Post by Deleted on Sept 4, 2022 12:46:12 GMT -5
Central Park
New York City
I regret nothing.
I’d do it all again.
I’ve said before and I meant it then as much as I mean it now. I’d sooner burn the entire planet and everyone on it, than to see my childrens lives at risk. ‘The things we do for love,’ right Jaime Lannister?
For those of you unaware, before my reveal as the man behind the Golden Phone, I had just ended the war with an entity known as the Ares Project. They were a heavily armed militant group that had been gunning for my head since early 2019. Before the kids came along, I was pretty passive in their threats to me. I mean, I lived life as if I were on borrowed time as it is and in some ways I hoped they’d succeed in taking me out.
I was the end of the Duke bloodline. Kill me, snuff out my family, so what, right? As long as I have breathed air, anytime an enemy was dealt with, another would pop up. Kill the bloodline, kill the violence.
Things changed when I became Frankie’s foster dad. They changed even more when I learned my then-girlfriend Elizabeth was pregnant with Caty and Talon. No longer was I the only life on the line. They were targeting Duke’s and my two infant children and later on Frankie too, were Duke’s. There is no greater responsibility for a father than to protect his children.
Come hell or high water, I needed to win the war by any means necessary. Three years. It took three years to finally and definitively defeat the men that hijacked my plane with Frankie on board. Three years to defeat the men that bombed and shelled my fortress compound in coastal Connecticut when my son was home. Three difficult and grueling years it took me to kill every last Ares Project soldier.
Over the course of the final six months of those three years I resolved to end the threat permanently. As head of the Illuminatus State, we were viewed as threats to humanity. We weren’t. Under my leadership, we fought for our freedom to live in peace and harmony with the seven billion other citizens of the planet we call home. Kill the Illuminatus State, kill the threat, right? As the war concluded and me and my flyboys and fighting men extinguished the Ares Project for good, my orders in the immediate aftermath of the war called for the dissolution of the Illuminatus State founded by my grandfather some forty years prior.
The Duke’s were finally, at long last, at peace. With no more threats to the lives and safety of my children.
Then I banned Easton Alexander’s Dragon Driver and everything changed. An innocent child became the target of cowards. An eleven year old boy that has never harmed anyone or anything that is so full of love and kindness and embodies everything that is good in this world, was terrorized, traumatized and kidnapped by a small group of people. Easton Alexander. Emicko. And…
See, my former life has created a bit of paranoia within me. I go out of my way to over protect my children even if it isn’t warranted. Cyrus Braddock was tasked to protect him that night. It’s not that I think people will hurt Frankie, it’s that you can’t just turn off the switch. You can’t go years of protection at all costs and suddenly switch it off. The night Frankie was taken, he was in Cypher’s locker room playing video games with Big Cy standing guard outside the door.
I didn’t learn the truth until the next morning.
I had been betrayed.
And Cyrus Braddock hasn’t been seen since.
I’m taking Monday off from Massacre to track him down.
Moving back to New York City for the school year always presents a challenge. There are certain activities that can’t be done at home now. Frankie and I have a mutual love for baseball and he’s determined to be good at playing it before he goes to junior high school next year. He can not hit. He’s horrible at it. But he can throw and he can catch. So everyday we can, we hit up Central Park and throw the ball around. My next throw was a grounder. A ground ball in baseball can be extremely unpredictable. Sometimes it can hit a tuft of grass or a divet on the surface and carry off in another direction. This one hit a tree root, popped into the air and missed Frankie’s glove by a few inches before rolling several feet away.
“I’ll get it!” he calls out as he runs off.
“Hurry up, we gotta go soon,” I remind him. Seb and Sloane are coming over this afternoon. I’ve been teaching ballet to Sloane and she’s clamoring for a lesson while I’m clamoring to give it to her.
You know, the lesson.
While Frankie chases the ball, I turn to my left. Lauren sits on a park bench playing with the twins that sit in a stroller. They’re starting to really grow fast. Just as I’m about to step toward them, my phone vibrates in my pocket. It’s my personal cell and only the closest people to me have this number. I spent years being pulled and pried away from familial events without notice so once I dissolved the Illuminatus State, I made it a point to prioritize my family over all other things. Business is business, it can wait. My life as a father and a husband waits for no one and nothing.
