6
559words
I bought Luna and Lydia a luxury penthouse downtown, matching sports cars, restoring their pre-collapse lifestyle.
For me, it was effortless.
I expected nothing in return.
They'd helped me find my footing in the viper's nest of the Foster clan.
Now I had power; it was my turn to help them.
Yet... they cooked for me, care for me.
Miles lived with us, but received no special treatment beyond a roof and food.
I assumed Luna and Lydia truly just wanted to repay his kindness.
Thanks to me, Miles had vaulted from the gutter to a life of luxury most could only dream of.
I was neck-deep in the brutal fight to become Foster patriarch.
Every day was a chess game of deceit and betrayal.
My time with Luna and Lydia became my only sanctuary, a fragile link to simpler times.
I vowed silently to protect them always.
After securing the Foster leadership, I moved them directly into the Manor House.
I thought the worst was behind us.
I'd broken the old guard's grip, dismantled their suffocating rules.
But fate is cruel.
An old business enemy of the Lawson empire resurfaced.
They kidnapped Luna and Lydia.
The demand? That I cripple myself – cut off my own hands – to secure their release and eliminate me as a threat.
Destroy me in one move.
We stood inside an abandoned factory by the sea. Wind howled through broken windows.
Luna and Lydia, bound to chairs, wept, begging me to save them.
The kidnapper's ultimatum froze my blood.
Sweat beaded on my forehead.
My hands trembled violently.
Cut off my own hands?
How? Could they be reattached? If not... what life awaited me?
But I couldn't abandon them.
As I stood paralyzed, the lead kidnapper offered an alternative.
"Too squeamish? Then you can jump into the sea instead."
My mind reeled.
In that instant, I chose the sea.
The survival odds were near zero, but jumping seemed preferable to the deliberate, agonizing act of self-mutilation.
Maybe... just maybe... luck would be on my side.
Decision made, I closed my eyes and let myself backward.
As I dropped toward the waves, I heard the Luna and Lydia scream my name—their voices torn apart by the wind.
"No!"
The police I’d alerted earlier arrived in time to save them and arrest the kidnappers. A search began for my body.
Fortune, in its twisted way, spared me.
I lived.
But my head struck submerged rocks.
My mind shattered.
I became a child trapped in a man's body.
I still recognized Luna and Lydia, but my intellect was gone.
I became clingy, desperate, needing to be near them constantly.
At first, they tolerated me.
Patience wore thin.
Annoyance set in.
Miles Sullivan saw his opening.
He descended, pouring syrupy concern over Luna and Lydia.
His constant, suffocating attention worked.
Luna and Lydia's focus shifted entirely to him.
If that was all, perhaps I could have accepted it. Human nature.
But Miles, subtly, maliciously, poisoned their perception.
He made them ashamed of me, the idiot.
He encouraged their cruelty.
Worse, they feared my idiocy would end the lavish life I provided.
So, they exploited my broken mind.
They coaxed me into signing papers.
Stock transfers.
The deed to the Manor House.
That was the unforgivable betrayal.
