Vow of Hell by Clara Elroy

Saint

There was no way I’d get to work on time today.

And my father was none too happy about it, judging by the silence on the other end of the speaker when I called to tell him I’d be late for the early morning meeting he had scheduled.

“I knew I couldn’t count on you.”

My jaw locked at his condescending tone, but I couldn’t say anything because I kept proving him right again and again. It wasn’t like I craved his approval. I was branded as the disappointment of the Astor family years ago. Disputing the label wasn’t in my immediate plans.

They could talk all they wanted, but we all knew the truth.

It was unspoken and sat on our monthly family dinners like an elephant we all tried to forget existed. I wore the disappointment tag and flaunted it proudly. After all, when you gave the absolute minimum in life, you could only go up from there.

“What was it this time? Another party, or trip to the Bahamas with money you didn’t work for?” He blew out an angry breath, and I could hear pacing on his side of the receiver.

“No actually, it was a wake-up call from a brunette with an incredibly generous rack and tight, wet—”

“Enough, you-you crude child.” I could almost picture how purple his face was turning, and a grin took over my face as a result. I might’ve been stuck in traffic, but at least I was entertained. “Chloe Fleur will be here in five minutes, I don’t have time for your bullshit right now, but you best believe we’re going to talk about your work ethic at length.”

“I couldn’t give less of a shi—”

“You don’t give a shit about inheriting Falco, huh? Well, what else are you good at, Saint?” He cut me off again, and my knuckles turned white, my grip turning slick around the steering wheel. “You have no other fucking talents. The least you can do is put your business degree to work.”

The vein in my forehead pulsed as the long line of cars moved a single inch.

The bad mood Brenna (or it could’ve been Jenna) sucked out of me this morning was coming back with a vengeance. A good for nothing dependable shit. That was what you turned out to be when life dealt you with a spinal cord injury three years in your NFL career.

Guess you really shouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket.

Even if that basket ended up making you seventy million dollars richer.

Two inches.

The cars inched forward at a sloth’s pace, and I was one more ignorant comment away from flooring the gas and causing irreversible damage to the silver Aston Martin. Rain poured from the skies today too, painting the whole town gray, battling down on the depression that hung all around the nine-to-five job holders like an infection.

We held the title of the City of Stars when you could actually see the stars only a handful of days per year. It was almost as if whoever named this town was aware of the darkness hiding underneath all the glittering gold.

“I won’t be able to make it in five minutes,” I choked out, any remnants of humor wiped out. “I’m stuck in Astropolis traffic hell.”

“Then come straight to my office when you arrive. Consider yourself on probation, Saint. You fuck up one more time, and you’re out. Killian will be inheriting everything.”

My brother had more interest in watching paint dry than he did in Falco.

“That’s not really your decision to make, Noah Kane.”

We all knew who held all the power, and that certainly wasn’t my father. He liked to bark a lot as rabid chihuahuas did, but his bite was equivalent to the overgrown rats too.

My mom, Celia, was the majority shareholder at Falco. Dad had just lucked out by marrying rich, changing his family name to Astor, and pretending his past didn’t exist. He was a small fish in a big pond, not some great white policing the goddamn ocean like he thought.

“Don’t call me that.”

“Don’t threaten me.”

“Be here fast. I’ll be waiting for you,” he barked one last time, abruptly shutting down the call.

I ripped the earbud out, dumping it on the passenger seat, and turned the car off as it didn’t seem like I’d be going anywhere any time soon. And what was I, if not an environmental activist? Fashion sucked up more energy than aviation and shipping but somehow was always overlooked.

Plastic straws were more important.

Drumming my fingers in tune with the music on the windowsill, I stared out the windshield. The sky looked like heaven’s gates had opened, and God was showering us with his wrath. It was raining cats and dogs, and I was starting to hear the pitter-patter of hail the more time went on.

My father had been singing the promises of retirement for the past four years, ever since I started working at the company. The longer I stayed though, I understood he was just blowing smoke up my ass. He had no plans of leaving, at least not until he’d made sure I was as much of a miserable fuck as him.

Competition was clearly in our blood, and we had fun out-performing each other. In a way, it made the fact that I would be selling out fashion shows and not football arenas more bearable.

I couldn’t physically tackle anyone, but mentally?

I thrived on that shit.

Starting the car back up, when the row started moving again, I winced when I felt a slight twinge of pain as I stepped on the gas. Bad weather always made my injury more sensitive for some reason. It had to do with barometric pressure, or something like that according to my physiotherapist. I had to put up twice the effort to make my limp stand out less during the winter.

