Chương 234: Act 3, Chapter 82: The other Penrose

Day in the story:??? Hell, it's about the right time for that Gertrude Monkey"We need to talk, old man." I pushed Penrose toward the far corner of the lobby. Everybody around us visibly tensed and Rei's shadow elongated, ready to snatch me here and there.

"I will always have time for that," Penrose replied, raising his hand in a gesture meant to stop any unnecessary escalation.

"There is no need for violence, Gertrude."

"That's rich," I mumbled, walking side by side with him toward the corner illuminated by the large branching aquarium. There was a circular couch there and a small round table. Phillip slowly raised his arm, two fingers and a thumb stretched out.

"Bring us refreshments," he said toward the people by the main desk.

"It's not—" They tried to protest.

"Quickly. Whiskey for me and tea for the lady. The best thing you have." He interrupted them and turned away without acknowledging that it wasn't within their job description. He knew full well that even here the authority of looking important worked just as well as magic itself.

"I don't need to drink," I whispered.

"Life is not only about what we need. Given the chance, we should carve out the pieces of it that allow us to want and take." He replied, sitting down, crossing one leg over the other and interlocking his fingers over his knee.

"It's rare that those opportunities present themselves."

"Unless you actively look for them," I replied, taking the opposite seat and Noxy out of my messenger bag. I looked at its sleek futuristic frame enclosed beneath the spidery body. His eye was closed, suggesting that it was nighttime. Personally, though, I could not feel any difference. I couldn't even remember if I had slept in here once.

"I want to kill you," I added, placing the gun on the table in front of me.

"Understandable," Phillip said simply.

"You feel betrayed by my Deadman's switch precautions."

"Shouldn't I?" I asked, leaning back against the comfortable backrest. I felt calm despite the severity of the topic I had brought up, but unease was slowly creeping up my spine.

"I wanted to do that before—when you wanted the necklace, when you maimed Peter for what I did to that shell of a man out there. It wasn't an equal trade."

"Do it." He replied.

"I deserve it, don't I?"

"You do." I focused on the weapon in front of me. There was no life within it, no will to get up and shoot. I could grant it in a heartbeat and Equinox would follow my order, but the truth was that I lacked the same conviction.

"What are you waiting for? Should I be the one pulling the trigger?" He pressed, and I could not take this mocking tone of his anymore. I reached for the handgun and leveled it at his face. Back in the distance both Rei and Thomas tensed, unsure whether to move or stay. Ramirez remained ambivalent, but observed cautiously.

"Why are you not pleading for your life?" I asked him, bordering on a whisper.

"Beg me, squirm for fuck's sake."

"No, Gertrude, just do it. You are close enough to make it final, aren't you?"

"I am," and yet despite the pledge I made to myself, whenever I tried to press the trigger my mind and body refused to follow. I looked at the man in front of me and saw the same one who'd sit with me and teach me how different safes worked and how to open them safely and quickly. His hands had picked locks before mine were ever allowed to do the same, following the trail he blazed for me. He stood in front of me when he negotiated with the Albanian mob and behind me when I was allowed to do the same.

He was the one who organized galleries to display the works that came from under my brush and the person who bought all of the art equipment I did not manage to steal for myself. And yet he was also evil incarnate, the man who put the names of two of my stitched-in family members on his kill list for no good reason at all, so I pressed against the trigger with my finger as much as I could.

"You are an embarrassment. If this is how you conduct all your kills, all those cold-served revenges, then please never mention my name. Do not drag my reputation into the mud pit of your incompetence." He said, and I shouted in reply—a primal, loud scream without much meaning beyond expressing pure anger. I came closer to him, climbed onto the table, and brought the gun inches from his face.

"Just do it." He said, grabbed Noxy, and pressed it against his forehead—metal against skin—while he looked into my eyes.

"I want to kill you!" I shouted.

"I need to do it." A tear ran down my cheek.

"What's stopping you?" He whispered.

"I don't know! I hate you! I deeply, utterly despise you!" I dropped Equinox onto the table again and it reverberated with the sound of defeat.

"Now that's a development," he said, tapping a finger against his forearm.

"If you truly wanted—or needed—to kill me, you would've done it when I wasn't expecting it. What you really need is to talk. So talk."

"Fuck you," I replied, watching the fish in the tank. One of them chased a smaller one through the water until both vanished into a forest of seaweed.

