Rain lashed against the floor-to-ceiling window, streaking down in silvery rivulets under the night's glow.
Next to it, seated at her vanity, Chiara Effendi Qusbecq withdrew her gaze and turned to the mirror. Tilting her head, she traced her hand along her taut jawline and up to the outer canthus of her slightly hooded eyes, still bright and ocean blue.
"You look beautiful, Chiara," in a deep, male voice, the mirror complemented her only to meet her snort.
"I didn't ask for an opinion."
"I'm sorry, my queen."
"Book me an appointment with Dr. Greg Borrayo for another brow lift," she said curtly. "As soon as he's available."
"Right away."
On the periphery of the mirror, a request was sent to the plastic surgeon's office. Chiara sighed, raising her arm. Attached to the crook of her elbow was a cannula connecting to a blood bag. Said to have the rejuvenating property, the ichor of a girl at seventeen that matched hers was dripping slowly into her veins.
Seventeen, she brooded, what an age to love, fuck, and be alive! She looked to the sky again. A thick veil of the rain had blurred the world outside, distorting lights into shifting smears of color not much unlike her memory as she trawled through those brighter years. The men who had bowed at her feet, the parties she had presided over, and the endless nights of glamor that had drawn to a close only too fast – she could hardly remember any of the names, their faces, those places, but how they all made her feel: a queen. No length she wouldn't go, and nothing she wouldn't do to feel that again and always. She raised her chin, the corners of her lips hoisting. Practicing the tearful smile, she captured the moment of herself before the mirror. Her heart ached at the want of audiences for the album of art that collected tens and thousands of her photos.
The doorbell rang. She let out a sigh and waved a hand. The photo dissolved, leaving only her reflection in the mirror. Slowly getting up on her wobbly knees, she plucked out the cannula. Lightning struck as she opened the door, clawing like talons at the butler already waiting.
"Gosh, Ezio!" she cried. "You scared me!"
"Apologies, my lady," the gaunt butler replied tersely, his smile forever pasted to his lips. A crisp bath towel draped from the crook of his elbow.
Chiara scowled. Miffed as she was, she couldn't blame him further for doing exactly what she had asked. "Yilmaz and Yesfir, are they both away for the night?" she asked the man in tow as she padded toward the stairs.
"Yes, my lady, they are both out with their friends."
"Good," she said, turning her eyes to the front. "But I'll still need you to stay in the security control room lest anything happens or anyone comes home."
"Of course."
The doorbell rang again when they were at the sweeping stairs winding into the vestibule, and the metal ring clanged on the ornate double door. Her jaw clenched, her hand reaching for the doorknob.
A gush of chill wind swept in her firstborn, who lost his footing and lurched headlong.
Chiara sidestepped, her face a wince as she smoothed out the white silk robe where he had groped. "When you said you'd come for a visit, I'd expect some manners and gifts." She sized him up, her head shaking. Clad in a white, long-sleeved lapel shirt and khaki pants, he looked clean at least, without any suspicious stains. His face seemed more sallow than tan, his grizzle curls still wet from the rain, and those big, russet brown eyes, bloodshot and brimming with panic.
She shook her head, her lips pursing while she chewed on the seams. It was one thing to see a middle-aged man in his sorry state, quite another when that man was her son. It laughed in the face of everything she had invested in herself to stay young with unbearable cruelty.
"You may leave us now," She blinked away her tears before glancing at Ezio Panetto. "I'll take it from here."
As the butler bowed and retreated, Chiara swiveled. "Follow me."
The rain pattered on, pounding against the roof in somewhat chorus with their footsteps. Chiara led the man back to her room.
The second the door clicked close, Serhat leaned to a wall and slid to the floor. Drawing up a leg, he propped an elbow on the knee, his hand shading over his brow. "So," he said, his voice incongruously calm. "You wanna tell me what the fuck this was all about?"
Very considerate of him that he didn't plop onto the plush mattress of her platform bed, or the pelt-covered lounge chair, or the cushioned ottomans slung with navy velvet, knowing her obsessive cleanliness – Chiara decided to give him some credit for that as she sat down before the vanity. "You have to be more specific, my dear," she replied in a much softer voice.
He broke a chuckle, his shoulders shaking. "On the drive here, we change cars three times, each with a different man driving. The first one gave me the change of clothes, and kept hold of the old ones, saying he'd take care of them. And only until I got into the third car was I asked where I'd like to go. So, I called you. The way you answered it, like you've been expecting me to call." He wiped down his face with his hand and tossed back his head, his pate rapping the wall. "I admit, I'm a traitor. When your husband asked me to give myself out for his campaign, I lost it. I turned to Mustafa, hoping that by giving away Warshon, he'd have me as an ally. Was I so wrong that I wanted the Effendi to have an ally? After everything the Qusbecq has taken away from us? From you?"
