Cruel Control by Candace Wondrak

Chapter Four – Markus

I was sitting in my chair, leaning back, my mind elsewhere when Doc came in. He carried a clipboard, where I assumed everything was. He gave me a short nod of his head as he closed the door behind him, slow to walk to my desk.

Nothing I did I did lightly. Everything was for the job. That’s how it’d always been with me, and that’s how it would always be. Nothing could change, because the system we had was a perfect one, and after our father stepped down, everything was up to me. Everything had fallen onto my shoulders, though no one had been surprised when it did.

“How did it go?” I asked, my voice low. There was a part of me that was almost apprehensive about the results. I feared… well, I supposed I didn’t really fear anything, but sometimes I caught myself worrying.

So unlike me, I know.

Doc did not sit; he instead stood behind one of the chairs facing my desk, silent for too long. I did not particularly like his silence, and I shot him a glare to let him know it. My glare must’ve kicked him into high gear, for he started to ramble off, “She’s healthy, if a bit thin. Her cycles are regular, her eyesight is good. Her hearing… she did well.”

“And what about…” I trailed off, picturing her face. I’d thought, after two years, she might’ve lost some of that wide-eyed innocence, but she hadn’t. I didn’t know yet whether that was a good thing or not.

“She claims to never have been intimate with anyone,” Doc said. “She seemed honest with me, if a little embarrassed. I don’t think she was lying. I think he’s kept her safe for the last eighteen years.”

Yes, that was the question, wasn’t it? I leaned on the armrest of my chair, running a finger along my lower lip as I thought. Such a tight leash he had her on this whole time. You never kept someone on a leash like that unless you had plans. I was not stupid.

Doc then surprised me by asking a question he did not deserve the answer to, “How long will she be here?” I only looked at him, feeling the urge to strangle him for asking something that was not his business in the least. “What are you doing to keep her safe? There are too many psychopaths in this house—if you plan on ever returning her to her father—”

A thunderous sound left my chest, and I slammed my hands on my desk, startling Doc into silence. I was measured in getting up, my shoulders hunched as I leaned forward on my desk. “She will be here however long I say she will be, and as for your second question…”

I didn’t say the truth. I couldn’t, lest I risk revealing a slight weakness to her. A man like me, someone who did what I did, someone who had to keep this house and its monsters in line—I could not have a weakness, otherwise one of them might try to use it.

“I don’t care whether she’s safe here. Mr. Osborne has gone against the family’s best interest as of late, and if I have to hurt her to teach him a lesson, I will gladly do so. I trust you will be there to patch her up when the time comes?”

Doc appeared unrattled by my sudden change in demeanor. He gave me a nod. “Of course I will.”

“Good,” I hissed, “now go.” I said nothing else, watching as he turned and left… but not before leaving the results on my desk, which I snatched up and glanced over once I was alone.

Juliet seemed healthy. She seemed… not exactly happy, but unharmed. It was more than I’d thought, at first, considering everything else. Still, she was a sheltered little girl, unaware of the darkness of the world. This house was built in the shadow of that darkness, its mortar blood. My family was born to that same darkness, to the evil and the ruthless and the corrupt. We were not the kind of people you would ever want to cross, but we were exactly the kind of people you always crawled to for help.

This world was full of demons, and if you were not one of them, you were one of the weak or the ignorant. If you were not the monster, someone else would be, and then you would be up shit creek, drowning in blood.

I knew Juliet had no idea why she was here, and I did not plan on telling her. Some truths were best left to the shadows. Let the monsters feast on their crimes and their prey while everyone else looked on.

The girl was far too innocent to ever last here; I knew Doc was right. This house was full of men who would gladly rip her apart, quite literally. I didn’t want to see her hurt, not after all this time, but sometimes, you had to do the exact thing you didn’t want to in order to get the job done.

And me? I was always getting the job done, even when I was younger.

I stood with my father, Jonathan Scott, in the basement. Our house looked like a castle from the outside, and once you were inside, you discovered just how many secrets it held. Such as its basement of terrors, a place where blood and screams comingled more often than not, a place where you either killed or were killed.