"You're always in control." I looked away from him and made all my tattoos close their eyes as well. I couldn't bear to see the disappointment on his face—the same disappointment I already felt in myself.

"No, I am not." There was a touch of sadness in his voice.

"Why couldn't you do it?"

"Our relationship is fucking hurtful, but I still feel connected to you," I confessed, spitting onto the ground, repulsed by my own words.

"I see." He looked up for just a second before refocusing on me.

"That's exactly the kind of emotional dependence I tried to eradicate from you. This is why I needed to make sure that when I am gone, those other people you love would be taken care of as well."

"You think I love you? That I need you as much as I need them?" I asked, closing my eyes and steadying myself.

"Yes, I do."

"You are wrong—I don't need you Phillip. I don't need Peter, nor do I need Sophie. I can live perfectly fine without any of you. What I do is choose to be around them, because I genuinely appreciate that their presence makes me a better person in ways I'd find hard to improve on my own."

"That is unfortunate avoidance of the truth, my dear. Why on Earth would you care about my plans then? Why would you feel betrayed by me?" His voice was steady. The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"Can't I just feel bad due to the fact that they would die because of me? Because of being close to you?"

"There is no doubt in my mind that you can. There is, however another doubtless fact—that it's not the reason driving you. I made sure of that when I raised you, and of that I am certain."

"You made sure of what exactly? That I feel no remorse for my actions?"

"Yes. Therefore only that stupid notion of love could cloud your judgment."

"Fine." I said, turning my hand into a fist and smashing the table. Noxy was thrown into the air an inch before landing back onto the wood.

"Call it whatever you like. Love might be a good word for it—how would I even be able to tell whether it was that or not when I was so far removed from it my whole life, right?" I asked, fishing for his reaction.

"You were my role model, after all."

"Indeed." He looked at me. There was no anger, resentment, or even caution in his eyes. They felt strangely empty.

"Your anger is warranted. I already said that, but if it's not leading to me being dead, we should get it over with, because we have more pressing matters at hand and we need each other."" Need." I repeated the word, feeling how suddenly the tables turned—despite the lack of physical violence or the threat of it.

"I don't need you, Phillip. I could leave you in here to rot this very second, but I want to give Thomas a chance to get out of this mess you brought us into."

"So, is he another person on the list I should take care of?" he asked.

"You are so stubborn in trying to show me that without you I am unable to make good decisions, but you are wrong." I composed myself. It was somehow easier to become steady now by simply talking to him.

"I will be fine with you gone, because despite your best efforts, I am not like you and I know how to expose vulnerable parts of myself."

"To what end?" he asked when a concierge brought us a platter with whiskey on the rocks and tea. He turned the tray toward me, all flat on his side, and put the teacup behind Noxy—his eyes noticing its presence and meeting mine to acknowledge it. Without a word, he handed the glass to Phillip, who snatched it from the platter in one quick swoop.

"Thank you," he said, sending the man away.

"Why would you willingly expose yourself?" he reworded his question and took a sip, twisting his face afterward into a grimace.

"Because, as I said, it makes me better. I feel better around them and it's worth the risk."

"It is not." He replied simply, and for the first time I understood what this was all about.

"You'd rather never know love than have it and lose it. That's it, isn't it?" I pressed, and his demeanor changed as his muscles tensed.

"Of course," he played it softly.

"This is what I was telling you all this time." He replied while I was pushing the anger at my own incompetence away.

"And yet you yourself are burdened with it." I said, and he knew exactly what I was alluding to. His brows furrowed and he dropped his other leg onto the ground, leaning closer to me.

"Do tell." He whispered, setting the glass on the table.

"Be wary of the words you choose."

"Or what? You're going to kill me? You are a hypocrite, Phillip. A fucking rotten pile of bile. You preach about being ruthless, casting away love—and it's the one thing that has you on its leash, allowing me to take the steering wheel again. To pull your fucking short string." His face darkened with anger again.

"Michael has been dead for so long and yet you still can't even talk about it."

"This is not hypocrisy, Alexandra." He dropped the pretense.

"This is consistency, because this exact feeling you are using right now is what I was trying to spare you from." He spoke through gritted teeth.

"I love my son. I never stopped, despite him being gone, and even though he can't be hurt anymore to weaken me, he still—as you so keenly observed—has power over me. So tell me, my dear, how am I the bad guy here when I tried to spare you from the same fate?" He slammed his fist against the couch and pointed a finger at me soon after.

