Scarlet Rose

Chapter 62

"Not only it is stupid!"

"Careless!"

"Amazingly irresponsible!"

"It is so unprofessional, what you did Terry, it really beggars belief whether your heart is in the right place..."

Robert took a break for breath. His stare under those bushy grey eyebrows, like the lightnings of Zeus. Terry kept glancing at his boss between periods of having his eyes fixated to the  thick carpet of his room.

"Because your mind clearly isn't. There in no question about it!!"

He was risking reaching the point of self combustion. But he was right through and through. Terry had resigned himself to just ride Robert's anger, despite feeling his head was going to split into two.

"It was bad enough that you missed the lead role here in London, because you were mugged in New York, and now??"

The question marks in Robert's voice queued up in front of Terry, who left them hanging in the air that turned silent. He had no excuses to give.

"Hm??" He raises his brows, waiting for a response.

Under other circumstances, he was never short of answering back, regardless whether he was right or wrong. He used to stretch Robert's nerves, with his every word able to tighten the screws inside his head to breaking point.

"Nothing to say for yourself?"

This time, he was peculiarly coy about what had happened to him. This silence from him, infuriated Robert even more. He hid his face inside his hands and breathed out his frustration. He pulled his hands over his skin. Stared at Terry, beaten up, stitched up brow, bruised cheekbone, cut lip. He could had been thrown inside a boxing ring.

"No grandiose, defiant - This is me and deal with it - Terrence?"

He continued, while trying to burn his anger over Terry's actions by pacing up and down the spacious living room of his hotel suite, stopping every once in a while to throw another murderous look over to his protégée.

Finally Terry, stood up, looking more impatient than anything else. He expected all that was coming to him, and Robert was right, he had messed up and there was nothing else to say or do to deny the fact that he had abandoned all logic for the last couple of days. But there was that much he could take from his boss.

"What do you want me to say Robert? I stepped in the wrong place at the wrong time and I said the wrong things. What happened, happened, ok?! I am sorry, I've said it many times already but apart from that, unless you want my head on a place, there is nothing else I can do about what happened."

"But don't you see how self destructive is this Terry?"

"Please don't start with the Froyd bullshit again, alright?!"

"Oh, you have no right to tell me what to say and what not to say. You lost that right Terry."

"Honestly boss, you become tiresome sometimes."

"Tiresome? Well, and you my dear boy, you have landed yourself into the shit - if you want me to use your gutter parlance - one time too many. And it affecting us too, the company."

Silence.

"Is this about your father?"

"What?!"

"Well what else happened before you went off the rails Terry?"

He turned his head in all direction, as if trying to find help from a invisible God. "You couldn't be further from the truth. What has my father to do with any of this?"