. Two weeks of rehab. Caring too little. Thinking too much. Drowning in the misery and guilt of having failed my son. It’s there every time I look into the mirror. The mangled remains of my face, so riddled with scars and metal plates that I don’t even feel human anymore. My punishment for being a shitty father. For putting myself first, when it should’ve been Roark.
His body was eventually returned to us and buried in a small sarcophagus down in the catacombs. It’s a place I can’t bring myself to visit. Not for a while.
“It was an accident. That’s all. An oversight,” my father says, sitting in his chair across from me, Amelia, and Mayor Boyd. “No one is really at fault here.”
At my father’s words, I lift my gaze from the condensation trickling down the glass of water that I’ve been staring at for the last twenty minutes. “He got his hands on her fucking pills. How is she not at fault?”
“I have told you repeatedly, Lucian.” Amelia’s voice has grown weaker, more fragile than before. “I would never--”
“But you did.” My jaw remains stiff, with more titanium in my face than a Russian submarine. “And now he’s dead.”
“And you’ll just keep punishing and punishing me and punishing me,” she whispers.
“All right, all right.” My father waves his hands in the air, the tone of his voice laced with irritation. “Enough of this bickering like children. We have a much bigger issue to contend with, which is what to tell the media. They’ve been all over us since Lucian’s little circus sideshow.”
“Sideshow? Look at me. Can you even look at me?” I tip my head to catch his gaze, a zap of electricity striking my skull as I grind my teeth. “This is what you wanted of me, remember? To be a father. A fucking monster, like you.”
“Careful, boy. Now’s not the time. The point of this meeting is to discuss next steps. If word gets out that Amelia’s pills were the cause of his death, she’ll be strung up like a Salem witch by this town. It’ll be bad for her, for Mayor Boyd, and for us. Everyone who had contact with Roark that night, down to the goddamn dispatcher who took the call, has been informed to remain quiet.”
In other words, threatened to be buried six feet under. The beauty of money and power.
“You think you can keep this from getting out? Someone is going to talk. They’re going to slip.” In spite of the pain, I steal the opportunity to chuckle. “I hope they do.”
“And we’ll address it when the time comes. For now, we’re going to inform the media that Roark has gone missing.”
“I’m not lying to the media about what happened to my son.”
“You don’t have to. I’ll be speaking on behalf of his distraught and grieving parents. There will be a reward for anyone who has information about him. All you have to do is keep your mouth shut and play along. Sheriff Townsend has agreed to do the same.”
Of course he has. He’s one of my father’s little cult buddies, and will, without question, take the secret to his grave. They all will, because that’s the Blackthorne curse. That’s what’s earned us the reputation of crossing paths with a black cat. That’s why no one will dare dispute a word of this, and Roark’s death will forever remain a mystery.
I turn my gaze away from my father, from Amelia, and Mayor Boyd. “This is wrong.”
“Welcome to the world of power, my boy.”