C12 Chapter 12

Later that evening, back in the mansion, Jullian wakes in his room and finds his mother's head resting on his stomach. She's gently stroking his side as one would a child.

Hearing the change in his breathing, she turns her head to look at him, her face still resting on his abdomen.

“Are you awake, rosebud?” Jullian blinks at his mother and looks past her resting head. He can see the rose tattoo on the left side of his stomach has been touched up.

Thank goodness, he muses. I didn’t have to be awake to watch this nonsense.

His mother is gently circling the area around the tattoo with her index and middle fingers, careful not to touch the recently re-colored rose petals.

Jullian groans. His mother's head is pressing down on his gut, making him uncomfortable. “Ngh! Yes, mother.”

“What do you think?” She says, raising her head and resting her weight on her right arm as she lay beside her son, gesturing to the newly, touched-up tattoo on his side, speaking sweetly, as if she were talking to a child.

She has always been like this, ever since she lost her baby girl, Ally – Jullian’s twin sister.

Ally had died from an illness when she was seven years old, and her mother had never been the same since then.

Celia presented herself very properly in public, as the wife of the great magnate Elander Grayson; but in private, she was the temperamental wife and mother of the Grayson household.

“It…it looks great, mother,” Jullian says in a strained tone, doing all he can to control his anger, his rage, his frustration.

This rose, this, this damn rose! He cursed in his heart.

But he knew that, with his mother, it was better to play along than fight.

He remembered the first time he tried to fight his mother. He was seven or eight, he couldn’t remember exactly, but he knew his sister was gone by this time.

His uncle, Jullian’s father’s younger brother, Anders, had gotten him a puppy to keep him company. It was a beautiful golden retriever. The puppy was the only living thing the young Jullian had around him that was truly happy to be around him.

A few months after he got the puppy, he found himself searching the mansion for it one day, when he heard a pitiful whine coming from the nursery.

He ran over and found his mother standing over the puppy, a terrible look on her face, “You peed on the carpet? You dirty, filthy animal! Have you not been house-trained?” She screamed at the poor pup.

Raising her hand, she threw the ceramic tea cup she had been holding down on the frightened puppy.

“No!” The young Jullian screamed, running forward to protect the scared puppy.

The hot tea splashed on him as he got between the panicked puppy and his enraged mother.

The puppy peed again, whining and getting as close to Jullian’s chest as it could.

“He peed because you scared him! He’s been here for months! He is properly house-trained! Uncle made sure before he gave him to me!” He yelled at his mother from the floor, his light blue eyes blazing with anger and wet with tears.

“How dare you look at me with those eyes! How dare you look at me with HER eyes!” His mother screamed, slapping Jullian hard across his small cheek.

At this point two maids came in, one pulling Jullian, still shielding the puppy in his arms, out of the room and away from his mother’s screams, and the other cleaning the mess made by the puppy and the tea, while pacifying her mistress with reassuring words, begging her to calm down.

==========

“Well, I think it's just wonderful! The indigo and white tones you had last year do not compare with this soft pink tone.” Celia says, clasping her hands together gleefully, up against her face and looking from the tattoo, to Jullian’s face, as if she had just made a pot roast and was showing off her freshly made dish.

Jullian stares at the retouched tattoo. It’s a 4x4 tattoo on his left groin; a fully bloomed rose flower with three sepals, attached to a curved stalk with six leaves and eight thorns. It was very detailed and looked very life-like.

Indigo with tints of white before, now rose pink where it had been indigo and where it had been white, it was now some shade of grey.

“I think it looks fantastic.” He says, closing his eyes tightly for a second and then opening them to look up at his mother who was beaming at him. “I should head back to the city.”

“Oh nonsense,” his mother says. “You can stay for the night and go back tomorrow.” She kisses him on the cheek and rolls off the bed. She swiftly walks out of the room, her dress flowing behind her.

Oh god, Jullian says in his heart.

Jullian exhales and falls back into the pillows behind him, anger burning in his eyes. He takes a deep breath, gathers his strength, and calls out, “Lucas.” Instantly, Lucas comes into the room. “We're leaving,” Jullian says, exhaling tiredly.

“Help me up.”

“Yes sir,” Lucas says, reaching out for Jullian's arm.

Suddenly, they both realize that Jullian is not clothed under the bed covers.

Jullian grabs the sheets just before he embarrasses both of them.

“One moment Sir,” Lucas says, his voice steady and unfazed by Jullian’s state of undress; after all, he had seen Jullian in every bad state he had ever been in since Jullian was seventeen.

Walking into the walk-in closet, he retrieves a change of clothes for Jullian.

“Damn it,” Jullian says under his breath, groaning weakly.

Lucas places the clothes on the bed beside Jullian, “Here Sir,” Lucas says, his grey eyes looking, but at the same time not looking, at Jullian.

Always the professional, Jullian muses, swinging his feet slowly off the bed, trying not to stretch his side, he places his feet on the bedroom floor, keeping the sheets well-placed, to maintain some form of dignity.

He dresses with Lucas’ help – boxers, trousers, shirt, shoes, and jacket.

Now fully dressed, Jullian places a hand on Lucas's shoulder and leans on him for support, “Let’s go,” he says in a painful whisper.

They leave the room and head out to the car.

Lucas opens the back door for Jullian to get in and then swiftly, like a jaguar, moves to the front of the car, gets in the driver's seat, and drives off.