It was annoying and at times painful, but I wasn’t complaining. At least I could still walk after my accident. Not many people could say that after a spinal cord contusion. It didn’t affect my performance in the bedroom, not in a way that mattered anyway, so there was that. I once had a girl tell me she and her friends were afraid I’d been crippled after not showing my face for a year after the fact.

I fucked her until she was damn near crippled and sent her on her merry way the next day, ready to spread the news that I was indeed still in my prime.

Not a lie, and not the full truth either.

Dots.

I couldn’t see anything but dots as I lay on my back, a massive weight crushing my body to the ground.

Bright, flaming orbs ravaged the clear night sky blowing everything else out of the water with their sheer magnitude. It was almost as if I could feel them inside me, blazing a path of distraction up my spine and spreading like toxic vines of a broken reality to the rest of my limbs.

That split-second detachment after the blow settled in. I couldn’t feel anything, but at the same time, I couldn’t stop feeling.

The air was crisp, heavy with the promise of upcoming despair. The soil was moist and crumbling underneath my dirt-covered fingers. And the stench of sweat tickled my nose as the defenseman still hadn’t realized that I wasn’t moving… that I was paralyzed.

“Hey, get off him,” a teammate yelled, and my bones groaned as freedom settled in.

One blink and all the sensations rushed back in like water bursting through floodgates. There was no more night sky view, only a singing pain and ringing sound in my ears as all hell broke loose.

Paramedics swarmed all around me, trying to get me to respond. I couldn’t, though. I was frozen behind a sheet of ice that only allowed waves of pain to register in my brain.

Red hot paralyzing agony.

“Is he going to be okay?” I heard my coach ask as he hovered over the paramedics.

The lulling of sleep wanting to alleviate the ache didn’t allow me to listen to their response, but the grim faces of the men surrounding me carried through all the way to the hospital and would play a permanent role in my nightmares years later.

* * *

Employees smiled and waved at me as if they didn’t think I was the byproduct of nepotism as I made my way to the glass tower housing the Falco headquarters. I didn’t bother returning the sentiment, except for dropping a kiss on Nina’s check before heading to my father’s office. She had been his assistant for years now and probably the only person in this whole building that didn’t hate my guts.

I knocked before entering but didn’t bother waiting for a response. I was feeling like a grade-A asshole today.

Two equally shell-shocked faces swung in my direction when the door closed with a thud behind me. I moved further in with a swagger in my step and a fake smile on my face.

“Is this him, Noah?” Chloe Fleur smoothed the fabric of her suit jacket, addressing my father.

“Saint Astor, in the flesh, ma’am,” I said, and her eyes glossed over as I tugged her hand up to my lips.

“Oh my, you’ve really grown up, haven’t you?” She patted my cheek with her other palm, examining me almost as if she was looking at a product line through her calculating blue eyes.

I straightened up, throwing her a crooked smile as I did so. “I would hope so, seeing as I am turning thirty-one next year.”

“Quite the jokester too; must have gotten that from your mother.”

“All my best traits come from her.”

I heard Dad sputter in his coffee beside us.

“What about tardiness? Does that come from her too?” She smoothed her gray hair, and her brow wrinkled further. “It’s an unspoken rule to never keep a lady waiting, Saint. Especially one that is looking to do business with you.”

I was ready to ask her to point out where the lady in the room was, but judging by my father’s twitchy pinky, that wouldn’t end well.

“You’ll have to excuse me. I’m feeling a bit under the weather. Changing seasons and all will do that to you.”

I was lying, and she smiled at me in a way that told me she could smell my bullshit from miles away. Chloe Fleur was a cunning woman. It came as a surprise to me when my father told me they were in the talks of a collaboration. Fleur was one of our biggest competitors, and if we managed to play our hand well, we’d end up with a huge win on our hands.

A rush of anticipation hit me.

I wasn’t sold on running Falco, it wasn’t what I dreamed of doing growing up, but I did enjoy winning. I enjoyed it so much so, I managed to climb up the corporate ladder at work in two years, from intern to CFO, and six months later COO. It was through hard work and determination, not favoritism like ninety percent of the building here thought.

“You’re excused. I do hope you show up on time for our next meeting. I know someone who’s dying to meet you.”

“I’ll make sure to bring a Sharpie then.” I crossed my legs, resting my hip on the chair opposite hers. I’d signed everything from tits to pets during my rise to fame.

“A what?”

“He’ll be here, Chloe. I promise.” Dad cut in before I could ruin this more from him.

“I’ll hold you to that.” Chloe nodded, and he visibly relaxed in his seat. “It was nice seeing you again, Noah. You too, Saint, but I’m afraid that’s all the time I have for today.”

Bet all she had planned was to go home and listen to Michele Bublé while a poor immigrant had the displeasure of rubbing her back.

Everyone in the industry knew Chloe Fleur had retired a long time ago, only meddling occasionally in her son’s affairs. It struck me as odd they sent her to negotiate.

