Charlie looked up from his homework when he heard the sound of screaming.
He was surprised about this, but not quite worried yet. Surely, hearing screams was a disconcerting experience - especially inside one's own home - but it also wasn't an entirely unexpected sound on this property. The main reason why Charlie wasn't worried at this point, was because he didn't recognize the voice of the person who was screaming.
Charlie frowned and set his algebra papers aside. He was happy to take a break anyway, and he wanted to make sure that there wasn't anything dangerous going on that he should be aware of.
He left his bedroom and walked down the big staircase that ended in a seperate foyer. There, he paused to figure out the direction of where the screaming was coming from.
For a moment there was nothing but serene silence, but then he heard a man loudly wail in agony. Charlie followed the sound, and it dauntingly coaxed him down a hallway and past the doors of the walk-in fridge and freezer.
Close-by, there was a third reinforced door that led to another staircase, which would take him down to the basement. Usually, this door was securely shut, and only staff members ever went down there to grab old supplies or to stow away new ones. Today, however, the door was standing ajar.
The stranger's voice screamed again, and then made some horrible sounds that varied between choking and sobbing.
Charlie had a bad feeling about this; a terrible feeling. And yet, his curiosity daunted, as he opened the door wider and the scary sounds from the basement became clearer.
He braced himself and walked through the door. Compared to the bright lavish spaces of the rest of the house, the basement was quite bleak and drab. The walls were low and raw, the hallways were narrow, the lighting was dim, and it always smelled of mildew.
One of the doors of the basement stood ajar as well. Charlie walked over to it, opened it up, and faltered at what he saw.
The interior of this particular basement room was fitted to be a dungeon of sorts. There was a metallic rolling cart, which had a metallic tray on it. The tray was covered in blood and other bodily fluids and, sitting in it, was a variety of different torture instruments.
The stone floor, as well as two of the walls, came with large metal chains. These chains were designed to mount a person to the wall, and they were covered in blood as well, although some of that blood looked to be much older.
Against one of the walls, a man was chained up. He was completely naked, his legs and arms were spread to increase his humiliation, and he was only held up by the metal shackles around his wrists and ankles.
The man was covered in cuts, and burns, and bruises, and little stab wounds. It was clear that he was being tortured, and had been so for presumably several hours. His face was flustered and crusty from all the crying, and his expression was stuck between agony, desperation, and utter terror.
Charlie vaguely recognized the man. He hadn't personally met many of the top players of his family's empire, as Bax preferred to keep his siblings' existence something of an open secret. Charlie only knew this man as one of the crime bosses that worked directly under his big brother's watchful gaze. As far as he was aware, this one specialized in distributing some of the illegal drugs that flowed through their markets.
Directly in front of the writhing and moaning torture victim, stood Fire. Her flaming-red hair was competing with the blood puddles for color, and it was winning the competition.
Charlie couldn't believe his eyes.
When the chained-up drug lord spotted the teenager that had recently appeared by the exit, his face lit up in hope. He opened his mouth to beg the newcomer for mercy, but he didn't get to say anything, as Fire stuffed her entire fist in his mouth. He gurgled and his eyes seemed to almost pop from their sockets, as her knuckles disappeared inside his throat.
Fire glanced over her shoulder, in order to see who was disturbing her, and if they might be a threat. When she spotted Charlie there, frozen in the doorway, she simply returned her attention to the guy before her.
"Now look at what you've done," she scoldingly said and mockingly patted his stuffed swollen cheek, with the hand that wasn't currently filling up his entire mouth cavity. "No more crying whiddle baby, okay? Or do you want me to put my foot in there, too?"
The man whimpered and frantically tried to move his head somehow to indicate his compliance. Fire removed her fist from his mouth, the chains clattered as he sagged, and he gulped in a couple of raspy breaths.
"Uhh... Hey, Fire..." Charlie said.
"Hi, Charlie!" Fire casually replied. "Did I forget to close the door? I'm sorry, but this one was just such a pain, to get down here." When she said 'pain', she used her magic to give the man a rough electric shock.
The drug lord howled and cramped up, sagged with relief as she retreated her hand again, and finally whimpered in fear of the next shock.
"What, umm... What are you doing?" Charlie uneasily asked.
"I'm torturing him," Fire nonchalantly informed him. For proof of it, she shocked the man again.
Charlie waited for him to finish screaming. "Yeah... I can see that..." he then said, "can I ask why?"
"Sure you can!" Fire generously replied, but she made no efforts to actually answer the question. Instead, she remained focused on the torture.
Charlie watched for another moment with a growing sense of dread and nausea. Fire changed tactics and went to pick up a blunt bloody knife from her tool tray. She tested the lacking sharpness of it, and slowly wandered back to her victim.
