Crazy but Sweet, Sweet but Crazy

64: as we like it

"I loved you very much, Elliot."

That was the first sentence Richard spoke, after Clare left the room for the two of them.

The possibility of hearing the word from Richard, had never occurred to Elliot.

Some things in the world just existed outside the realm of even imagining, daydreaming, picturing. Just like the word 'love'.

As if looking at the man's face for the first time, Elliot inspected all details of his face.

The ridge of his dark eyebrows, the electric, intelligent blue eyes, the characteristic Lockwood blond hair that had become snow-white.

He could take in all details of Richard's face, but still, could not decipher what he was feeling.

Even after having hit thirty years of age, was he still not experienced enough to read the closed book of Richard's face?

Or was Richard feeling anything at all?

That there was nothing to read from his face in the first place?

"I loved you very much, Elliot." In the silence that followed, Elliot mentally tasted, pronounced and probed every curve and corner of each word.

No biological reaction in his body came, nor did any thoughts, any reaction.

Elliot wasn't feeling anything after having heard the sentence.

Why was that?

"I planned to have both you and Landon lead the company after I step down in a few years. You are both intelligent in different ways. You would've been perfect partners in leading the corporation through inevitable vicissitudes."

Elliot was hearing, but he wasn't listening. The words weren't quite registering in his system.

"I trained you to read people's intentions, to hide your weaknesses and desires, because it's the most important skill a businessman can have."

Richard, with his other hand, was distractedly, slowly grazing his fourth finger, where his wedding ring used to be.

"The best businessman doesn't do business. He does people. And the first day I saw you at your mother's home, I knew you had an instinctive knack for being good with people. That you were like me."

His soft, low voice had a tinge of satisfaction and pride. Pride, because one of his sons resembled him.

Lowering his two hands onto his lap, under the table, Elliot touched his own wedding ring.

"Is that why you brought me to private rooms with businessmen? The rooms with drugs and rum?" Elliot started at his own stoic, dry tone.

Rubbing the edge of his eyebrow with his finger, Richard smiled thinly.

"I raised you to be more intelligent than that. It was for your own good."

"My own good?"

"Your presence in those rooms, was photographed, video-taped, recorded. Those very materials, when you grow older and take over Lockwood, you can use as your source of power and cash."

"Even now when I forget to take my pills and go to sleep, the sleep isn't deep. And the dreams come again- when I remember how they laid their hands on me."

The words came out so easily. Elliot's palms were dry, his hands were steady, and his gaze, unwavering on Richard.

"I gave you a weapon." Richard's voice rose, ever so slightly. "Not just a weapon, but many. Your physical beauty, to use as weapon.