Letting in.

Three

She brought the tension into their lives. As you can probably tell, the tension was not there to begin with, no she, the stepmother, dragged it in along with her 9 cat lives. It seemed, whatever she did, she was always able to talk her way out of it. Therefore the kids around the block, when he was growing up, called her The Cat. Kids would even dress up as a cat for Halloween, pretending to be her. They all knew how hard she tried to fit into the shoes his real mother had left behind.

She dropped down to 3 lives when his father came home to question her about the new furniture she had placed in the lounge without asking for permission to spend the money his father had earned. Thousands and thousands of dollars on just the house, and we are not even going to talk about the clothes and cars, animals and jewelry. 16 years she had been stuck to the walls of that awfully expensive house as if she had given birth to it.

She loved money, loved.

When his father met her, she was only a nurse at a local hospital. His real mother wanted her last days spent in a hospital so that the memory of her at home wouldn't be death, and so it happened that she was placed at the hospital where The Cat was working night shifts.

North Shore Medical Center hospital, five words that would ring in his head over and over again by the thought of The Cat and his mother.

On a night shift, a cold winter evening, his mother was rushed into the treatment section of the hospital. Brent wasn't there that night. While the butler had made sure Brent went through his routines before bed, Mr. and Mrs. Astor had been sitting in the living room two stairs down. They were laughing, touching shoulders, covered in a rather thin satin blue blanket. He was holding a can of cold bear, she was sipping on her glass of wine. She didn't know this would be the last time home. He didn't know he'd never be able to sit in the same spot ever again.

When Brent woke up that night, he wasn't allowed to leave his room.

"Orders from the top boss, little man. You're just going to have to hang in there for a while." the security said, as he was handed a tall glass of water which he had asked for. And he didn't think much of it. At 4am, half asleep, he didn't think much of anything.

When he went down for breakfast that morning, he wasn't allowed to sit at the dining table.

"It is quite a large table for a young man like you, don't you think? Just this once, the old man allows food while watching TV." the cook smiled, as he ruffled Brents brown curls.

And as the good news about eating while watching TV came right after, he forgot to think about it and so he ate while watching TV.

When he put on his leather shoes and went into his father's room to get the golf clubs, he was stopped.

"Boss won't be able to join your session today, young man. And we wouldn't want to cause any trouble by using the old man's expensive belongings without him here, now would we?" James smiled. As James was his favorite of all the security in the house, Brent nodded and resisted a sigh when he took a sad glance at the leather shoes he put back into his closet.

It was when around dinner time, he noticed the silence in the big house. For a little boy whose brains were praised until numb every day, he found himself to be stupid and felt lied to by all those people who dared to stare him in the eyes while smiling out those words.

"You're a remarkably smart kid, Astor. We can't wait until your farther steps down and you take charge."

Was his brain turning out to be useless? Feeling fed up with all the words he had been stuffed with all day by one suit and tie to another suit and tie, Brent led his steps to his father's office where he knew the top guard would be standing. The guard that would know everything about his father's whereabouts

The guards recognized the old man's son as cold and emotionless. He was never found of all the fuss around him. He knew, even as the little child he was, the power as a heir he had was beyond imaginable. He could afford his cold attitude against the security and the staff around the house. He was the one they would be working for later on.

He had their destiny in the palms of his little hands. Even if his father was sweet and caring for the people that worked under him, no one could predict what the little boy would grow up to be. And so to keep their titles and places in the house, they all had to treat the boy better than they were ever treated themselves and better than they would treat anyone else in the world.

But as his steps got closer and closer to the office, he felt the boy in him shudder. It was as if he already had gotten bad news. And when he opened his petite mouth and uttered those 5 little soft words, no one ever expected to be as soft coming from him, the guard lowered his head to the boys height and asked for the question to be repeated as politely as he could.

The guard never imagined that what he thought he had misheard would turn out to be the exact words the boy had spoken. And the boy did was he was asked.

"Where is mom and dad?