His Niece

[DAMIAN]

A tragic past is usually the price of admission for a hero although I never bothered with the role; I was content to be a shadow on the wall of my own story. That is not to say tragedy did not mark me in its own unique way. Born into a lineage where wealth was quiet yet abundant, I learned early that to keep it, one had to be as sharp and unyielding as the men in the paintings hung in our portrait room- competent, quick, and entirely devoid of sentiment.

My elder brother Jared and I were twelve years apart, although the gap between my younger sister Tara and me happened to be only one. The inconsistent gaps in our ages were a testament to our mother’s indulgences outside the family, and I learned quickly that this was something that ran through our blood. It was not uncommon to find cousins and aunts with fractured lineages—half-siblings scattered across the city. Weddings were as common as divorces, the birth of children at one point ceased to be a cause for celebration for it was far too common.

I learned quickly that infidelity was our true inheritance—a restlessness that ran through our blood as surely as the money. My brother was the prime example of such a disposition, his affections on women never lasting more than two months. He also regularly indulged in multiple women at once, causing our father much grief.

Tara and I were closer than Jared and I had ever been. Jared was closer to being a father figure than a sibling, his direct involvement in my own upbringing contrasted with my father’s absence, making me look up to him.

The rest of our extended family answered directly to the patriarch; Arthur Nolan Mordant III. Beneath him, the branches were spread thin across the country. He had managed to spread his seed far and wide, maintaining control over a good portion of the biggest assets in the world. Arthur Mordant was absolute and unavoidable. He didn’t just own companies; he owned the invisible architecture of the world. Under him were the Pembrokes, the Blackwoods, and the St. Ives line – they were the families that mattered to me most personally since they were directly involved with my father, the direct heir of the Arthur Mordant.

The entire extended family were a legion of strangers bound by a name and a ledger. To the world, my great grandfather was a concept, and they pushed my father onto the stage to be the family’s spokesperson as soon as he had come of age. He became the face of the Mordants on media and television – a role later filled by my older brother Jared.

I spent my childhood watching the adults of our family, learning their ways. I watched the Blackwoods the most, disliking them for their inclination towards high society gossip.

Our mother was – in very simple terms – a woman who loved places more than people. She died in a tragic accident on the very day of my middle school graduation, in Bali. Her body was never brought back home, and we held a private funeral. Jared and Tara both inherited the restlessness that ran through her blood, both of them longing for adventure as if they needed new places to breathe life into them. Jared started working under our father right after, and eventually took to studying abroad and following the same hedonistic lifestyle our mother had previously set the standards for.

The autumn I turned thirteen, Jared got married. Fresh out of university yet with an eon of experience with women under his belt – I had not expected my brother to settle down so soon. The reason for this sudden change of mind I could see when I met his wife during the wedding ceremony. She was swollen with who I presumed was his child.

The wedding was a grand affair. My brother spared no expenses to throw the most lavish party the Mordants had ever seen. The celebrations went on for a month. My brother seemed smitten with his wife, a model from overseas who caught his eye during a vacation to some tropical place. It was true that Holly Bennett was a beautiful woman. She had short cropped black hair with piercing gray eyes and occupied a graceful demeanor that resembled those of a foreign princess. Her voice was a resonating melody that soothed the ears of those who held conversation with her, and my brief presence in her company made me realize that she was a brilliant match for my brother. In her presence he was a competent, dazzling man. She made him better, and I was all the happier for it.

They moved to an estate near our patriarch’s own residence, but did not stay for long. I heard news of Holly giving birth during a vacation someplace, a beautiful daughter – my niece. I did not have the luxury of meeting her for years, for they chose to reside abroad for her education. I sent a congratulatory message via post, being unable to do anymore for them.

When I started university, father passed away. Jared flew back just in time to attend the funeral. That was first time I understood responsibility – standing in the cavernous halls of our primary estate at the age of nineteen. The weight of a crushing, inescapable inheritance burdened my soul as I saw my brother discuss the thousands of lives tied to our signatures, talking about the web of infrastructure spanning continents that the Mordants held. It felt like a kingdom of cold steel and iron-clad silence, where people were merely data points and sentiment was a defect to be purged.

I was being groomed not to live, but to maintain – the heir to a fortune that felt less like a gift and more like a burial. I felt crushed beneath the weight of everything I was destined to own.

Our father had many, many businesses. More than he could certainly handle. A big portion of it went to Jared for he had passed away when Jared was a working adult. But I was still in university and therefore I inherited the business overseas and until my own education was complete, I did not have the permission to hand it over to Jared. Jared wanted the portion I had inherited; he did not wish to uproot his life overseas to come back home and handle the company. The family elders called for us, to make a decision once and for all on our inheritance. Our father’s will did not matter as much as Arthur Mordant’s words.

