Every family has a door
that stays locked.
Not because there is nothing behind it —
but because everyone knows
what is.
He poured himself a glass
and called it justice..
Smiled at a broken man
and called it power.
Wanted a throne
and called it his birthright.
...
Samson didn't slow down when he reached the house.
He slammed the front door hard enough to make the frame shudder, stepping into the entrance hall with the evidence bag still clenched in his fist, chest heaving, eyes already scanning the room.
He found Daniel in the sitting room.
His brother was sprawled across the sofa in the particular way of a man who had just exhaled a very long breath — loose limbed, unhurried, the relieved posture of someone who had decided the worst was behind him.
He had a glass of something near his hand and the television murmured in the corner and everything about the scene radiated a disgusting, obscene normalcy.
The scratches on his face had been cleaned and dressed.
Samson crossed the room in four strides and punched him. Hard.
The punch landed square across Daniel's jaw with the full weight of everything behind it — the police station, the evidence file, the cause of death printed in plain black type, his name saved under important on a phone she would never pick up again.
Daniel's head snapped sideways and he went off the sofa and hit the floor in a heap, the glass tumbling and shattering somewhere nearby.
For a moment the room was completely still.
Daniel lay on the floor, one hand pressed to his face, looking up at Samson with an expression that cycled rapidly through shock and pain before settling, almost instinctively, into something defensive.
"What—" he started. "What is wrong with you? Why—"
Samson said nothing. Just glared at him.
He spread out his hand and held up the evidence bag. Let it hang in the air between them. The penknife caught the light inside its transparent casing — dark wood handle, brass fitting along the spine. Unmistakable.
Daniel looked at it.
The defensiveness drained out of his face.
"Samson—"
"SAMSON."
The voice came from the hallway. Roland Mitch Sr. filled the doorway a moment later, tall and immovable as ever, his expression set in the particular authoritative stillness that had ended arguments and closed doors for as long as Samson could remember.
Two security personnel appeared behind him almost immediately, stepping into position on either side of the room.
"That is enough," his father said. Not loudly. He never needed to be loud.
Samson turned to look at him.
Something passed across his father's face when he saw the look in his son's eyes — something that might, in another man, have been the beginning of alarm. Roland Mitch Sr. recovered instantly, but it had been there. Surprise?.
"I said enough."
"Did you know?" Samson's voice came out very quiet. "Did you know what he did?"
"This is not the place for—"
"Did you know what he did to her?"
The question landed in the room and stayed there.
His father's jaw tightened. He said nothing, which was, Samson realised, its own kind of answer.
Samson looked at them both — his father standing in the doorway like a wall, his brother slowly pulling himself up from the floor with one hand braced on the sofa, the dressed scratches on his face still visible, still red beneath the bandaging.
Her scratches.
"Listen to me carefully," Samson said. His voice was the quietest it had been since he walked through the door, and somehow that made it the most frightening thing in the room. "Both of you. If you do not make him confess confess what he did — what you are now trying to cover up — I will make sure you suffer for it. Every single day, for the rest of your lives."
He looked at his father first. Then at Daniel.
Then he walked over to where Daniel was half standing, looked down at him for one long moment, and spat on his face, the rage barely been held under.
He turned and walked out without another word. The front door didn't slam this time. It closed quietly behind him.
The security personnel exchanged a glance. Roland Mitch Sr. stood motionless in the doorway for a moment, then straightened his jacket and turned back toward his study without a word. The room settled back into silence.
Then the door opened again.
Kingsley Mitch strolled in with his hands in his pockets and a wide, deeply satisfied smile spreading across his face. He looked at Daniel, trying to wipe his face, hands shaking, then at the shattered glass, at the scratches beneath the bandaging, and his smile widened further.
"Well," he said. "I heard all of that."
He crossed to the wine closet without being invited, selected a bottle, pulled the cork with practiced ease and poured himself a generous glass. He turned and leaned back against the cabinet, swirling the wine slowly, regarding Daniel the way one regards something mildly entertaining.
"Quite a night you've had."
"Uncle Kingsley—" Daniel started.
"I want you to know," Kingsley continued, as though Daniel hadn't spoken, his voice dropping into something lower and more deliberate, "that I am going to make absolutely sure you both pay for what happened to that girl." He tilted his glass slightly.
"You and your father. Do make sure to tell him, When you're both out of the picture—" he smiled again, "—well. The company will need someone to run it."
He let that sit for a moment.
"And after that," he added almost as an afterthought, swirling the wine again, "I guess I'll deal with Samson too."
He drained the glass, set it down on the cabinet, and walked back toward the door with the same unhurried ease he had entered with.
"Don't get too comfortable down there,
Daniel," he said without turning around. "It doesn't suit you." Laughing as he left.
The door closed behind him.
The room was quiet again.
Daniel stood slowly, one hand still pressed to his jaw, eyes on the floor. Everything that had held him together for the past few hours — the relief of thinking it was handled, the belief that his father's reach was long enough to make this disappear — had come apart in the space of twenty minutes.
Samson's face when he held up that penknife.
He had never seen his brother look at him like that. In all the years of rivalry and resentment and careful, pointed cruelty — Samson had always been the steady one.
The patient one. The one who absorbed and endured and kept his composure while Daniel pushed and prodded and took what he wanted.
Well not tonight.
Tonight something in Samson had looked at him like he was already a dead man.
Daniel's hands weren't entirely steady when he walked down the hall and knocked on his father's study door.
"Come in."
Roland Mitch Sr. was behind his desk, phone in hand, expression unreadable as always.
"Dad." Daniel hated how young his own voice sounded. "What do we do? Samson is—"
"Samson is angry," his father said simply. "Anger passes."
"And Uncle Kingsley?"
His father looked at him for a moment. Then, without a word, he set his phone on the desk and pressed play.
The recording filled the quiet study.
I am going to make absolutely sure you both pay for what happened to that girl. When you're both out of the picture — the company will need someone to run it. And after that I'll guess I'll deal with Samson too.
Kingsley's voice. Clear, unhurried, and thoroughly incriminating.
Daniel stared at the phone.
"You recorded him."
"I record everything," his father said, picking the phone back up. "I always have." He leaned back in his chair, something cold and precise moving behind his eyes. "Kingsley has been a problem for a long time. Now he has given me the means to remove him."
"And Samson?"
Roland Mitch Sr. was quiet for a moment.
"One problem at a time," he said finally.
"Kingsley first. Then I will handle your brother."
Daniel stood in the study doorway and said nothing. The recording had stopped. The room was very still.
His father had already looked back down at his desk.