Pulling my cell from my pocket, I see that its an email, not a call. Opening up the email from the TD Garden in Boston, I’m shocked. Appalled. Dismayed… absolutely furious.
“Lauren,” I call out while I can feel the red in my face.
“What?” she says without looking up from Caty and Talon.
“We need to talk,” I inform her. I haven’t told her what Frankie told me about the night Easton took him. She doesn’t know he had help from someone within our circle. She doesn’t know that someone we trust betrayed a child. It’s not that I didn’t believe what Frankie told me, it’s that I didn’t want to. The traitor helped me out so much and it blew my mind that he’d do something so devious… to a child.
The email from the Garden is security camera footage confirming Frankie to be correct.
“What’s up?” she asks as she wheels the twins near me.
“Tuesday after the kidnapping, Frankie told me something and I haven’t told you yet,” I begin.
“What did he tell you and why didn’t you tell me?” she asks.
“I didn’t tell you yet because I wanted to confirm what he said and I just got that confirmation,” I try to reason. “Easton had help.”
“Yeah that… protege or whatever,” she surmises just as I did when Frankie was telling me.
“No,” I reply quickly. “He had help from one of our people.”
“Who?” she asks as the color drains from her face and a worried look appears.
To which, I’m unable to answer verbally.
“Who, Leander!?”
I hand her my phone.
“Do not react the way you want to,” I tell her as she starts the video.
“MOTHER FUCKER!” she cries out and instantly, I put my hand over her mouth.
“We don’t react,” I remind her. I can feel her starting to tremble with anger and fury of a mother instinctually protecting her young. “We act.”
Tears form in her eyes and in mine. Not out of sorrow, but out of betrayal, out of anger. I pull her to my chest, releasing my hand from her mouth. Our embrace isn’t one out of love necessarily, but out of unity. Lauren and I are a team for better or for worse, until one day when she inevitably kills me. And it is highly likely I will have deserved it.
“What are we gonna do?” she asks quietly as she holds me tight.
“First things first, you need to pretend you know nothing or it’ll blow the whole damn thing.”
“I’ll try my damnedest,” she replies with a sniffle. “Then what?”
“I find Cyrus Braddock,” I reply as she pushes off me.
“Where’s Frankie?” she asks.
“He went to get the b…” I turn my head and Frankie is nowhere to be seen. “Son of a… FRANKIE!?” I yell out. Lauren grabs the stroller as we quickly make our way through the park.
“FRANKIE!?” she calls out.
A moment or two later, he comes into view. He was obstructed by a tree. He’s talking to a man that’s knelt in front of him. Lauren abandons the stroller and gives the man a protective shove.
“Stay away from my son!” she yells at him while turning to Frankie. “Baby you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” he answers. “You didn’t have to…”
“Sorry about that,” I say to the man, extending my hand to him to help him up.
“It’s no problem,” he replies as he takes hold.
“Been an odd few weeks and we’ve recently had a scare,” I tell him as I help him up.
“Alex Thomas,” he introduces himself.
“Alex, nice to meet you. I’m…”
“Thaddeus Duke,” he interrupts. Suddenly, this chance meeting maybe isn’t so chance after all.
“Do I know you?” I ask Alex.
“No,” he says with a smile and I’m immediately struck with something familiar about him. “But I do know you.”
For a moment I start racking my brain. It’s not uncommon for me to get recognized in public. In acting, in wrestling, in several other endeavors I’ve been a literal poster boy. People know who I am. This time though, I get the feeling it’s something different.
“Thaddeus,” he says. “You’re my brother.”
Standing there, I’m entirely at a loss for words. My first instinct tells me this is some sort of ploy. I have a fortune and at the moment, this reeks of a money grab.
“Huhhhhh?” Lauren chimes in.
When I think about it, it’s not outside the realm of possibility. My mother was killed when I was just a few months old and my father cut me off from her adoptive family. I don’t know any of them. I know nothing about them except that her parents last name was Nguyen.
I guess it’s possible.
“Caitlyn Nguyen was my mother,” he says.
Still, I stand petrified like wood turns to stone, unable to move, to speak, even to think.