060: Benevolent?
**Chapter 60**
I left Betty in Sara and Mira’s care. They would stay with her through the remaining visiting hours; I had other matters that could not wait. It was Sunday, and even though the past week had been a continuous string of crises, the machinery of my actual life still needed attention.
There was also something that felt off. I had learned long ago that ignoring small inconsistencies was how people ended up owned or dead. The world was already difficult for most adults. For a teenager trying to hold together both a legitimate empire and its darker counterpart, it was lethal. Questioning everything was the only reason I was still breathing.
I met Richard first, Lucy’s uncle and the public face of my legal affairs. His firm had handled Haller business since my grandfather’s time. He knew nothing about the other ledger. As far as he was concerned, I simply maintained two attorneys for redundancy.
“So you’re telling me Matthews left Los Angeles two days ago to meet me here?” I asked.
“Yes,” Richard said. “Hasn’t he contacted you yet?”
“Not yet.”
Richard was a decent man. He handled the clean side with quiet competence and never asked uncomfortable questions. Matthews, the second lawyer, handled everything that could never appear in a courtroom. Officially, he was in Pittsburgh to brief me on the week’s legitimate numbers and the coming week’s strategy. Unofficially, he was also supposed to update me on the other operations. The fact that he had been in the city for two full days without a single call sat wrong.
We finished the clean agenda quickly. When Matthews finally arrived at the café and settled across from me, he opened the first of the darker folders.
I stopped him before he could begin.
“Tell me, Matthews. What kind of man do you think I am?”
He blinked, caught off guard. “Pardon?”
“What kind of boss do you think I am?”
He hesitated, searching for a safe answer. “Benevolent?”
I gave a short, quiet laugh. If that was still his impression, then I had been far too soft for far too long. Softness was how people decided betrayal was a reasonable risk.
I slid my own coffee cup across the table.
“Drink this.”
He looked at the cup, then at me. I said nothing more. After a moment, he picked it up and took a careful sip, eyes still questioning.
“More.”
He drank until the cup was half empty. I watched him for several long seconds, then exhaled.
“You met with someone else while you were in the city these past two days, didn’t you?”
The color drained from his face so quickly it was almost comical. I smiled without warmth.
“I suppose I really have been too lenient.”
I gathered every folder, clean and otherwise, stood, and left him sitting there with the half-finished coffee.
“Your services are no longer required.”
~~
I reached the hospital at the same moment an ambulance bay door opened. Orderlies rushed a gurney past me. The man on it was already foaming at the mouth, body locking in the classic early stages of severe poisoning.
I did not need to look closely. I already knew the cause.
[Serpent’s Greed]
[Grade: D]
[Description: A traceless poison extracted from the snakes found in the left region of the Blue Haven forest. They are quick and swift but are often caught by hunters as they manage to lure them out because of their greed for red meat.]
[Effect: Kills anyone below a two-star knight or a one-circle mage. Has a lesser chance of working on two-star knights and one-circle mages. Does not work on anyone above the aforementioned ranks.]
[Cost: 1,000]
Expensive, but clean. Matthews had been seen with me less than an hour earlier. His sudden death in the same city would raise questions, yet the toxin itself would leave no identifiable chemical signature available to any laboratory in Pennsylvania. The investigation would chase the origin of an impossible poison, find nothing, and eventually collapse under lack of evidence. I would be a person of interest for a short time and then quietly cleared.
I continued to Betty’s ward. Steve was just leaving as I arrived. He stopped, looked me over from head to toe once more, and asked in a low voice, “How did you do it?”
“Do what?”
He glanced at the two new guards, then back at me. Whatever conclusion he reached, he kept it to himself. He only shook his head and told the men, “Don’t stop him,” before walking away, most likely to check on the two I had put down earlier.
Inside the room, Sara was carefully cleaning the edges of Betty’s facial abrasion. Mira sat on the other side of the bed, making a clumsy project of peeling an apple. Betty’s eyes found me the moment the door opened.
“You’re back.”
I nodded and handed over the three coffees I had bought from the hospital cafeteria, never from the café where Matthews had taken his last drink. That kind of stupidity got people caught.
“You’re not on restricted intake, are you?”
Betty shook her head. “Doctor said light food and drink are fine. Heavy food just makes… other things a little difficult.”
She stopped, embarrassed. I had seen far worse in Rox’s memories and in the last twenty-four hours; bodily functions did not trouble me. The discomfort was hers, so I let the subject drop.
Sara finished with the bandages and checked the time. “Visiting hours are almost over. We’ll have to come back tomorrow.”
Why was she doing that in the first place when we were in a hospital with professional staff present?
I looked at Betty. “From now on, you don’t go anywhere without protection. If those men outside make you uncomfortable, you call me directly. Understood?”
“I won’t go anywhere,” she said quietly.
Once Sara and Mira stepped out to give us a moment, I placed a small healing potion on the bedside table.
“It will raise questions,” I said. “We’ll talk about them later.”
Leaving it was a risk, but leaving her in that much visible pain was worse.
Betty only nodded. I left them to the remaining minutes of the visit.
The drive home was silent. Neither Sara nor Mira spoke. When we walked into the house, Aunt Elise was in the kitchen. She looked up at the sound of the door, worry already on her face.
“How’s Betty?”
“She’s stable,” Sara answered for all of us.
I stayed on the edge of the conversation, still not ready to meet Aunt Elise’s eyes for longer than a second. When the explanations wound down, I went upstairs, showered, and changed before coming back down for dinner.
Tom was already at the table. Aunt Elise sat in her usual place beside my chair as though nothing in the world had changed. The normalcy itself felt wrong.
“I heard what happened to Betty,” Tom said while I was still trying to decide where to look.
“Yes, it was unfortunate,” Aunt Elise replied calmly. “Luckily she wasn’t hurt too badly.”
Scraped facial skin was more than “not too badly” for a girl Betty’s age, but there was no point correcting him. I kept my attention on my plate and tried to ignore the soft heat of Aunt Elise’s presence only inches away.
Then I felt her hand.
It settled lightly on my thigh under the tablecloth, fingers warm and certain. My entire body went still. I risked the smallest glance downward. She was answering Tom in the same even tone as before, discussing the accident and the hospital, while her hand slid steadily higher along the inside of my leg.
She reached her destination without the slightest change in expression, cupped the growing length of my cock through my pants, and gave it a single, deliberate squeeze.