Heart Of Stone
Dan Glenton stood by the floor-to-ceiling window of his penthouse office, surveying the River Thames stretched below like a ribbon of gunmetal. A muted dawn glow slipped between the clouds, yet Dan’s world was already alight with deal chatter on his phone.
Fifteen years had passed since that day—to everyone else, he was the embodiment of success; to him, the world was a ledger of debts to collect and scores to settle.
He ended the call and turned to his desk, where folders bearing the names of four overdue companies, a glass of neat whisky, and a framed photo of his late wife, Laura, smiling in a sundress, awaited him. He tapped the frame until the glass rattled. He never removed it—it was a reminder that all softness ends in ruin.
A soft knock at the door. His PA, Marianne, entered. “Sir, the board are assembled.”
“Very good,” he said, voice cool. “Let them wait two minutes.”
She hesitated, reading the tension in his jaw. “As you wish.”
He closed his eyes. The boardroom beyond was a place of polished veneers. Behind those smiles lay ambition as merciless as his own. He would swallow them whole if it meant another zero on his balance sheet.
—
Fifteen years earlier, Dan had been deeply in love, married to a beautiful woman, but he had come home early and unexpectedly one afternoon to find his wife in bed with his best friend. She had meant everything to him, and he’d have done anything for her except share her with another.
Enraged at the sight of them fucking each other, oblivious to him being there, he had gone into the kitchen, taken a butcher’s knife, and returned to the bedroom. Then, full of grief at what was happening, he brutally took his revenge on his wife and lover in what the law would call a crime of passion.
Afterwards, he sat on the bedroom floor, crying, looking at the mangled body of his wife and the asshole so-called friend who had fucked her. All kinds of thoughts swirled through his numbed brain; the shock of what he had done prevented him from formulating anything rational as he wondered what his next step should be.
Dan was a very successful stockbroker who owned and ran his own firm, which had allowed him and his wife to enjoy a good lifestyle and the home they shared, or had shared, until his now-deceased wife’s death. The house was isolated and remote; it had extensive grounds, which included a large private forest; it was there that he had decided he would bury the bodies.
That had all happened fifteen years earlier. People had wondered then where his wife had gone. The police had even questioned him after her family had reported her disappearance. They had searched the house from top to bottom; detectives had also checked the grounds of the house to see if there was any evidence of foul play.
Dan panicked when they entered the forest. He had, however, done an excellent job of hiding the bodies, burying them deep and levelling the ground over the graves before his wife was even reported missing.
Dan had explained that his wife had left him; he had said she had emptied the safe of approximately £ 20,000. Using her phone before destroying it, he had sent texts to himself to this effect, and he showed these to the police with tears in his eyes.
The investigation remained open; no new evidence had been discovered, and, despite thorough examination, they could find no evidence of foul play. He had grown up in the East End of London, and using a contact he still had in the area, he arranged to have a professional underworld clean-up of the bedroom. This had removed all traces of what had occurred.
Eventually, Dan had been allowed to get on with his life, but what had happened had drastically changed him. After all, you can not take the life of another and not change in some way. It had hardened his outlook on life; he had come to know what betrayal and deadly revenge were.
There is no other way to describe it: Dan had become a selfish bastard. Knowing what he had become, he revelled in it. Dan cared only about himself; other people were there to be used, abused and discarded as the need arose. This was the actual cost of what had happened all those years ago. He no longer trusted anyone, and, determined never to be hurt again, he had allowed his heart to harden.
Back in the present, Dan lowered his hand as if he could squeeze the memory out of his veins. The whisky was untouched. He swirled it, watching amber liquid cling to the glass.
Marianne returned. “The board are ready, Sir.”
He nodded. “Send them in.”
As the heavy door swung open, Dan straightened his tie and crossed to his seat. He would speak of acquisitions, hostile takeovers, and market share. Every word meticulously chosen to mask the ice in his veins.
But beneath each polished sentence lay the echo of that afternoon: Betrayal, rage, a heart turned to stone. And as the board members bowed in greeting, none suspected that the most dangerous man in London was haunted not by ghosts—or by regret—but by the memory of his own damnation.
