The trust-fund kid was convinced some misunderstanding had taken place, but Javier disputed that. Sure, a misunderstanding had occurred, but did it matter? No. It mattered not a whit. He had given the trust-fund kid time to leave, but he had wasted that chance. A bit too late for regrets now, wasn’t it? A wrongdoer had to be punished, so Javier beat him up until he had to crawl under the desk. The poor man shrieked and wailed like a banshee under the desk as Javier brutalized him.By the time Javier was finished, Iseult had returned with black eyes. No one else followed her. She seemed to have come back alone. Shortly after she had left, she had rounded a corner and found her path blocked by Herschel. The two of them had immediately gotten into a fight. It was technically a one-sided fight more than anything. Iseult had been the one pommeled, it seemed, which would explain her injuries. Javier looked at her wounds and laughed. “Didn’t know you were into smokey eye make-up!”Iseul
Iseult’s fear grew exponentially. The closer Javier loomed over her body, the more terrified she became. By the time she could feel his breath on her skin, her fear reached a fever pitch.He took a long, hard sniff of her skin while Iseult’s cheeks burned at the humiliation. She blushed so hard one might think her face was bleeding. “Delicious,” he crooned, being utterly shameless. “You’re a disgusting, despicable bastard and a sh*t stain of a human being!” she screamed.Javier considered her anxiety and laughed. “Then you can just tell me what I want to hear.”Iseult knew exactly what he meant, but the last thing she wanted to do was oblige. In fact, she tried threatening him. “If Piers knows I’m still alive, you know his guilt and conscience will compel him to save me, right? And once he finds out what you did to me today, you know he’ll be livid. He won’t let you live after this! The Whites will wage war against the Kerseys, and your losses will be immeasurable!” Iseult had
Conviction maketh man, they said. But conviction, especially faith, could also bring a man to ruin. Such was its nature as a double-edged sword. People who gathered over shared interests would sooner break away than people who gathered for the same cause. A shared conviction would turn them into a force of terror shaped by the singularity of their minds, with nothing as momentary as interests to distract them. They marched in a single direction in unison, unbreakable and unwavering. If the conviction was good, then such a force would also be good. But the Raiders’ cause was not. Building their own empire was just a means to an end, and one could tell because nothing seemed beyond the pale for them. What they—or what the leader of the Raiders—really wanted was to be the ruler of the world. It was a mortifying thought in an age when most wars could be fought on a technological front. A megalomaniac madman could bring the whole world down with him. The number of a-bombs in the entir
Once Iseult stopped caring about modesty, everything lost its gravity. It was just as Javier had predicted. Once the worst and the inevitable came to a heel and one’s fear reached its apex, everything else would feel like a gentle slope down. Javier removed the latex binds around her under the comforter. Now, Iseult reclaimed some of her freedom. Of course, “some” did not mean “all”, to the point that it would be a stretch to call this freedom. Going anywhere beyond this room was out of the question.The first thing she did was leap out of bed, switch on the AC, and stretch her limbs. Having her arms bound while her legs were spread wide over that extended period of time was certainly tiring. Iseult was relishing in her bodily freedom so much that she forgot she was just as free of clothes. Javier considered her stretching, sexy body and suddenly wrapped his arms around her from behind. Iseult froze. The delight of being free died down. Her nerves became frazzled at once, and sh
It was now or never. She had to do this right now. It was her only chance. She reached out toward him under a casual pretense, when Javier suddenly opened his eyes. He met hers directly. Iseult felt fear surging into her bloodstream. She had not expected him to open his eyes at that moment, which was why the suddenness of it all chilled her. It felt as though the thoughts in her head were clear to him—a possibility that made her shudder. What he said surprised her, though.“Hey, now. You need to sleep under the covers. The night’s windy and cold. Goodnight.” He turned his back to her before falling back into a slumber as though he trusted her not to stab him in the back. Iseult was so baffled that she suddenly did not know what to do next. What he’d said had been very unremarkable and quotidian, and yet for some reason, it made her feel warm and fuzzy inside. She had not been subjected to that sort of care for at least…well, 20-odd years. Since the day she had been abandoned
Iseult could not believe it. Javier had to be making sh*t up. The Raiders could never have done something like this. But Javier produced his phone and showed her evidence. All the evidence showed that it was the Raiders. The reason why this village was going through such a terrible time was because of the Raiders. Iseult was filled with disbelief as she looked at the evidence. She could not believe this was real. But the evidence was so real and completely undebatable in its veracity that she mulled it over for a few minutes and said, “Either my adoptive father knew nothing about this and this is all the work of his underlings, or he knew and authorized it because it will serve a greater cause and far greater people. A country as beautiful as the one we envision will inevitably require some pain and sacrifices. That’s what it is!”Javier cracked a smile filled with both amusement and contempt. On what grounds did she think her adoptive father could spill blood and still be a noble
After leaving the border, Javier and Iseult returned to Chinea and arrived at yet another remote village. Iseult was starting to grow suspicious of his choice of destination, so she asked on the way, “Are you just going to take me to rundown, destitute sh*tholes?”“Aren’t rundown, destitute sh*tholes the best kind of place to prove a utopia’s existence?” Javier retorted. She said nothing. She had to admit, once again, that Javier was completely right. They got out of the car and saw an old man pulling a car chassis up the hill. After locking his car, Javier and Iseult helped the old man with his task. With two young people giving him a hand, the task became a lot easier. The old man sat on a roadside boulder after they got it up the hill. He passed a self-made cigar to Javier as a token of gratitude. Javier puffed it while Iseult tried not to gag from the smell. “Where are your kids? Why are you taking on such heavy labor?” she asked.The old man informed her that his childre
At the sound of that, Javier turned to face Iseult. Before he could say anything, she shook her head hard and recanted, “No, that’s impossible. I cannot have been wrong, and my adoptive father even less possibly so. I mean, just look at you and your people! You’ve worked for nothing, and yet you possess as much wealth as the GDP of an actual nation. If your wealth could be shared with the masses, just how many people would live decent or even great lives? Instead, all that wealth is concentrated in your hands alone! “This is inequality of wealth, pure and simple. And it’s the existence of people like you who are the biggest cause of it!” Javier laughed. He turned on his side and looked at her. “Now, even if I spread all of the Kerseys’ wealth around the world and everyone got what they could, do you think it would change their lives substantially? No. They would be happy for a few days, and then life would go on. But if I alone hold all of the Kersey’s wealth in my hands, I can do