"How?" Incredible how he could look into a barrel of a gun, but could not face the memory of love lost.

"Because given the chance to forget about him, you would not take it," I replied.

"You say you would, but it's a lie and you know it. You wouldn't do it."

"Alexandra," he started, taking a deeper breath, though his brows were still knitted together. He looked like a sword poised to strike.

"Like you said, it would be better not to know love than to constantly hurt because of it. I would do it, both for you and for myself." His response made me realize a deeper truth about him and I felt it immediately—that resonance from the soulmark of Trueform within me.

"Why did you single me out? Why would you do it for me?" I asked, leading him toward the answer. He paused and simply looked at me, unsure how to proceed.

"Why not for Thomas or Rei, Lincoln, Ramirez… hell, anyone else? Why me?" I kept pressing.

"I betrayed you, like you said. Hid the necklace for myself instead of giving it to you. I meddled with your business and turned enemies against you. I took an eye from your man and openly opposed you, which in your line of work is not a good look. And yet all you did was threaten me here and there and take an eye from Peter, which I now realize you always knew he could get back, right?"

"Alexandra, if you are suggesting that I treat you like a daughter—""No, I am not. I am sure of it now. It's painfully clear to me now, how similar we are to each other through the flaws we share. You never took anyone else under your wing. Not once in over ten years had I seen you put so much effort into any other child. I was and still am your Michael replacement, just like you are one for my parents. Fuck!"

He threw the contents of his whiskey onto me, soaking me in alcohol and pelting me with ice as he stood up violently.

"No one can replace him!" He shouted, losing composure.

"Then why didn't you kill me!?" I shouted back at him, standing to match him and mirroring his questions.

"If you suggest that my love for you is stopping me, then what's stopping you!? You never fucking stop!" I dropped onto the couch again, leaving him standing there, boiling in his anger. He closed his eyes and stood still for a few seconds before sitting down slowly again.

"At least have the fucking balls to admit it if you want this from me, because you are bloody right, I do have feelings for you. I don't want to have them, but I fucking do. You cared for me and took me in when no one else in the world wanted that burden, and whatever those reasons of yours were, the effect is all the same. I chose to put my trust in you and kept doing it.

Every time you lashed out at me, every wound you inflicted upon me, every shout—after each of those, no matter how much I wanted to end it with you, I kept crawling back for those bread-fucking-crumbs of love I felt from you. Pathetic, right?" He covered his face with both hands and kept them there for a while before slowly sliding them back onto the table. His eyes were just a tiny bit redder.

"Pathetic indeed. Same as me." He hissed.

"That's it?"

"I will not talk about something that is obvious to both of us." He replied, leaning against the backrest and taking the empty glass with him.

"Here it is. The great Phillip's admission." I mocked him, but stopped when I saw no reaction. He just kept playing with the glass he had taken from the table, swaying it slowly.

"I have two things to tell you. First is that I am apparently incapable of killing you no matter how much I want it." He tracked my every movement now, observed me with profound attention.

"Fortunately I am a creative person Phillip and I can think of fates worse than death that I would be able to pull off. Therefore, if either Peter or Sophie, ends up gone because of you, I will make your life a living hell." He nodded in response.

"And if by some miracle they come out of it without any harm, you will make sure to amend for that however and with all that you can—starting with removing this stupid Deadman's switch and ending with being gone from my life for good. No more jobs, tasks, asks, tales of grand quests and nexuses of power, no more fucking calls. I will never see you or hear you again. And don't even think about that bloody necklace either."

"And secondly?" The question—and his failure to offer any counterterms—was as close to acceptance as I was ever going to get from him.

"You're going to bloody love this one, because apparently I'm your genie in a bottle, Penny-fuckin'-boy." I grinned.

"I think I can actually do it for you. Grant that greatest wish of yours—the one you keep pushing onto me with all this effort. Not here, and not now, but I can make you forget Michael if that's truly what you want." I leaned back.

"My experiments with the extra brain—and a certain accident—proved that I can acquire someone else's memories. And if I can share them, I'm bloody certain I can erase them just as well. So tell me, dear mentor, are you ready to put your money where your mouth is?"

"That... won't be necessary." The words came only after nearly half a minute of silence. Then he stood and walked away toward the others. Penrose was a proud man. Admitting defeat was never easy for him, especially when he'd had to do it twice in such a short span of time. I took a sip of the tea. It was too cold for my liking.