Lifting her chin, Chiara cocked a brow. "Do you see me as a fool? Do you think I married Arslan Qusbecq so he could take away everything from my House?" When her son scoured for a reply, she went on, "It was a deal. I helped Arslan fulfill his ambition, and he helped me take down the Effendis, piece by piece."
Serhat stared at her agape. In those large russet brown eyes – eyes he took after his unremarkable father – brewed a mix of hurt and hesitance, the kind that slipped through when one was betrayed. "Why?"
"Why?" She laughed, looking daggers. "They shot your father, and made me watch his brain splash on my bedroom wall! The bedroom where you're conceived!"
"Like you give a shit about my father!" Serhat clapped back, slamming a fist backward at the wall. "All these years you called him a loser! Hell, I don't even know his fucking name! And you're telling me you took down those men for him? Men who are your father and brothers! My grandpa and uncles! Who practically raised me when you were never around!"
"They ruined me!" she snapped, hurling a bottle of face cream at the wall next to her son. It ricocheted and careened across the floor. "I was locked away, institutionalized in a cuckoo's nest after that for six years, you needy piece of shit!"
Serhat gulped, his parted lips wriggling as they drew closer.
"I promised myself when I was bounded in a straitjacket that I would tear down every Effendi and take everything they own to myself. That promise kept me going! It kept me alive! And I fulfilled the promise!" She jabbed a thumb at her chest, indignant with the pain, her voice tearing her throat. "One by one, I drove them out of power and turned them mad! I've made them rue what they did to me! And everything was fine! Everything would have stayed fine! Until you tried to wreck the deal I had with Arlsan! What the hell were you thinking when you turned to Mustafa?"
Nudging against the wall as if he was trying to stand up, or perhaps run away, Serhat flopped on his hip again. "All these years I've spent on hating Arslan Qusbecq while really, I should have hated you?" His voice cracked into a manic laugh. "And so what I turned to Mustafa?" he snarled. "You're all a bloody team, aren't you? A fish net hidden so deep and spread so expansively there is no way to ever escape you, is there?"
"Oh, please!" Chiara scoffed. "Don't act as if you're innocent! You had the time of your life running your little whore house!"
Another strike of lightning axed down, limning the night with an indigo silver. Serhat looked aghast, flexing his hands, his fingers digging at the velvet carpet.
Chiara recognized the look. She, too, had it once a long time ago when she realized she was but a pawn in a game she thought she dominated. A sigh fled her lips. Bracing her forearm on the vanity, she pushed herself up on those wobbly knees. Her face might lie about her age, but her body stubbornly stayed true to it. She gritted her teeth, her hands clenching. Dissimulating her weakness with an impassive smile, she held her head up as she wended toward her son.
"On your feet," she said, her voice low, almost gentle.
Serhat glanced up, those russet brown eyes glistening. He looked away, throwing his head over the shoulder.
"On your feet!" she repeated herself in a voice that commanded unreserved attention this time, authoritative and indisputable.
Propping on his back against the wall, he obliged, his reluctance notwithstanding.
Chiara dusted off his shoulder and smoothed out the creases on his shirt. "I know you've always hated Warshon. You have your reasons. Ever since Arslan brought him here to live with us, he had stolen everything that should have been yours. Military credentials, best medical school, and even the women," she paused when she saw a brew of shame and rage in her son's sallow face. "Oh, don't pretend I didn't know you had a thing for the little whore of yours, Guiliana, was it?" A mocking grin perched on her lips. "Frankly, I'm glad Warshon stole that one from you. Save me the trouble to do what Arslan must do. But I can imagine the insult, which must have cut deep, and now you want what's his." Resuming the former gentleness in her voice, she lifted her eyes to seek his. "The first time I heard what Arslan needed you to do, I objected. I told him he was being unfair asking you to give away what you've built, and his unfairness wouldn't be perceived well. But then, I realized his intention. It was a test of loyalty, and you failed miserably. You failed because you've never stopped trying to get back at Warshon, and because you're willing to take anything for an excuse to do so, you let your impatience show." she paused again, pulling his collar.
Serhat gulped. Something faltered in his russet brown eyes, his larynx bobbed while the muscles feathered along his cheeks.
"Do you think I like Warshon Qusbecq? Do you think I enjoy seeing him being ahead of you in everything? Oh, don't act hurt when I tell the truth. If there is anyone who wants him gone more than you, it's me! But do you see me rushing it?" She let go of his collar, shoving him against the wall. "You're a grown-ass man now, Serhat. And you ought to have learned how to co-exist with people you detest. Much that you hate the man, Warshon Qusbecq is a prerequisite peg to get us what we want."