The drug lord seemed horrified at what was to come, as his torso already carried various deep marks from his previous experiences with the same blade. "No. No, please..."
"Oh, he talks!" Fire facetiously praised, "in that case, why don't you explain to Mister Hench's brother here, what it is you did, during today's meeting...?"
He shook his head with a mixture of submissive obedience and scared defiance.
"No?" Fire asked, feigning surprise, "but you had so much to say earlier!"
The crime lord desperately shook his head again. He didn't have anything to say now.
Fire annoyedly sighed and plunged the blunt blade inside his liver. He screamed, and she twisted the knife, and he screamed harder.
Charlie found his shoulders rise up more and more for dread and intimidation, and his feet uncertainly treaded between leaving and staying. He couldn't rip his eyes away; it was like the morbid anticipation of watching a car crash.
Fire pulled out the knife, and immediately replaced it with an electric cauterizing tool.
After having screamed some more, the crime boss moaned and whined in despair several times. Fire viciously imitated his whines, making light of his suffering until even Charlie felt a bit embarrassed for the man.
When the horrific noise had finally settled, Fire shot Charlie a look over her shoulder. "He questioned your brother's integrity in front of all of his colleagues. He said... What did you say?"
The drug lord didn't want to repeat what he had said, fearing the punishment that might follow. This was futile, as Fire punished him for his silence, instead. She unnecessarily cauterized his wound for a second time.
"He said to Bax; 'you're still just your father's caretaker, and he isn't even around anymore for you to wipe his ass'," Fire continued, after his wails had rung out. "Isn't that right? Isn't that what you said?"
The crime boss whimpered and dutifully nodded in confirmation.
"So, we're sending his friends a little message," she concluded in Charlie's direction.
"Right..." Charlie said, finding himself wholly unconvinced by this argument. "And after this, you'll send him back to his people to pass on the message?"
"Nah," Fire shrugged and uninterestedly mustered the man up-and-down, like he was already a pound of flesh, "I think I'm gonna kill him."
The crime boss burst out crying.
"I might hang him up on the flagpole down the street!" Fire called over the sound of his sobs, "just so everyone's clear on where he's been all day!"
Charlie grimaced with disgust. He usually tried not to argue with Fire, as her stone-cold walls were hard to crack, and trying to do so usually came with quite the punch-back. Yet, the developing healer in Charlie couldn't continue watching this. He also couldn't leave and essentially condone it either.
"Don't you think, this is a bit much?" he carefully asked.
Unsurprisingly so, Fire rolled her eyes at the criticism. "You'll have to ask your brother that. I'm just doing it because he doesn't enjoy this stuff, and I think it's fun!"
"Right..." Charlie said again.
He glanced at the drug lord, who had recently passed out. He looked very much alive still, and merely seemed to be taking a break from the pain.
Charlie sighed and began to turn, in order to find his brother.
"No, wait!" Fire called after him.
He hesitated, but he did as he was told and waited. "Yes?"
"I didn't mean that literally, dumbass. Don't you go bother Bax right now; he needs time to think."
Charlie scoffed, "so, what you're saying is; there's absolutely nothing I can do, to get you to stop torturing someone in our basement?"
"That's exactly what I'm saying," Fire nodded, but she was interrupted in her full reply as she noticed the drug lord asleep. "Hey!" she called and roughly slapped his cheeks to wake him up, "I didn't say we were done, did I?"
The man first agonized over his various injuries as they popped back into his mind, then he pitifully shook his head. "No miss..."
"That's right," she contentedly nodded. "You have no power here, my friend."
"Fire!" Charlie interrupted.
Fire groaned out loud for annoyance, tipping her head so far back into her neck, Charlie could almost see her face upside down. Then she straightened out her neck and stared at her drug lord. By the controlled breathing technique and the tension in her shoulders, he could tell that she was silently counting from one to ten.
Once she was done, Fire turned around to look at him with a fake smile. "You know, Charlie, you and your sister are really lucky. Your brother has done such a fantastic job of raising you to be upstanding members of society; you have the luxury of also being naive spoiled brats."
Charlie defiantly frowned at this. "That's not true..."
"A-ha," Fire disagreed, and tried to focus on work.
"No, seriously, what are you trying to say?" he challenged. "You think I don't know how this stuff works?"
"Exactly," Fire agreed, sounding pleased that he was finally talking sense.
"Well... You're wrong," Charlie offendedly stated.
Fire sighed in defeat. She pinched and patted the drug lord's sweaty cheek like he was a cute little child. "I'll be right back with you, cupcake."
"Uh-huh!" the man enthusiastically agreed to the idea of finally taking a proper break.
Fire went to drop off her tools on the bloody metal tray and walked over to Charlie. She cleaned her hands with a rag along the way, grabbed him by the arm, and pulled him away from her torture chamber.
