A/N I think Slokum's only fault is that he's got an ego the size of the whole mourge. Hell, the whole city of Boston. Which leads to all of his other faults. This was nagging me for a while, another of the list of infinite fic. Don't own them.
I poured another glass of scotch into the crystal tumbler. If Macy had one thing, it was good taste in liquor. I raised it and toasted myself. The king of all bastards. The one to rule them all, the cynical, horrible, evil person I was. And I didn't hide it, it had grown to be part of me, nothing else, a shield, a wall to protect me. Hate them before they can hate you.
What was it Machiavelli had said? "It's better to be loved and feared, but if one must choose it's better to be feared than loved?" So true. Yeah, it was great if they loved me, but if they hated me, it was just as well. I held their jobs in my hands, their whole lives revolved around me deciding on whether or not they stuck around. In an instant I could ruin a life.
Power was a good thing. But what else had it been said about ruling, that absolute power corrupts absolutely? Another altruism that was just that, true. I knew I had crossed the line a long time ago, but I was beyond caring. I had my career, that was it, that was the only thing that mattered to me. And my career happened to revolve around making other people's lives miserable.
Macy had told me that these people would put their lives on the line for me if I would just do some stuff for them, treat them like the family that they were. No, I had no family, the very word was a mockery of what it should have been. I laughed as he poured another glass of scotch.
Family, what a quaint little notion. "A house and a wife and a family, the easiest way to find youself bound in chains and under eternal lock and key." Jacob Marley had it right with that one. I had seen what a house and a wife and a family had done to all those around me, my brother, my father, no, us Slokums were not family men. Family was what drove us insane.
I had my job, I was married to that. Girls were nice, don't get me wrong, I love them, but they have their place, they don't belong in any ambitious mans life. They're good for children, occasionally you get the one who's got a good career, but usually she's sensible enough to know that a good career is harder to come by than a good family.
I had to respect Cavanaugh for that. Thirty something, she had a man that she had wrapped around her finger, and yet she didn't chase after him, he may have been wrapped around her finger but a ring most certainly wasn't, rumor has it that she turned him down. I didn't blame her. He was the poster boy of the anti-ambitious. The man who was perfectly content with where he was.
The only place for those are at the bottom. I always strove for more, great was never good enough, and she was the same way, as much as I hated her, I respected her for that. Macy, Macy had been great back in the day, but he had grown soft, he had stopped striving for more and was content with doing what he was, never seeking any more advancement, simply stagnating at his role as the chief. He had stopped pushing himself and that's where he faltered.
In this line of work, you have to keep going. You have to step on people to get anywhere. I had learned that back when I was in med school. I had been just as hated then as I am now, but I was respected. The one thing I always had was respect. That was what I craved most from my staff, the respect.
But they saw me as a bastard, an evil cynical man out to destroy them. If nothing else, if I couldn't earn the respect, I might as well earn their fear, at least then I knew that they would obey. I poured out one last glass of scotch and again toasted myself. The king of all bastards indeed. And I didn't care.