Claim (A Dangerous Man 3)

Chapter One

“MAY I DRIVE NOW?” I ASK STEVE, as he maneuvers the car through the black, wrought iron gates, and onto the paved driveway of the old brick mansion where I’ve lived since I was six.

He turns a brief glance in my direction. “Not today.” He says, his voice deep and quiet. With his shaved head and permanently severe expression, he could pass for a dangerous mobster, but actually, he’s an ex-marine. My stepfather Henry Weber hired him to drive me around and keep me out of “trouble.” Whatever that is.

Steve doesn’t talk much, but usually, he lets me drive when we get to the house. I still have two years to go before I can get a license, but he says he has extreme confidence in my abilities, after all, he taught me himself.

We get to the end of the driveway, and I see why he didn’t let me drive. The shiny black Bentley that’s usually covered up in the garage is parked close to the front door.

That can only mean one thing.

They’re back.

I frown.

Steve stops the car. “See you later kid.” He sounds almost sympathetic.

“Yeah.” I reply sullenly, climbing out and shouldering my backpack. The thought of running into them makes me reluctant to go into the house. I drag my feet to the door and cautiously push it open.

Inside, all is quiet. Relieved, I let myself breathe. Maybe they’re tired from their flight, or sailing trip, or whatever, and have gone to bed already. I move quietly. With any luck, I can hide out in my room until they go out to one of the numerous parties they probably have lined up.

No such luck. When I get upstairs and open the door to my room, I find my mother waiting for me.

She’s sitting at my reading desk, her back towards me. Her black hair, which is the same color as mine, is pinned up in a classy looking style, the way Henry prefers it. She never wears her hair down anymore, like she did when I was a kid. She’s looking at the picture of my Dad and me that occupies center place on my desk. In the picture, I’m a chubby, toothless baby, and my Dad is carrying me around his shoulders.

She turns around at the sound of the door, and her eyes light up when she sees me. “David!” She exclaims with a wide smile, as if she’s spent all the time when she was away waiting to see me again. She gets up and comes to hug me, wrapping me in a cloud of soft perfume. “You’ve grown so tall!” She continues, still smiling and looking at me expectantly, as if she’s waiting for a response.

I mumble something in reply, squashing the instinct to hug her back the way I used to before, in the days when I lived for the moments when she would float back into my life after a long absence, with stories of places they had gone, and parties she’d been to. She’d come with her beauty and her exotic adventures, and my life in her absence would fade to dullness.

Now I just wish she would leave me alone.

She starts to talk about how she missed me, she sounds very sincere, but she can’t have missed me very much if she didn’t have a problem staying away for nearly six months, I decide resentfully, tuning her out.

I drop my backpack on the floor and go to sit at the edge of my bed. While she talks, I study the picture of my father and me. We’re both grinning happily at the camera, or at my mother behind the camera. Of course, that was back when she was still my mom, not Henry Weber’s socialite wife.

She’s still talking to me, but I can’t really hear her. I smile wistfully at my toothless baby grin behind my father’s handsome one. He died when I was six, after a drunk driver ran a red light and crushed his car. Almost immediately, my mother married Henry, an idle millionaire whose only desire is to travel and socialize. She’s been travelling and socializing with him for nine years.

“You’re starting to look so much like your father.” My mother’s soft words cut into my thoughts, and I turn towards her. Her eyes are shiny, like she’s about to cry.

I don’t say anything, even though the comment makes me happy and proud. I ignore her sigh of exasperation at my silence. What’s the point of telling her anything? Soon she’ll have left for another one of their trips, and my life will go back to normal.

She leaves me alone soon after. They’re going out to a dinner party, and she has to prepare. I go downstairs to find Steve, sure that I won’t run into Henry while he’s locked up in his massive closet trying to decide which one of his hundreds of tuxedos to wear. Steve lives in an apartment over the garage, and sometimes if I plead enough, he relents and teaches me some of his martial arts moves.

It’s while I’m walking across the lawn towards the garage that I hear the voices. I turn back towards the house, and through their bedroom window, see my mother and Henry arguing. I’m not surprised. They argue a lot. Henry’s a jerk. I can’t stand him, he can’t stand me, and I have no idea how my mother can stand him.

I’m about to turn away, when I see him raise a hand and strike my mother across the face. I stand there frozen as she holds a hand to her cheek. He turns towards the window, and seeing me, walks towards it and abruptly pulls the curtains closed.

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