Man of the Year (Drake Story)

Chapter Tolv

So the devil - I mean, my uncle - was back.

To celebrate his glorious return from prison, he brought Madeleine with him. They’d been separated for the past few weeks due to some argument they had, but Haley told me that she was the one who bailed him out, and somehow during the ‘thank you’ conversation their casual rekindling turned into getting back together. She lived here once again.

Almost all of Madeleine’s hair was gone; she now had a curly boy-cut. “Kind of like yours,” She said to me when I told her that it looked nice on her. Drake didn’t seem to like it, with how bitterly he stared at it every time he walked past her.

Drake. Yes, he felt bitter towards his wife’s hair, but there was no word in the English dictionary to accurately describe the way he looked at me. Me, his dear nephew, the boy who did nothing to him besides try to save one of his victims, if there were more. He glared at me with fiery eyes that appeared hungry, as if they had a need to swallow me whole, to burn me to dust and ashes. He was better at the resentment game than I was, so I didn’t return his dragon stares. Instead, each time he looked at me I would only smile, sometimes adding a wink, and then go on to start up a conversation with his wife. The degree to which it pissed him off was priceless.

The rest of the staff followed my lead. They saw our interaction and mirrored it, replying politely whenever Drake snapped orders at them, grinning for him when he scowled at them. It was entertaining for the whole house and became sort of a game for us, something that was juvenile but lightened the mood in the mansion. Things were always so dramatic for us.

We walked in circles around Drake. He walked somewhere, the servants would follow to tend to his every need as much as he didn’t want it. Then, to escape them, he’d come over to the living room just as I would deliberately sit down to watch TV. That would push him up to his bedroom, where Madeleine was talking loud to one of her girlfriends on the phone. You could see how badly he wanted to rip his hair out when he marched out to the golf court, where Michael, Joshua and Isaac were playing a long game.

There was nowhere in this big, grand mansion where Drake could go to be alone. The only place he could go where no one would bother him, even though it was being occupied, was Belphoebe’s room. She did not participate in the game. She stayed in her room, not coming out for absolutely anything but to remind Haley not to bother her. I didn’t mind; no one really noticed she was gone, and for a while I not-noticed with them, but she was always in the back of my mind. Her face, the way she ran away from Cyrus’ house, the voice of the anonymous man last night who told me of the will and her strategy to getting to the top. Information like this was extremely difficult for me to believe, because Drake was very selfish and probably wouldn’t leave anything for anybody, much less someone not even related to him. And Belphoebe didn’t come across to me as someone who would murder for material things. Then again, she didn’t come across as someone who would murder at all, but that didn’t change what she attempted to do to Cyrus. Of course, he wasn’t dead and would be back soon, haunting our lives again. Only this time I would have a few questions for him.

I wanted to go in her room, not to speak to her but at least look at her to make sure that she wasn’t being drugged or trying to drug someone herself. The fact that neither of these possibilities had any trace of sarcasm scared me away from even walking near it. I instead waited for a moment when everyone was either outside or in their rooms to call on William.

“Master Aubrey, I hope this little poking-fun at Drake doesn’t get taken too far,” He said as he pulled out the keys to the East Wing door. These days I didn’t even need to ask; I usually didn’t need much from the help, and when I did need to ask them for something, I’d likely realize that it was only a ‘want’ and I could get it myself. But these trips to the attic, these were needs of mine, things that I couldn’t go more than fourteen days without. The attic was a healthy addiction. William seemed to understand. Hopefully he understood.