TYLER'S STORY
Tyler's eyes were fixated on the pendulum bulb going to and fro on the table. The tick-tock sound made him relax anytime he was stressed or had to make a difficult decision. He remembered being fascinated by pendulum clocks as a child. Many times when his parents were involved in arguments and were yelling, he crept into the guest room where the abandoned clock hung to watch its hands move back and forth. Over time, the sound from the clock gained an immense ability to drown out external noises no matter how loud they were. Or maybe his mind had made its sound a shield that protected him from situations that he never wanted to face as a child and an adult. He would sometimes be so lost in its allure that he would fall into a hypnotized state for minutes, on very bad days, hours. When he was much younger, the maids would try tapping him out of his lucid state times without number. Sometimes they would succeed, other times he snapped out of it himself. Many years later, the pendulum bulb would become his most cherished companion and escape route from all the troubles around him. He had a really troubled childhood and many of those memories still stuck with him like an adhesive. His father was an alcoholic and his sweet mother was always at the receiving end of his toxic life. He would remember her screaming most times from his beatings or sometimes it would be him that would receive hurtful whips and slaps. There was one particular time that his father had beaten him into a coma. He spent days in a hospital bed and needed surgery to fix his wrist and ribs which were broken in the incident. His father came home that night from one of his numerous travels drunk. His mother was away for a business meeting, leaving him alone in the mansion with the housekeepers. It was just a little past bedtime and Tyler just thought to gaze at the stars briefly from the patio before he went to bed. It was father's voice from the living room that made him run into the house but it was too late. His father caught sight of him as he tried to run to his bedroom. He remembered his father's voice being so loud and he stank so much that Tyler had to put his hand over his nose. This got his father angry and made him hit him repeatedly. As soon as Tyler hit the ground, he began kicking him on his side, sending Tyler spiraling. He laid there on the floor writhing in pain and screaming for his mum. His call for help was muffled by pain. Even the housekeepers didn't dare stand up to John Sinead. Everyone cowered and avoided him whenever he was around and that included his wife and son. Tyler remembered rolling on the floor in intense pain. As soon as he noticed his father trying to make his way towards him, he tried getting up but was held down by the pain. He couldn't get away fast enough. His father got a hold of him and slammed him into the wall breaking his wrist and ribs. Tyler remembered feeling gut wrenching pain like he had never felt before. He lost all sense of love and respect and family that very day. His mother did the best she could before she died. She spent time with him in the hospital after the incident and always told him that she loved him. But he never really understood how a woman like his mother ended up with a man like John Sinead. She never told him the story and even in her death, she didn't tell him anything about why she married a monster. Tyler never stopped being angry at her for marrying his dad and not leaving him. She had enough money to take care of him if she had chosen to leave the marriage. He concluded that it could only mean one thing. She was just like his father. If his father didn't move him enough to treat him like a son, she probably never wanted him too or maybe he was never her son. His parents threw money around to make everything he did wrong go away, he had enough toys to play with as a child, he went to the best schools but he never had his parents' love. He never saw himself as someone anyone could love. If his own parents never wanted him, why should anyone else? He made up his mind that he didn't have love to give anyone and he would never love any woman. Beyond his resolve however, he knew that he was afraid. He didn't want to be with any woman because he never learnt how to treat a woman right. He saw them as tools and a means to an end. Why love a woman when you can have as many as you want?. Over the years, he had learnt to believe that no woman would love him. They were all after his money and he convinced himself that when push came to shove, they would all leave him alone. He never wanted marriage. He never wanted a family or a child. But he had been in love once and he felt like those years with his girlfriend were the best years of his life. He met her in business school when he was twenty two years old. For him, it was love at first sight. May was an Economics major at the time and didn't come from a rich family. She had told him that she was Tennessee and that her family lived on a ranch. She told him often about the struggles her family faced and how she was finding it really difficult to cope with paying her school bills. Tyler of course wasn't bothered about all her needs, he just found himself taken away by her beauty and smile. He had never been with any woman besides May. She was his first. He remembered how he would always look forward to their movie dates and their spending time together. When he began to speak to her about his struggles at home and what he had been through in his childhood, she was the only one that understood him. She had her own unique way of cheering him up when he was sad and she even encouraged him to go for therapy sessions. He remembered her sitting afar off and smiling at him whenever he shared at those sessions. His life was so much better whenever she was with him. He proposed to her in his third year of business school while she was in her fourth. May was three years older than him but it didn't matter to Tyler at the time because he was head over heels in love with her. The proposal was a lavish one. Tyler took her on a cruise, got her favourite artist to play and even bought her parents a mansion and her own car as a proposal gift. He remembered that day being one of the happiest memories of his life. She agreed to marry him. He dreamed every night of how they would be happy as a family, how he would love his kids and wife and how they'd all live happily ever after. He was more pleased however, that he would finally be able to prove his after wrong. His father would finally see that he was nothing like him and that he ended up well despite his ill treatment of him. His father always told him that women were nothing but pawns and weren't worth caring for. Tyler never believed him at the time and was sure that May would prove his father wrong. Three