Beauty and the Beast

A Talk With The Father

Damian:

I came out of my room the next morning after a good night's sleep. Rose was still sleeping in the room. I tired her out a lot last night appearantly.

I found Harry and Sonia in the garden hugging each other as they enjoyed the sunrise. Mrs Brown was probably still sleeping and Mr Brown was working on his laptop.

I walked over to the couch and sat next to Mr Brown. Time to have a heart to heart with the heartless father.

"Good morning Mr Brown." I greeted.

He looked at me and gave a slight nod. "Mr Knight."

"Please call me Damian. We're family now." I said.

"Are we?" He asked sceptically.

"Yes we are. Rose is mine, so naturally her family is mine as well." I replied casually.

He gave back a mirthless chuckle. "Young love." He said in a skeptical tone.

"You seem to have some some enmity with young love." I asked intrigued.

"Because it's just a moment's passion which gets destroyed in the blink of an eye. Yet, that one second of passion can destroy lives." He replied.

I looked at him intently. "Looks like your passion has made you to pay a very heavy price."

"You have no idea." He said and finally looked away from the laptop and gave me all his attention. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

"I'm trying to figure you out. You look completely different from the man Rose told me about." I replied.

He snorted at my words. "Really? How?"

"She told me you're a cold heartless bastard that doesn't care about anything and uses everyone for his benefits." I said.

"And I'm different how?" He asked with fake interest.

"You're not cold and unfeeling. You do feel things. You're not heartless towards Rose, you hate her. Don't you? In fact you hate het with passion." I said and the disinterested look of his face changed into one of stunt. "And if I'm not wrong, it's an reasonable hate. Otherwise if it was because of her some mistake, you would taunt her about it to make her feel guilty about it. But you don't. Meaning, you can't taunt her using the reason. Which in turn leads to my hypothesis, whatever happened wasn't her fault. But she did get involved somehow."

Mr Brown looked at me for a few seconds then took a deep breath. "You're good."

"But things aren't just that is it? You may hate Rose but at the end of the day, she is your daughter. You can't hate her to the degree of wanting to make her life hell. Then why marry her off to someone like Jace?" I asked.

"And what's wrong with Jace?" He asked with a smirk.

"Well for starters, he's a manwhore. Second, he is an arrogant bastard who likes humiliating people. Who liked humiliating your daughter. Third, there absolutely no redeeming quality about him." I gave my reasons.

"You mean he is a typical second generation rich boy. Because every man belonging to status is like that." He gave a snort.

"Not everyone. At least I'm not. I've been totally loyal to Rose." I said offended.

"You are just a lucky encounter. Because every other man in our society is like Jace. It's Rose fault if she was treated like that." He retorted.

"Rose fault?" I roared, now getting angry. "Why? Because she loved him too much? Because she never argued back. Because she was obedient? Is that her fault?"

"Yes, that's exactly her fault. Being a pushover is her fault. Letting that man walk all over her is her fault. If I didn't marry her off to Jace, she would marry some other man who she 'loved', only difference would be, that that man would make her fail in love with him, use her inheritance for his sake and then, when she was of no use anymore, leave her alone like yesterday's newspaper. As long as she's weak and let's people bully her, people will bully her." He bit back with a bit of a temper as well. Then took a deep breath before continuing, "You say you love her. You're not like Jace. But stupid man, you love the woman that born after the death of the woman Jace married. Look me in the eyes and say, you're hundred percent sure you'd love the woman who married Jace."

I looked down for a moment, thinking back of the time when I first met her in a bar in LA. The first thing that attracted me to her was not her appearance. It was her personality. The strength that she exuded, her peacefulness with herself. I never encountered that weak girl at everyone's mercy. How can I be sure if I loved her or not. "Maybe I wouldn't. But I would never treat a woman the way Jace did." I replied the one thing I was sure about. Even if I didn't love her, I wouldn't humiliate her like that.

Only a coward, insecure and downright worthless asshole needs to put a woman down to feel good about himself.

"Maybe." Mr Brown agreed. "But men like you are only chance encounter. Every, every rare. Usually, men bully weak to feel good about themselves and worship the strong to feel protected."

"You know, until now I thought you just hate Rose. It's now I understand, you're a pessimistic, insecure and broken man with an extremely negetive approach to life. Who thinks he can't do anything by himself and needs to use everything around them to increase the possibility of success. No wonder you wanted Rose to make up with Jace. You thought it wouldn't make a difference who she married because all of them would be the same." I said suddenly enlightened.

So this is the source of Rose's insecurity and pessimism. It me so long to remedy them.

Mr Brown snorted at my response. "Pessimistic? Nothing has ever been optimistic for the Brown family. Ever." He replied not denying my hypothesis at all. So self-depricating as well? Wonderful.

"Enough." A voice said. I looked at Mrs Brown coming towards us. "Damian, I know you mean well. But sometimes, you need to stay away from some matters." She said sternly.

I looked at the couple confused.

"What?" She asked looking at my stare.

"Exactly what happened in this family to break Mr Brown to this degree and you protecting him?" As soon as I mentioned this, a guarded look appeared almost instantly on the couple's face. "Whatever it is. It is something astronomical." I said and left the place.

Third person:

"Rose's boyfriend is good. Smart girl." Mr Brown said, with a hint of pride in his tone.

"Yes. But that is not too good for us. If that incident is unearthed now-"

"Andrea." Adolf stopped his wife from continuing. "Do not mention it again. Just keep distance with him. After this vacation, we'll hardly meet him anyways."

"Yes. But what if he finds out something during this vacation?" Andrea asked concerned.

"Let's just pray he doesn't." Adolf said hiding his panic.