Charlie relaxed a little, as the bloody tools and the severely injured man left his line of sight. Though he could still smell the blood and the sharp stink of recent cauterizations.
"Look, kid," Fire said with an extra fake smile, "you know that I'd walk through literal fire for you, just like your brother. But you've been annoying the crap out of me recently. So, you are going to learn a lesson today, and as Bax has much more important things on his mind, I'll be the one to teach it to you for once. Ready?"
Charlie wasn't ready at all. "Okay..." he said anyway.
"Let's make this real simple. Tell me; what happens to a beehive, when the King Bee dies?"
He confusedly frowned. "You mean, the Queen Bee?"
"Ugh, just stop being a smartass for one second and hear me out, will you?"
Charlie sharply exhaled but decided to indulge her. "Fine. So, if the King Bee dies, the entire beehive dies. Easy, so what?"
"Not exactly," Fire corrected. "At first, the colony might swarm up to look for another King Bee, and consequently scatter across the area. Now, only for the sake of this metaphor; some bees might find a new hive or form several independent colonies. And only those who don't find a new King Bee will eventually die without the resources of the hive."
"Right, yeah..." Charlie nodded. He found himself both feeling more agreeable at Fire's logic, as well as vaguely impressed by how much she knew about bees. "So, what's your point?"
"I'm not done," she sharply said, in a tone that made Charlie want to actively heel. "Now, let's say that the beehive is at an apiary, and it's controlled by a beekeeper. Still with me?"
He focused on active listening, "yup, beekeeper, apiary, got it."
"If the beekeeper notices that the King Bee just died, what would he do? How does he make sure the whole colony doesn't swarm out and scatter into lots of little splinter cells?"
Charlie shrugged, "he gives them all a new King Bee?"
"Exactly," Fire nodded, visibly enthused by the fact that he had stopped talking back to her. "But does that mean, the hive will just automatically accept their new Bee King?"
"Well, no, I mean..." he hesitantly followed, "the new King didn't create the colony. So, they might reject him."
"You've got it." Her enthusiasm seemed to grow, yet she kept the stern tone of a teacher that was calmly scolding their student. "Now. In this metaphor, your father was the original King Bee. He built the empire; the colony. He brought all the bees to power, but then he died."
"Right...?"
"Your brother is the new King Bee. All he did was to take over your father's beehive. Ever since the day that Chris died, all this beehive has been wanting to do, is to swarm out and splinter off into lots of independent groups."
Charlie's defensiveness had almost entirely wavered, now that he was slowly getting her point. And in fact, he was beginning to feel his stomach slowly sink along to each sentence, as the deeper meaning of her metaphor slowly became a new part of his reality.
"A hive can be controlled and influenced. A hive can be exploited," Fire importantly concluded her bee lesson. "Little splinter cells are unpredictable, hard to track, and almost impossible to control. Do you understand what I'm saying?"
Charlie somberly nodded. "If Bax wants to keep track of the organisation, he needs everyone to stick together and follow his leadership."
Fire looked thrilled that he had caught on, and she meaningfully poked a blood-crusted fingernail at his chest. "Your brother isn't all powerful; he is a figurehead. There are lots of different players he needs to keep a tight leash on. He needs each of them to heel to his command, in order to stay in control of the entire hive. And that means..." She poked at his chest again, underlining each emphasized word with a sharp stab to his sternum, "he's a very, very, busy bee."
Charlie swallowed at his throat, which suddenly felt quite dry, and he made no efforts to remove Fire's prodding finger from his chest.
At her final statement, all of the false friendliness had slipped from Fire's demeanor, and she seemed hell-bent on making her point heard loud and clear. "Bax Hench does not have the time to be arguing with his teen brother about politics. You, little one, need to remember your place. You have nothing to say, until you're done suckling off the teat of your dead father. Your only responsibilities are; focusing on your schooling, doing as you're told, and shutting, the fuck, up. Got it?"
During her final speech, Charlie had grown smaller and smaller with each pointed statement. He had always known that, to other people, Fire could have quite the intimidating aura. This was the first time in his life that he actually was a little scared, himself.
"Yes ma'am..." he brought himself to mumble.
"Sorry, what was that?" Fire facetiously cupped a hand around her ear, "I couldn't quite hear you?"
Charlie cleared his throat, mustered a significant amount of willpower and pride, and straightened up. "Yes, Ma'am." he said with more conviction.
"That's better." She scanned him, visibly pleased with her work. Then, Fire pointed a thumb at the door of her torture dungeon. "Now, I'm going to go kill that man. So unless you want to watch, I suggest you go back to your fancy villa upstairs."
Charlie glowered a bit at the final jab, but he gathered that she was right. He had no intentions of watching Fire kill anyone.