"You mean what you want," hissing with a snort, he retorted.
Chiara cocked a brow. "Like you don't? Like you haven't spent those hours, standing before the mirror wondering when did all those lines creep up around your eyes? Or how those beautiful eyes lost their luster?"
Serhat squinted, his chin jutting out, ragged breaths rattling through his nose. "So, this is what organ farming is all about?"
"What do you think?"
The hesitance in his eyes was contorted into a sneer. He smacked his lips. "A prerequisite peg, huh?" He shook his head. "Now I actually feel bad for Warshon Qusbecq. Don't you fear what he'd do once he found out what you're all up to?"
"Why else do you think Arslan and I have kept it from you both all these years? You won't understand until you've aged, and the best years of your life spent. A crime remains a crime until it works in your favor, and you'll find ways to make it a law."
Serhat looked her in the eye, his head rolling.
"I'd keep it from you a bit longer, and I'd have let you on the secret in a much gentler way. But since you made your choice, I cannot convince Arslan to trust you again. And to keep you alive and well, I must agree that he keeps your allegiance." When her son fell into a deathly silence, she turned her back to him and proceeded over to the window. Watching the curtains of rain rumple down, she grazed her hand along the glass, expecting it to be cold. The glass felt warmer. "But you're right," she continued. "As necessary as Warshon, he is a threat, and even Arslan knows that he's impossible to control. That was your edge." Looking over her shoulder, she took a deliberate pause, hoping that her son would catch on this time. The dumbfounded gape of jaws disappointed her gravely. She huffed a long sigh. "You let your impatience show while you should have waited for Arslan to deal with him. Instead of going after the son, you should have chummed around with the father. Arslan is a suspicious man. If only you could lure your enemy to the receptive end of his suspicion, you could have wielded him as your weapon."
"Why are you telling me this now?"
"Did you ask for my counsel before?"
"Why tell me at all?"
Chiara whirled back to hold his gaze, her arms crossed. "You're my son, after all. Isn't it obvious?"
"And you don't find it self-contradicting?" Glancing up, Serhat let out a quiet laugh. "You're helping me now because I'm your son. But so is Warshon Arslan's. Even if I did try to chum up to the man as you've so kindly counseled me to do, he'd always choose him, just like you'd always choose me!"
"Oh, don't be too sure, my dear," she teased, her voice flat and measured. "Warshon's mistake is that he had never tried to win me over. If he did, who knows what I would do? But fortunately for you, he didn't. And if you have any wit, you will hearken."
He lowered his head, his eyes brimming with scorn.
"There is no going back for you now just like there is no going back for any of us, which is fine, and no real loss there so long as you don't try to act out again," Chiara went on. "But if you want to see Warshon suffer," she snickered. "You need to find his soft underbelly. That's how you put a man on your leash."
"Easy for you to say. The man has no underbelly," Serhat snorted. "If he ever had one, it was Guiliana. But your husband made it unlikely now…" His voice trailed off into a chilled laugh that shook his shoulders, his eyes shut, brows lifting.
"And do you see why he did what he did now, my son?"
He slowly opened his eyes, his jaw moving sideways. "Fuck."
"And stay away from that whore. All the information she's been feeding you is from Arslan, to test your loyalty is one thing, also to gauge your caliber, to see how you'd act."
"Has it never occurred to you to tell me all this sooner?" The man shook his head, his voice taut with rage, his big brown eyes a ripple of hurt.
"Have I not told you not to trust information from one source?" she clapped back, her patience rubbed raw with frustration from her high hopes being deflated so utterly by his underperformance. "And how the hell was I supposed to know you're still screwing that whore? Does it make you feel like a man preying on what's discarded? Are you proud of yourself that the whore is sucking you now because her preferable choice was denied? Do you –"
"Enough!" he let rip, his shoulders hunched as if he was ready to pounce, his fists tight at his sides.
Chiara relished this moment. She had always rejoiced in seeing herself above others, including her own children. What a shame that all life must end, spectacular or otherwise, that it must be passed on as if it were humanity's only shot at immortality! What a shame, really, that her youth was now in the hands of her children, and the new generation looked so dull and performed so poorly! Why couldn't her brilliance shine for infinity?
Her thoughts went wild in the echo of the snarl until the thunder devoured it all.
Serhat swirled to the door. "Where's Arslan?" he panted.
"Don't know." An honest answer. "Somewhere to avoid this, I take."
"I need to see him."
She turned to the vanity, a snort rattling in her throat as she sat before the mirror. "Be my guest and look around, but like I've said –"
The door went ajar and shut, leaving Chiara alone with her reflection, perfect and still. Pounding on the window, the rain rolled down like a curtain rumpled by the skirling wind.