months prior to their wedding, he had gone shopping in an antique store and found two rare jewelries that were handcrafted by an ancient tribe in Africa. The jewellery was often given to women who were about to get married as it was thought to give them good luck. Tyler thought it was the best pre wedding present to give May before the wedding. So he bought the jewellery, alongside matching bracelets for couples and set off to surprise her. He walked into her dorm room and couldn't help but notice the faint noises that seemed to echo in the hallway. He didn't think much of it because he was too excited to see the reaction in her face. He knocked on her door a couple of times but no one answered. He pressed down the door handle and realized that it was left open . As she stepped into the room, he noticed two wine glasses on the table with one other half empty. Audrey, May's friend must be around and they probably were asleep in the bedroom, he thought to himself. The TV was on and the volume was a bit loud. He set the gift bag on the table and turned down the volume of the TV. That was when he realized that the noises he was hearing were intense moans and they were coming from the bedroom. His heart began to race and his veins felt like they were going to pop out of his skin. He suddenly began to feel dizzy and anxious with beads of sweat forming in his brows. He made his way to the bedroom with shaky legs and gently opened the door. The image before him hit him like lightning and he suddenly felt all the air in his lungs disappear. He held the door so tightly that his hands began to hurt. He was standing there for about three minutes but they didn't notice him because they were engulfed in passion. Tyler felt anger being well up so much in his body, that hd picked up the metal sculpture on the bedside table and hit it on the guy's head. May's screams never left Tyler's head as they sounded so terrified. He remembered the look of horror on her face as she watched her lover on the ground in a pool of his own blood. The guy turned out to be May's coursemate whom she had been dating long before she met Tyler. Apparently, it was Dwayne she loved but she needed Tyler's money to get through school and help get a family. Dwayne had suggested that she marry Tyler and divorce him five years later so that they could be together. Dwayne had told May that she should ask for a prenuptial agreement which would ensure she would get alimony if they divorced. The plan was to take the money after the divorce and start life somewhere else. Tyler hit Dwayne so hard in the head that he died instantly. May had tried calling 911 to save her lover but he was declared dead on arrival. Tyler left her house in shock as soon as he realized what he did. But he never felt remorse from hitting the metal sculpture on Dwayne's which led to his death. Tyler tried to find some kind of remorse in his heart but he could find none. It was at that point he knew that he had something broken and dark in his soul. His parents paid off every legal authority in the country that could send him to jail and made the case go away. The judge couldn't find the murder weapon and all evidence placing Tyler at the scene were swept clean. May had tried pushing the case to get justice for her lover,she even wanted to testify in court. However, the private investigator hired by the Sinead family found out May's drug problem and the fact that one of her cousins whom she was sheltering was an illegal immigrant. The Sinead family lawyer even did a better job of attacking May's credibility in court making her an unfit witness. After one month of dragging the case in court, Tyler was exonerated. He had determined to never love a woman after that incident and he became more hardened. He only married Elena because he could not access the trust fund worth billions of dollars left to him by his father except he had a child. A child that was biologically his own. The will had stated the woman who would bear the child was to be his wife, not a surrogate and the child had to be borne through natural means. Tyler knew that his father did it purpose cause he knew that Tyler had no intention of continuing the Sinead lineage. He remembered telling his father that he would never father a child so that his father's memory and legacy would perish. The sick and bedridden man simply laughed hysterically on his deathbed. Tyler was full of anger and was irritated thinking that the old man was just mocking him. He made it his life's mission to ensure that he didn't father a child. He made sure he used protection on all his sexual escapades and even made the life of the woman who was previously married to him a living hell because she got pregnant and refused to abort the baby. He made her abort the baby forcefully and then ruined her life totally so word wouldn't get out. However, he had needed a large amount of money to expand the company and realized that the money in his trust fund would be more than enough. He was told that when he had clicked thirty, he would access it. However, the lawyers made him realize that there was a clause in the will. He needed to have a biological child to get the money. Tyler realized at that point that his wicked father wouldn't leave him alone. Even in his grave he had found ways to torment him and make his life a living hell. He didn't want to be in debt so he didn't want a loan from the bank. The trust fund was his only hope. He was about to give up all hope when Elena's father showed up and suddenly the plan clicked in his brain. He would marry her and to speed things up he would make her sign a contract that would require her to get pregnant within one year. In exchange, he was willing to forget Tynad's debt. By his calculations, he would get access to the fund nine months later. It didn't seem like a long time to wait anymore since he had waited from the age of twenty five. However, all of his plans were at the brink of failing as the marriage was already nine months old and there were no signs of a child forthcoming. He couldn't afford to not get the money quickly or the company expansion would not happen. And now Elena, his wife, was suggesting IVF. If not for what was stated in the will and the wickedness of his father, he would have agreed to it. Even if he tried to do it behind the lawyers back, they would find out because they were loyal to his father, even in his grave. The problem couldn't be with him. It had to be Elena because he had a child once. He had gotten a woman pregnant before so he was sure he was fine medically. He knew he was fit to father a child. She had to be the problem. He decided that he was going to give Elena an incentive to speed up the process. He needed to do something to make her know that he wasn't joking and he needed to do it soon.