He sharply sighed, turned, and walked away. On the way out, he made sure to shut the door properly behind himself. After he had walked up the stairs and back into the luxurious part of the villa, he stopped for a moment.
Charlie stared at the fancy marble walls and the expensive furniture, and sighed again. He suddenly had a bad feeling in his gut, much different but equally as grinding as the one he had felt while watching the torture happen.
Fire was correct, as she often was, but she was only ever correct in the logical way. She sometimes missed little details. Little cues that would inform a regular person that, right now, logic wasn't what mattered.
The biggest part of him wanted to do as Fire had told him, and leave Bax alone. After her imposing speech, that was the only logical thing for Charlie to do. And yet, there was this feeling nagging at him. It told him that, even though Fire was right, she was also missing something important.
For the third time within a minute, Charlie heavily sighed in dismay. Then, he decisively walked to Bax's office.
He found Bax in the corner of the room, cradling a crystal glass of expensive cognac. He wasn't sitting on his desk chair, but on the black leather loveseat sofa, which stood across from a larger sofa of the same material and style.
The corner of the smaller sofa was the only one with a decent view out the window. It wasn't even that impressive of a view. As there were many trees planted in this part of the yard, one could only see branches and leafs, and little bits of the sky between them.
However, many of the trees that surrounded the villa's property were old Trembling Aspen. Trembling aspen trees had these plentiful small bright-green leafs, which moved effortlessly from even the slightest gust of wind. And watching the aspen leafs tremble and dance in the orange light of the setting sun was admittedly an almost hypnotic experience.
Thus, Charlie sometimes found Bax sitting there in the gloomy light, one leg up, one arm draped over his knee. He rarely drank, but when he did it was always brandy, and it was always to be had in that specific corner.
Bax was currently looking out the window and at those mesmerizing aspen, and he seemed to be lost deep in thought. His forehead was furrowed to a vague look of absent-minded focus. Whenever he focused in this manner, there was a little wrinkle that developed right between his brows. It always made him look just a bit sad at the same time.
Finding Bax staring into space for long periods of time, Charlie had always thought of as a quirk of his - the signs of a brilliant mind at work. Yet, Fire's words still rang out in his ears; 'a very busy bee'. So now, Charlie thought to spot the slightest inkling of tension for the first time. Something about the manner in which Bax held his glass looked like he had been forced to hold it for far too long.
These were the types of little details that Fire often missed. No matter how deep her understanding of Bax went; the complexities of people's emotional needs were generally hard for her to wrap her head around. In some of these ways, Charlie knew his brother better than her. And he knew that Bax liked to ground himself in the mad chaos with the presence of a trusted person.
Charlie had decided to be this person today. He didn't want to startle him, so he quietly knocked against the wooden doorframe.
Seeming a bit surprised anyway, Bax sharply turned his head to look at him. As soon as their eyes locked, his focused frown melted away, and it was replaced by a warm smile. "Hello there, brother."
"Hey, umm..." Charlie hesitantly asked, suddenly feeling rather shy, "can I join you?"
"You can sit with me, if that's what you mean," Bax both agreed and clarified, "but you can't have any of my cognac."
He snorted and slowly started moving into the room. "Don't worry, it's all yours."
As he hesitantly arrived by the sofa, Bax took his foot down from the cushion to make space, and set his glass aside on the heavy wooden coffee table close-by. Charlie sat down next to him, and Bax draped his arm over the backrest behind him.
"What are you thinking about?" Charlie asked.
Bax vaguely rolled his eyes and minimally smirked in annoyance. "Work."
He nodded as that made sense. A brief moment of quiet developed after that.
"So?" Bax asked, "what do you want to talk about?"
"Nothing," he shrugged.
He skeptically raised a brow at him. "Nothing?"
"Nope." Charlie innocently shrugged again. "Just... hanging out."
"Right..." Bax slowly nodded but he looked like he didn't believe him. When Charlie didn't give him anything else to work with, he tilted his head down to shoot him a prodding look. "You okay?"
Charlie considered it for just a second. Then, he conjured up the most convincing smile that he could possibly manage right now. "Yeah," he said. "I'm okay."
Bax went back to nodding and watching him with a mixture of concern and curiosity. But there was a different notion growing in his eyes as well; one that might have been a sense of understanding.
Charlie looked out the window, nodding to the trembling aspen outside. "The trees always look really nice at this time of day."
He nodded in agreement this time, though he continued observing him. "Don't they just?"
Another brief silence passed. Then, Charlie thought to see his big brother smile at him, from the corner of his eye. Bax picked up his brandy glass, comfortably sunk back into the cushions, and followed his gaze outside. And for maybe an hour or so, they just sat together and watched the leafs dance.