Fletcher hated the way his back had been screaming at him every time he bent over, it was his age beginning to show its face more with every opportunity. He didn't dare let his employees see how much pain he was in, especially since he had gone to the extent of consulting a doctor that said a cortisol shot would help as well as Tylenol with codeine. He never wanted anyone to think they could walk all over him, and if any of the guys caught wind of him popping pills and getting a needle to stop his pain then he would never hear the end of it. Instead he mustered through each strain in his back as he continued to pick up things he kept dropping on the ground. Each time a nail or a screw fell to the ground, he contemplated it's value and whether it was worth the agonizing pain he was going to have to put himself through in order to pick it up – but of course he couldn't waste materials, they weren't paying for themselves. He had enough men on his watch that wasted valuable goods, every nail was a penny from Fletcher's pocket and every penny taken from his pocket was one less he could pay towards the debts he owed.
The debts were eating away at Fletcher's stomach, yet another ailment that he wouldn't admit to being a problem in front of anyone. He had stomach ulcers for well over fifteen years but they had been manageable for the most part up until now; the pain had gotten so bad that he wouldn't eat anything acidic which meant his usual meal of a hamburger slathered in barbeque sauce over at Nancy's Diner was no longer an option. He remembered the way his favourite waitress there, Laura, looked at him when he asked for a salad with dressing on the side – a small exception he thought he could make to his strict diet – instead of their infamous Back Home Burger that he had been ordering almost every evening for the last four years. The girls at Nancy's knew him quite well by now, always asking how business was and how his daughter, Hadley, was doing. He had been a regular for almost five years now, since his wife Marie left him. She had always been upset about his love for the casinos and specifically for cards, but it was selling off her grandmother's dinner set from the early nineteen hundreds that really tipped her over the edge. One day he set out for work and heard her mumble something under her breath as he left the house, when he came back she had packed her things and left him – she didn't even bother leaving a note to explain herself. So he relied on the cooking of strangers – at the time – until they became much better looking wives to him than Marie had ever been.
But now the stress of Marik coming after him and involving his own nephew John in the matter was making his stomach act up worse than it ever had before. He wanted to do a kind thing by helping John, even though in the long run he had used John for his own financial gain. Marik had cut him off after Fletcher had resorted to his services for the fourth time in a single month, saying that Fletcher was becoming a liability that he couldn't waste any more of his time on. But Fletcher needed to try to make a bit more money, he already owed the bank a good ten thousand and he had taken out a business loan from his own company in order to join in on a poker game that was supposed to be the game of the century, leaving him another twelve thousand in debt. Despite the work his company was getting, there was no possible way that Fletcher could make the amount of money back to pay the bank in time, which meant he had to resort to a new low for him.
The phone call had come just as Fletcher walked in the door from having dinner at Nancy's, having tipped Laura more than he could afford at the time but it was because he liked the way she forgot to button up the last button on her uniform which allowed Fletcher a bird's eye view of his two most favourite breasts, even more than Marilyn Monroe's and that was a feat in itself. He thought about ignoring the persistent ringing of the phone and instead popping in a DVD of an old war time movie that he could fall asleep to, but the damn phone wouldn't stop screaming at him – it reminded him far too much of his ex-wife. When he finally mustered up the will to answer the phone, he was surprised that it was John calling him. John was upset about something, but he never outright said what it was, just that he was in desperate need of money so that he wouldn't have to touch the remainder of his mother's savings. He was hard up for a job and had debt collectors after him for his student loans, not to mention John had been living with his ex-girlfriend for a matter of months as a way to have a roof over his head but things were souring there very quickly. At first Fletcher didn't care all that much about John's situation, he was young and able bodied – if he wanted work he could find it easily enough. He was about to say just that when it dawned on him – maybe he could help John out, but for a price.
Fletcher explained that John was welcome to come stay with him, and he could help John out with the money so long as he worked for free in return to pay for the rent he would be owing. As for the money, Fletcher said that John could take his time repaying him, but that he actively had to look for another job to start repaying his debt. If Fletcher sounded benevolent, it wasn't without a price. Fletcher realized he could go to Marik once more, but this time with the excuse that his brain-dead sister's son was low on cash and needed something to pay off his bills so that he wouldn't have to relocate his mother into a home worse than where she already was. He would tell Marik that they needed a steep one-hundred and twenty thousand dollars – medical bills, you know? – in order to get things on track for John and his mother. But that was a lie, John only needed about eighty grand to pay off his student loans, but Fletcher was going to pocket the extra forty thousand to pay off some of his own bank loans. John would never know a thing, because it would give both Fletcher and John time to pay off their dues while getting their lives on track. Fletcher would use the excuse that John didn't want to deal with someone like Marik, that he didn't want to tarnish his good reputation being seen doing business with a known loan shark, and that Fletcher was simply a middleman in the deal. Funnily enough, Marik bought the story and gave Fletcher one more chance, only because Marik had a grandmother who was in a vegetative state after a life-threatening stroke.