That’s the first day I was allowed deeper into granddad’s estate, far beyond the east wing and into the chambers where the family held court. The family elders were rather known by their sentencing than their names. Jared walked beside me, his stride heavy and familiar, but as we reached the double mahogany doors, even he seemed to pull his shoulders tighter, his usual easy-going nature nowhere to be found.

Once inside, I sat down beside Jared on the chair our father used to occupy, finally laying my eyes on the authorities behind the Mordant name. Granddad Arthur Mordant sat at the head of the dinner table, and flanking him on two sides was his wife Miranda, and his half-brother, the Blackwood family’s current head, Morty.

Jared whispered introductions into my ear as Tara watched the silver cutlery, fascinated by the way their waiters and servants were so silent, almost phantom like, moving in and out of the room, serving us dinner.

“There’s the terrifying one,” Jared whispered conspiratorially to Tara, “he once signed one document and whoosh, the man vanished. He is the Ives’s second brother’s son.”

The one thing I did gather from his very terrible descriptions was that these people held the fate of all of us in the family, and to stand trial before them would be worse than an embrace with death.

There was no laughter at that table, only the clinical clink of silver against china and the low, rhythmic discussion of fortune. They spoke of trust funds as if they were leashes and of our younger cousins as if they were flawed blueprints.

“The girl in the Kentish branch is soft,” Harold Ives remarked, his voice like dry parchment. “She will not hold the weight of the name. Prune the allowance. Move her to the periphery.”

“And the boy?” Arthur asked, his eyes on his plate.

The dread wasn’t in what they said, I realized then, but in the casual way they dismantled lives over wine and roasted meat. Being a Mordant wasn’t a privilege, it was a curse. Our whole family operated on the motto that children should be seen, not heard and therefore Tara and I made myself as quiet and small as possible throughout the dinner, knowing we had not yet earned our places at the table of judgement. Talks of our inheritance was brought up, but Arthur Mordant refused to budge on our father’s will. All would take place as it is written in his will, he said. And that was the verdict.

After dinner, Jared and I paced around the garden in our crisp new black suits, hearing the crunch of fallen branches under our feet.

“Did you hear him? He really thinks he’s all that,” Jared spoke up, shaking his head. “Cutting people out of the fund just because they made a scene at school? That’s insane.”

“But he does have the power,” I counter argued, my eyes on his face. “He can kick anybody out for nothing. What if he thinks me unfit someday?”

“He won’t do that and I still have a lot I can do without having to borrow the family name. You don’t have to worry about all this now.” He had ruffled my hair. “I’ll take care of you. You’d never have to work a day in your life.”

That proved to be a lie because soon enough I got my first job, the very position my older brother had inherited and vacated just to spend his time with his wife and child at their home abroad, causing our family yet another financial blow. The distribution of father’s assets were unfair, Jared inherited what I wanted most and vice versa, yet we made do, having made prior agreements between us without the patriarch’s knowledge. It did not help that my brother was also a mad man who was financially irresponsible, causing me to put in double the work back home just to hide his tracks from the family elders. Neither of us wanted them to know who was handling which part of the business, for fear they would take it all away.

I spent months working under his signature despite the fact that I was still in university, ghost-writing his decisions and cauterizing the bleeding of our accounts just to keep the patriarch from seeing how far the eldest son had fallen. It was to no one’s surprise really, when I finally took up my position in the family business. It suited me fine, I quite liked fixing problems. But in the matter of a year, I had an overwhelming number of files to review, the never-ending financial records made me face the brutal facts of exactly how valuable every asset we owned was and how taxing the upkeep was becoming on my soul.

I drowned in my work. Leaving the primary estate to Tara, I moved towards the mansion by the countryside – a beautiful structure made by our second great grandmother.

The house projected a jagged silhouette of grey stone and arched windows that stretched across forty acres of unmanaged oak and pine timber. Outside, it rained constantly here, providing a white noise that soothed my brain. My boots clicked against the expanse of bone-white marble floors, the sound echoing up into the vaulted ceilings for acoustics in this house were reflective; movement anywhere in the foyer was audible from the upper landings. Much of the furniture remained exactly where my great grandmother had left it—heavy, high-backed mahogany and tarnished silver. It was old, but it was functional; every hinge was oiled prior to my moving in, every surface polished to a dull glow.

The kitchen was the only place where the modern world truly intruded, but it was my study that truly held my heart, eventually providing a home for my soul.