My father and I both shared Chloe’s sentiment, bidding her farewell as he rounded his glass desk, escorting her to the door.

When he turned back to me, any semblance of warmth had vanished from his eyes as I made myself comfortable on the leather armchair grandma Fleur had vacated.

“Is it my imagination, or was this more of a social meeting rather than a business meeting?” I asked, toying with Newton’s cradle that was resting a few inches away from his splayed agenda.

“How would you know? You weren’t here to listen to it.”

“Well for one, I doubt Chloe Fleur a.k.a. the fashion industry’s matriarch”—as dubbed by the media—“would be doing any kind of business talk without an army of lawyers present. And two, she addressed us as if we were best fucking buddies reconnecting over a cup of coffee.” I looked pointedly at the clear empty cups on his desk.

Realizing I had a point, he pressed the intercom. A few seconds later, his second assistant, a leggy blonde, swooped into the room, clearing the cups and cookies from the table.

Some business meeting.

It seemed more like an elders’ convention.

My father wasn’t nearly as old as Fleur, but the dusting of white all over his scalp and the wrinkles—he injected with Botox every four months—along his eyes betrayed that he was well over his fifties.

“We met at the conference room, and of course, seeing as you were an hour late, you didn’t manage to catch any of our talk. Besides, we’ve always been close with the Fleur family. Don’t you remember we spent some summers together when you and your brother were younger?”

“You mean when I was eleven?” I deadpanned. “The only thing I remember from then was watching Killian trying to fit his fist in his mouth as a toddler.”

Killian Astor was a delinquent in the making ever since he was born.

Part of the reason why I never took my father’s threats seriously when he threatened to cut me out of the will was because if there was anyone worse than me, it was that little fucker.

My brother was eleven years younger than me—a surprise baby—but he already inspired fear where I brought disgust.

“I’m supposed to be interrogating you, not the other way around.” My father finally snapped, ripping Newton’s balls away from me. Frustration gleamed in his gaze, so like mine, it sometimes hurt to look at him. It felt like I was looking at a mirror. Disappointment hugging me at every turn like an unwanted mistress.

My palms turned to fists as I held back. Many of the people that worked here wondered how Falco ran like a smoothly operated machine when the people that managed it were like two loose cannons that blew up in each other’s presence. I remembered exactly when and why my relationship with my father turned disastrous—more than it was anyway.

It happened when I was drafted by the Raptors, and I told him I had no intention of passing on the dream of my life to take over Falco. He’d screamed at me for hours on end until he lost his voice. I couldn’t help but put the blame on him for what happened.

It was illogical.

He wasn’t the one that tackled me within an inch of my life. He wasn’t even at the game.

But I couldn’t forget how much he despised that I’d defied him.

That I’d tainted our name by becoming a jock, a brute, a beast.

“Men like us don’t get our hands dirty. We don’t settle for millions when we could have the fucking world. Who’s going to continue on the legacy now? Are you going to let some rando walk in and steal what the Astor family worked so hard for?”

His real presence eclipsed the one in my thoughts as he continued talking, oblivious to the dark turn of my thoughts. “What you did today was unacceptable. Being the boss’s son doesn’t make you immune to the rules, Saint. You have to come to work at the same time everyone else does and most importantly leave last!”

“I know it doesn’t.” I clenched my jaw so hard my teeth hurt. “I informed you that I wanted to take today off though. You insisted I come.”

“You’re not really sick. You look fine to me. So, tell me, what reason do you have to request the day off?”

“You know what today is.” The objects on the desk rattled as I slammed my palm on it.

The very day he rejoiced in my pain. Sat by my hospital bed with a smile while I lay paralyzed next to him, my head pounding as if an army of elephants had stomped all over it. He may have not been the cause of my accident, but he’d adored every second of it. Noah Astor loved being proven right more than he loved his own sons.

I fucking loathed the curl of his lips as he sat once again, proud of his handiwork. Proud he could push my buttons and make me snap, something no one else could do.

“The only thing I know about today is that we had an important meeting, concerning billions of dollars’ worth of profit, and you missed it.” He flipped through some stack of papers in front of him. “Now, don’t you have to work?”

Don’t feed into his hand, don’t let him win.

Up and go, and don’t look back unless it’s to laugh while something he loves gets destroyed.

“Always a pleasure talking with you, Father,” I said, making my way to the door without glancing back.

“I’ll send Yelena over in a bit to brief you on the latest updates on the Fleur case.”

“Don’t bother. I’ll be taking the rest of the day off.”

“Saint,” I heard him hiss, and the blood under my skin warmed. “I told you, you are not tak—”

I let the door slam shut behind me with a satisfying thud.