Flip back to the present time and Fletcher felt sick about the entire deal, wishing that he could have stopped himself from interfering in John's life – but it was too late now and he had to bite the bullet. Everything that could have went wrong did, and there was not a thing Fletcher could do about it except hope that he could syphon some of the money from his very own sister's savings in order to buy himself a bit more time. He even went so far as to explain that John did have a savings account in Alana's name, using it as leverage to keep Marik from hunting him down. But the thought of touching Alana's only funds to keep her in the nursing home that she was now, it killed Fletcher. He had loved his sister very much, she had never done him wrong and cared deeply about him before the accident. Fletcher tried to reason with himself – would Alana even notice if they moved her to a cheaper nursing home? What difference would it make, any how – she would be getting the same amount of treatment just without some of the perks, and it wasn't as if she was really aware of what was going on. There were plenty of nice nursing homes they could transfer her to – sure, they didn't have the same physiotherapy programs but they had some government funded programs that would surely be just as good for Alana.
Fletcher cursed under his breath as the pinch in his back felt like an electric shock down his legs, leaving the nails he had dropped on the ground for someone else to pick up. His mind raced with the thoughts of the night everything went wrong; it had all been going according to plan and Marik had bought his story like it was an overpriced souvenir in an airport, until Fletcher couldn't control the urge to head over to the casino to see if he could double his money in order to pay off Marik much faster. At the time it seemed like a genius plan, and Fletcher had been on a winning streak – his luck wouldn't run out now. He would slip down to Brook, where he was sure he wouldn't run into Marik, and play a couple hands of cards to make a bit of extra money. If anything, Marik would have been proud that Fletcher was taking responsibility for his actions and wanting to pay some of the money he owed him before it was due. With this sense of pride in himself, Fletcher found himself at the casino with his lucky bracelet strapped tightly around his wrist, giving himself a pep talk as he sat down at the table. As soon as he scanned his opponents faces, he knew that they didn't stand a chance. There was the typical poker player with sunglasses on, the fat guy that had far too many drinks, the man down on his luck, and then there was Fletcher – the lucky one. The first game didn't go as well as Fletcher had planned, but he shrugged it off as a warm-up round. The second game followed suit of the second, but the third ended up getting him a bit of extra cash. It wasn't much, a mere one hundred dollars on top of what he had come in with, but it also wasn't enough. Hand after hand, Fletcher tried his luck hoping that he would come out ahead. That wasn't the case.
Two hours into sitting at the table and Fletcher was already down twenty grand, but he still had another twenty to play with – which could easily get him back to where he needed to be then everything would be fine. He played for another forty-five minutes and suddenly the man that had been down on his luck was now the winner of the table, aggravating Fletcher to the point that he moved tables. It was just a bad hand, a bad table, maybe he wasn't betting the right amount – there was always an excuse. He even tried to say that the dealer was purposely giving him bad hands, which almost got him thrown out of the casino for that comment but he quickly retracted it, acting as though it had just been a joke on his part. Just when Fletcher thought he was beginning to hit his stride, someone joined the table. Fletcher had been so caught up in trying to win that he didn't take time to acknowledge the new player, which was his first mistake. His second mistake was thinking he had the hand to win them all, betting every last cent only to lose. Fletcher's heart sank and the world tumbled out of view, leaning his head against the table as the dealer wished him better luck next time.
"You really think I wouldn't find out you came here?" Marik's voice rang out, causing Fletcher to jump from his chair. The second his eyes met Marik's he knew the gig was up. Marik motioned for Fletcher to follow him, seeing two rather well-built men following not too far behind.
Marik took Fletcher outside where there was no one to be seen, ordering his henchmen to rough Fletcher up a bit. Fletcher screamed out for help, but there were no ears around to hear him – and even if there had been, no one was going to risk their neck to save him. When Fletcher was thoroughly shaken up, Marik threatened Fletcher and demanded the money back right away – and this time he didn't care how Fletcher had to get it, but he better have it as soon as possible. Fletcher begged to give him more time, trying to barter time with Marik but he only gave Fletcher until June. After this Marik made it his mission to call Fletcher almost daily, asking for updates about how the money situation was coming, because if Fletcher didn't figure it out then Marik was coming for blood, and that he knew all about his daughter Hadley and how pretty she was. That was enough to send Fletcher's stomach into a fiery pit of acid, constantly churning inside of him with every step he took throughout the day, even as he slept at night. Hadley was his life, she was the only thing left of him that was pure and untainted. He didn't want to imagine what a guy like Marik could do to her, and it sickened him to think of anything bad happening to his daughter. For the first time since he was a child, Fletcher found himself crying.