It was a large room lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that acted as insulation against the outside world. The fireplace cast a warm glow when it was lit, and the air always smelt like a thick, intoxicating blend of seasoned wood, old paper, and the sharp, metallic scent of rain that clung to the windows.

The house functioned as a vault, designed to keep the world out and the Mordants in. I could see why Miranda Mordant liked to hold family meetings here rather than at her own estate, there was something to this place that felt like home.

Thanks to my occupancy, Miranda was forced to give up control over the estate and I moved in, functioning like a ghost that moved from the study to the bedroom and back to the study, venturing into the kitchen every once in a while when I needed nutrition, and the parlor when I had to entertain family guests – though guests were a rarity, their appearances even more so.

Tara graduated and took off the other half of my workload a year later, and together we scanned every single file that ended up at our desk, with the understanding that soon one of us had to move abroad to oversee the business branches we had there. Jared had vacated his position there as well and it was becoming harder by the day to cover for him. Now that I was of age I had more of a say in the type of work I did, and I had finally had enough of covering for my brother. If he did not wish to work, he could bleed the trust funds dry, but I wanted to no longer help him worth a single dime.

The Mordants called it business, but it was more like an exploitation of available resources. My work demanded grueling hours and a terrifying precision that allowed for no mistakes, and one gloomy evening I was possessed by the sudden urge to map the true scale of our reach. Tara came to the conclusion that it was virtually impossible. I took it upon myself to take a direct look at the funding that went to each family under our family tree and discovered that ignorance was indeed, bliss. Our assets were immeasurable.

“Aunt Isla got sued. Again.” Tara dumped the file on my desk, making me look up at her over the top of my glasses. I was already nose deep in analyzing the stocks of a parent company when her words finally registered in my brain, making me grimace. I pushed my chair back from the desk, standing up.

“Why me?” I rubbed the bridge of my nose. She walked round the table, plopping down in the chair I had just vacated.

“You know why. You’re the fixer, I’m the sweeper. You fix, I clean. While Jared fucks around with women, but I do think he is serious this time.”

“About what?” I turned towards her, already exhausted by the mountain of workload I had to manage. I did not wish to take on yet another load for my brother.

“Jared contacted me. He wishes to come back home.” She spoke, her eyes grave. “I would suggest you clear your schedule for the upcoming week. The family elders want to talk to both of you.”

My days of covering for my brother had finally come to an end. Jared flew back in, and we settled the matter once and for all. Arthur Mordant was adamant on executing our father’s will, and Jared was ordered to come back home. He was to take my position here and I was to go abroad.

“I have to go overseas,” I informed Tara the moment I walked through the door of my study. She was sprawled on the couch, her nose buried in a file. She glanced up, her brows scrunching in sympathy. My desire to not leave was palpable in my voice. The familiar sickness that had infected Tara and Jared – the one that made them chase adventure like our mother, had not taken root in me. I had taken after our calm and docile father, who was always uncomfortable with change and would go to great lengths to avoid it. I sat down on the sofa that lined one side of the wall, my eyes trained on the floor.

She watched me with a sad smile. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of your house.”

“It’s not about the house, Tara.” I lied, looking around the study with despair in my voice. I had lived here for all of two years, yet I had grown so used to this place that the thought of leaving it made me terribly upset.

Tara smiled, standing up. “Well the silver lining is that you can finally take a break. Have a little vacation of your own. What would I not give for that?”

“Yeah, leave work here to go work elsewhere, what changes? Except I lose my house.” I scoffed, pushing her hands away as she tried to give me a consoling pat on my shoulder.

I had already signed my soul away to the Mordant family the day I was born. I never had any desire to pursue vanity like Jared or Tara, my workaholic life suited me just fine. I really was prepared for the work abroad, and I found it satisfying. Yet home sickness became an ever present constant in my heart. The new environment soothed my mind only a little – I missed the constant drone of the white noise the rain provided back at my estate. The loneliness in my soul did not leave me even as I moved to a new country. It followed me all the way to a new continent – and every day I found myself dying just a little bit more.

I was prepared for the slow death I had signed up for since birth, but what I was entirely unprepared for was the arrival of the air—the sudden, gasping realization that I was no longer a corpse. That was Liliana. I met her at a work conference, a beautiful fiery redhead who I fell in love with at first sight. She didn’t just walk into my life; she restarted my pulse, forcing me to breathe until the very act of existing became a violent, beautiful necessity.

She was the one that became the marker of the tragedy of my life – her arrival acting as the sole, definitive spark that ignited the long, slow-burning wreckage that has defined my life ever since.