My father was an older man; he’d had me when he was almost forty. Now, he was over fifty, his black hair streaked with grey. He wore a suit, as he always did, a neatly-trimmed beard on his jaw. He had the same eyes as me. Most of my brothers did, though a few of them somehow took after their mothers.

We didn’t all share the same mother, you see. A man like my father, Jonathan Scott, was powerful enough to have his own harem of women, though none of them particularly cared for the family business.

I was eighteen, not yet graduated high school. I wore all black, as I usually did, and as I stood there beside my father, I didn’t say a word. I did not ask why we were down here, nor did I ask why there was a man tied to a chair inside the chamber we gazed into. A rectangular window which looked into the room; something similar sat on every cubicle down here.

Each room was a torture room. A death room. A room where our family did what it was paid to.

Sometimes we were hired to make things look like an accident out in the world, and sometimes our clients wanted us to bring in the marks, render them helpless, and dispatch them exactly how they wanted.

My family was full of killers, you see. We all were. And, maybe it’s because of the blood, but none of us were of the sane variety.

No one else was around us. In fact, I found it odd that we were down here, alone. I didn’t think it was time for a new round just yet. Our basement was not always full of corpses, you know. Everyone needed a break now and then.

My father set a hand on my shoulder, squeezing it as we gazed into the room, at the man who was currently restrained to the chair inside. His arms were held down by leather straps, and his legs were much the same. The only thing the man inside could do was scream, but he was currently too out of it to do much of that.

“You’re eighteen now,” my father spoke, breaking the silence of the hall. “It’s time you became a part of this family.” He did not speak it as though this would be my first kill; it wasn’t. I’d killed before. I’d watched dozens of men die already, and I knew I’d watch countless more before I drew my last breath.

He pointed into the room, his finger hovering inches away from the glass. “That man in there,” he said, “someone wants him dead. Whatever his crime was doesn’t matter. Whether he’s guilty or not doesn’t matter.” My father glanced at me, though I could not tear my eyes off the man inside the room. “We are not the jury. We do not decide who is innocent and who is guilty. We are merely the executioner.”

It was a talk I’d heard before, and I wasn’t sure why he was so keen on telling me this again. I knew what we were. I was under no impression that I would get to leave this family and start something of my own. When you were born a Scott, you died a Scott. Plain and simple.

“He’s a bit of an odd case in that the client does not care how it’s done. He just wants him dead,” my father went on. “I had tools brought in. Pick out what you like and do whatever you want with him.”

A gift of a body. It was a gift I knew many of my brothers would like—most of them did not hide their penchant for death and destruction. They loved the kill, the chase, and they took pleasure in it. They liked to hear the screams, to watch the blood roll… we were a family of psychos, truly.

But I never thought of myself quite like that.

I said nothing, moving away from my father and stepping into the room. The door slid closed behind me, and as I walked to the table off to the side, where the tools of death lay, I glanced to the man. He was starting to stir, blinking and coming to, fighting with the restraints holding him back.

He would not break free. Today would be his end. Whatever he’d done—or whatever he didn’t do—to deserve this fate was none of my concern.

My eyes raked over the tools, their silver hue shiny and unblemished. The walls of the room were tiled; easier to clean that way. Sometimes things got messy. We’d had cameras installed a few years back, but I could tell the one in the corner was not recording; no red lights blinked down at me.

This would be a private show, and I did wonder why he’d brought me down here instead of one of my older brothers, like Lincoln.

But then, deep down, I supposed I did know why after all. I’d known for a long time that I wasn’t quite like my brothers.

I gravitated towards a single instrument of pain and vengeance, and that was a sharp blade whose jagged edge glinted in the fluorescent lighting. I picked it up, feeling its weight in my hand. I had gloves on; anytime you came down to the basement, you were supposed to wear gloves, just in case. You could never be too careful when you did what we did.