But now Fletcher was determined to make things right, all he had to do was get the money from Alana's savings to give Marik some money to buy him more time, and then he could figure it out from there. But it was becoming a bigger problem because Fletcher had no way of accessing Alana's savings, not unless John did. Marik was getting antsy and it was eating away at Fletcher, so he did what he thought was right and told Marik about the savings – which appeased Marik for the time being. But that now meant that he dragged John into his mess, and that somehow he was going to have to get his hands on that money. The entire ordeal was impossible, there was no way he could convince John to give up the money, especially since he would have to explain why he needed it so desperately. There was only one thing Fletcher could do, and he hated to think about it.
Just as Fletcher was going to blame the nails on the ground in front of him on someone else, so he would do with the money that he owed Marik. Fletcher sighed, walking away from the scene so that he could take a break in the shade by the shed of Phil Marksman's house. He wanted to gut the entire place, come up with some kind of excuse why they had to, so that he could make a bit more money – but he couldn't do that to Phil. He took a sip of his water bottle and noticed Hadley's boyfriend, Atheson, stumbling up the driveway and around the side of the house, confusion marking his face. From the second he saw Atheson, he knew that he was drunk. Fletcher watched as Atheson surveyed the damage to the house, clearly unaware of what had happened. Some of Fletcher's employees asked Atheson to leave as he needed to wear a hard hat while construction was going on, but Atheson slurred his words at them and said he was looking for the person who lived in the house. Fletcher snapped his fingers, finally drawing Atheson's attention towards him. His cheeks went bright red as he tried to contain his drunkenness, straightening his shoulders as he approached Fletcher.
"Come have a seat, son," Fletcher said, patting the ground next to him. Once Atheson plopped himself down on the ground, Fletcher passed his water bottle to him. They sat in silence for an ungodly amount of time, which Fletcher had done on purpose to shake up Atheson. He wasn't fond of the kid, the entitled little prick that he was, but this made his nerves even worse. He wasn't unaware of Atheson's past, that he had been with Ellion Marksman for a long period of time, especially for people of their age. "Celebrating something?" Fletcher asked, his eyes never meeting Atheson's.
Atheson stumbled over his words, unable to get his story straight. Fletcher shook his head, taking the bottle of water back from the kid without looking once in his direction. "Let me tell you a little story while you get your bearings. I was quite the ladies man back in my day, believe it or not, I had girls wanting to be with me left, right, and centre. I guess it was my charm or maybe these big blue eyes of mine, probably even the fact that they used to call me Fletcher Presley when I was younger. I could have any girl I wanted and I was fully aware of it, no one had to explain to me how lucky I was. But I met this stunning woman named Marie, and by god was I even more lucky to stand a chance with a woman like her. She exuded sexiness and she never took it for granted, she used to dangle it in front of me like a cat with a toy. I did damn near everything to get that woman to notice me, and eventually it paid off. My luck definitely wasn't running out any time soon. But, you know how we men can get, our eyes tend to wander especially to things we aren't allowed to have – the more restricted, the better. I got a little handsy with another pretty young thing, not nearly as nice as my Marie, but I thought she was worth it at the time. Marie found out, as women always do, and kicked my ass to the curb. I almost lost the woman of my dreams because I couldn't think with my big head, it was all the little guy doing the work. Women like Marie don't forgive that easily, and I thought for a long time that she wouldn't. It took a wedding and a baby for her to forgive me, and I'm pretty sure she never fully did. But I got stupid again, and I lost her for good this time," Fletcher explained, patting Atheson's knee a few times before finally making eye contact. "Hadley is just like her mother, except ten times smarter and a hell of a lot more beautiful – she can have anyone in the world that she wants, you could just be a stepping stone for her. If you think she will forgive you, I can damn well tell you that she won't. So stop thinking with your little guy."
Atheson stared blankly at Fletcher and that made Fletcher feel as though he thoroughly shook up Atheson, but that wasn't what was going through Atheson's head whatsoever. In the blink of an eye, Atheson's mouth opened and vomit hurled out all over Fletcher, covering his shirt and part of his pants. Fletcher cursed loudly, so loud that even Frank Moon heard it from his house, and shoved Atheson away from him before round two began. Fletcher stood up and carefully pulled off his shirt, throwing it down beside him as he reached over to the hose on the shed and began spraying himself down. The guys by the house began laughing at Fletcher, but he quickly yelled for them to get back to work or else he would fire every single one of them. Fletcher reached for his belt, discarding it to the side as he ordered Atheson to get lost before he buried him in his own vomit. Atheson took off like a bat out of hell, trying to apologize between keeping the rest of the contents of his stomach down.
Fletcher cleaned himself up, leaving his shirt out to dry on a nearby rock as the sun beamed down to heat it up. His pants weren't nearly as dirty and he didn't want to go without them, so he picked up his belt and pulled off the sheath for his family knife. He set it down on the ground and just as he went to loop his belt back through, he noticed that the sheath was opened and that there was no knife inside. Panic filled Fletcher as he double checked that his eyes hadn't been fooling him, but they hadn't. His knife was gone – the knife that had been passed down from his grandfather. He searched everywhere, even asking if anyone had seen it, but no one had. It was gone.