THE CASE INC.
THE CASE INC.
“You know, I don’t buy into everything that happens around me. Some people really get under my skin, and I usually just let it go... but this? No. Not this.”
“Ha. Pretty deep, huh?”
“Yeah... I guess so.”
“And what’s funny about it?”
“You wouldn’t get it. But I do.”
“Ha, sure. So? You must’ve called us here for something good.”
“Obviously. Why else would I bring you two out here? I’ve got good plans. I just need hands. Or friends.”
“Ha! Friends? Us? Hahaha. What makes you think that’s what we are?”
“I wouldn’t say ‘almost never’... but he’s got a point.”
“Fine. Just don’t say later I didn’t invite you.”
“Alright, alright. Tell us more.”
“Of course.”
Words spoken by three men on the open deck of a cruise ship, at three in the morning, sailing toward no destination anyone could name.
“Go kill the owner of the Stubbs Company.”
“Ugh. You again?”
“Fine, sure. I just need you to understand this isn’t simple, and—”
“I don’t care. Just do it. Or—”
“Okay, okay. I get it, I guess. Sorry, Erick.”
“Ha. And if someone sees you... well, there’s no shortage of suffering to go around in this place.”
The night was rainy. The gardens drenched, the windows fogged with damp, the streets empty. Not a sound, not a soul.
A masked figure moved through the shadows, each step slow and deliberate. While the city slept undisturbed, the horror unfolding inside the Stubbs mansion was carried out with precision. The last thing glimpsed in the mansion’s hallways was the mask and dark cloak of the one who’d done it, caught for a single instant in a flash of lightning through the windows. In one leap he cleared the front gate and disappeared into the dark street.
The next morning, a scream tore across the sky above the sprawling estate.
“What happened?”
The chatter among staff and maids started at once — some frightened, others already pointing fingers. The maid who’d been first to find the scene sat wrapped in a blanket, trembling.
Meanwhile, Mr. Stubbs’s only son was fighting a battle no one else could see.
How could he forget that sixty-year-old man who used to scold him as a boy, who’d rap his cane against the floor to make him behave? A man who, though not his father by blood, had shown him what a family was, what a home felt like, Christmases with presents that—
—though some people take for granted things he’d never had. He’d never known his biological parents. It was that man who pulled him out of the old, filthy orphanage, where time crawled and everyone felt like livestock waiting to be chosen. It was inhuman, really. Dreaming of a comfortable, perfect life wasn’t so much a wish as an impossibility.
Being born, growing up — maybe that’s a blessing for some people, he used to tell himself. Not for us, though.
Until the day a car pulled up outside the orphanage, and a tall, older man in a suit stepped out.
Like some kind of staring contest, the two of them locked eyes from across the yard as the man drew closer.
Among the kids at the orphanage, there was a rumor — more than a rumor, really, an unwritten law: men in suits meant one of two things for whoever left with them. Death. Or something just as bad, maybe worse, than staying behind. And staying behind was bad enough as it was.
So the moment they saw him approach the woman who ran the place, every child bolted for their room.
Every child except him.
He stood his ground, alone, facing the stranger. The man crouched down and looked him square in the eye.
“What’s your name, kid?”
“Erick.”
“Everyone thinks you’re a bad man.”
“Ha. Figured as much.”
“So why didn’t you run?”
“Because I’m not a coward.”
“Ha. Yeah, I can see that. You’ve got spine, kid.”
From that day on, his luck changed. Not by much, though. The orphanage had its rules, but the rules inside a family were something else entirely — stricter than the orphanage’s simple don’t hurt each other. Still, in time, he adjusted.
And now, this.
All of it passed through his mind at once, the memory heavy with a grief he couldn’t quite name. There was little the police could do — whoever had done this was a professional, and had left nothing behind.
Then, voices.
“Erick. Don’t worry. We’re here.”
It was his friends.
“Katie, Luis, Augusto... what are you guys doing here?”
“What do you mean, what are we doing here?” Katie said. “We heard what happened and came straight away.”
Without a second thought, they pulled him into a hug, holding him the way good friends do.
“Are you okay?”
“How are you holding up?”
Katie, Luis, and Augusto — all three came from money. But if it came down to who had the most, that title belonged to Erick and Katie: children of major business owners, with everything that came with it, and everything it weighed on them.
The hours passed, day folded into night, night folded back into day, and eventually — inevitably — the moment arrived. Preparations were made for the funeral, and for burying his father.
After the burial, and after his friends had stayed with him a good while, Erick didn’t have it in him to feel anything at all — and how could he, when his whole world had flipped in a matter of days, gone from normal to fatherless, sunk in sadness he couldn’t shake, was this some kind of nightmare or was it one of those things you see on TV that somehow, years later, turns real, and you never think that could happen in your own life, or could it, how do things change so fast, things so huge you can barely believe they’re happening, it’s like living inside a video game until the moment you realize it’s real, it’s like saying I’ll never get a girlfriend and then the next day you have one, impossible to believe, it just happened.
it’s a shock not knowing whether to feel scared or sad or everything at once or in what order because nobody prepares you for something like this, all you know is that it can’t be undone, and no matter how much you wish it were a lie, it isn’t, it’s almost too much to believe
Erick didn’t go to school all week. Luckily, technology picked up the slack — Katie, Augusto, and Luis emailed him everything, and even offered to do his homework for him.