Our house’s expansive basement ended with a furnace, which made clean-up easier. It burned so hot, everything was incinerated. Clothes, flesh, blood… all of it. Bones were crushed into dust, and then there was nothing left of the pitiful fools who’d found themselves in our care.

My feet drew me towards the man in the chair, and I saw he’d awoken completely, his eyes darting around the room, alert and freaked out, to say the least. When he saw me, when he saw what I held onto, he started to sweat.

I did not know who this man was, but that didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was that he would take his last living breath here, and I would watch him die. I would kill him. That’s what we did. That’s why the Scotts were so different from everyone else.

We were natural born killers. We cradled our baser instincts, nourished our inner beasts, let the monsters loose that society would have you forever chain. Our family was an old one; we’d been doing this for a while. Our money would be eternal, as long as we continued to be smart about things. There was always someone in power, someone with money overflowing out of their pockets, who wanted someone else dead. It was the way of things.

“Hey, man,” the man tied to the chair before me sputtered out, his lower lip trembling somewhat, “I don’t know what this is, but I think you should let me go. If my dad finds out about this, he’ll ruin you—”

I said nothing, only stared at him, slowly cocking my head as I moved the blade I held onto between us. The slight motion caused the man to fumble.

“I can pay you!” He was not the first to try to pay his way out of this, nor would he be the last. But once a job was accepted, the job got done, one way or another. “Please, man, don’t do this. You can let me go, you can—”

I knew the man would keep talking, forever if I let him, so I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. There was no point in prolonging this. My eyes dropped to the blade, and I saw my reflection mirrored back at me on the two-inch wide steel. I stared into my own eyes for only a second, only a split second before lifting it and cutting it through the air.

It happened fast. It happened almost too fast, too fast for the man to register. My movement was unmatched, and after it was done, I raised my eyes back to his, watching as it slowly dawned on him. The blade in my hand dripped with blood, but it was such a clean, quick cut that it had yet to show on him.

“You can… you can,” the man fumbled, blinking over and over as he tried to speak. His voice came out haggard and broken, and in a few moments, it became evident why. A thin line of red appeared on his neck, blood oozing out of a deep cut. He coughed, maroon pooling at the corners of his mouth.

I did not take my eyes off him, not until he was dead. I could’ve been messier, yes. I could’ve dragged it out. It was what my brothers would’ve done, I knew that in my heart. But I was not them. I was me, and because I was me, I saw no point in prolonging this… even if my father had told me I could do whatever I wanted to this man.

Blood bloomed out of the wound, falling onto his chest, seeping into his clothes. Such a gory display of death, a dark maroon hue that made me anything but uncomfortable. Blood wasn’t so bad.

But then again, neither was pain. I never understood why people feared pain so much.

I moved back to the table with all of the instruments, and I set the bloodied blade back in its rightful place. I did not linger in the room longer than I had to, and soon enough I was back in the hall, standing beside my father, who currently stared at me as if he was proud.

“Good,” he said, setting his hand on my shoulder and squeezing tightly. “I knew there was something different about you, Markus. I’d known it ever since you were a child. You’re not like your brothers. You’re more. You’re better…” His voice trailed off, his hand dropping off my shoulder as a tiny, almost imperceptible smile crossed his face. “And because you’re better, you’ll be above them. When I am gone, you will rule this house with an iron fist. You will do whatever you have to to keep this family going, to protect them, to guide them. Every animal needs a keeper.”

I listened to him, a part of me already knowing what he would say. Every animal needed a keeper, and in this case, he meant my brothers, my sisters. The ones with a few screws loose, the ones who would wreak havoc on the world if they could, the ones who would kill anyone who looked at them wrong.

I was not like them. I did not enjoy killing, didn’t get off on it. I didn’t jerk off to thoughts of making girls bleed and scream. My fantasies didn’t involve violence and blood; those things were simply all in a day’s work. A job. A duty. There was no rule that said you could not enjoy what you did here, but to me, killing was just that.

A chore.

I did not stay in my office for long after Doc left. I took her file and brought it to my room. My room was dark, the lights off, the curtains drawn on the windows. I set the papers on the desk in the corner of the room before heading into the attached bathroom. I’d already looked at the papers too much, honestly.

The bathroom was a large thing, wide, open space with a free-standing shower along the wall, a tub with jets nestled on the wall opposite the two-person vanity. The tile on the floor was a white and grey marble, its grout dark. It was probably one of the lightest rooms in the whole house, all fancy and ridiculous.

Don’t get me wrong: it was good to have money. I would much rather be among the haves than the have-nots. When you had money, when you had our kind of money, no one was on your level. No one could dare hope to match you. It earned you an automatic respect among certain crowds.

I never really caught myself wondering what life would be like if everything was different. Not really. I didn’t dream of things, didn’t have my own wishes or desires. I didn’t let myself, and after years of it, I’d grown used to it.

But then… but then something changed. We employed a man named Fred Osborne, and I learned he had a daughter. And a wife, once upon a time. But the wife didn’t matter to me. It had always been the daughter.

The Scotts were not a stranger to taking people in. Some of the people in our family were not related by blood at all, but by circumstance. Take Ed, for example. Or Jaxon. Or even Will. We took in those who we could use, those who could prove themselves to us. The ones who could play by our rules.

Or the ones we could break and reform.

I caught my reflection in the mirror, and I met my own eyes. Dark things, pitch-black, the kind of eyes that saw right through you, no matter what your defenses were. I was able to read people well, able to play them even better. I’d been molded by my father for years before he’d officially retired and handed me the baton of running this family and this house. I was not one to pat myself on the back, but truly, out of us all, who else could he have chosen?

My brothers were too bloodthirsty, too psychotic. They would never be able to do what I did, to run this whole show and keep it going for eternity. My father had chosen correctly when he’d picked me as his successor, and not once did I ever doubt him, because not once did I ever doubt myself.

Not until her, that was.

Juliet Osborne. A kitten. A dove. Something pure and white and naive as hell. Something that had been carefully tucked away from the world, someone who had no idea of the world’s darkest nights. Her innocence was infuriating, but it also a curiously tempting.

I tore my eyes away from the mirror, starting to shed my clothes. My watch came off, first. My fingers worked to undo the buttons on my shirt, and once my shirt was off, I let it fall to the floor. Bit by bit, I dropped every piece of clothing on my body to the floor, and once my feet were bare, I walked to the shower.

My hand turned the water on, and it immediately pelted my head. Cold, at first, but I hardly felt it. Within moments, the water had turned warm, and then hot, steam quick to form in the room. I leaned against the wall, my arms outstretched, my hands flat on the tile before me, my eyes closed.

Juliet was only here because of her father. It was not the first time I’d had to remind myself of this fact, and it probably would not be the last. I’d always been so focused on the job, on getting shit done and getting it done right, that I never let myself wonder… never let myself drift off.

The job was the most important thing. The job, nothing else. Not Juliet. Not the hypnotizing way her blue eyes looked at you. Not the way her innate innocence called out to any monster nearby.

A job. It was just another job, and it would be done soon enough.

As the hot water pelted my head, dripping down my face and my body, I found my mind thinking of her father, the entire reason she was here. My right hand tensed, fingers curling. Before I knew what was happening, I felt a jolt of shock course through my arm, and I opened my eyes to see I’d punched the tiled wall.

Hmm. Did not mean to do that.

I brought my fist away from the wall, finding that the tile had cracked beneath the blow. The skin on my knuckles had broken, blood oozing out of the small wounds. I moved my fingers, moved my hand, but I could not feel the pain that should’ve radiated up my arm as a result of the punch.

I felt nothing at all.

That was my curse, I think. To oversee this family, you could not feel. To feel anything would be a weakness, and inviting any weakness here, with what we did, would be a mistake. And when you did what we did, a mistake like that might kill you.

Death would not come knocking on my door anytime soon. I had a job to do, a life to live, a family to guide. I was Markus Scott, and I was just getting started.