King of New York (13 page)

In that moment
he felt as if love never loved him, so he vowed to never love it back.

The smell of cleaning substances
is strong inside the hospital, but it somehow brings comfort to him. His demons
return as he enters the building. Guilt corrupts his thinking as he fears the
worst when the doctors and nurses begin to run in the direction of Sierra’s
ward. He runs with them hoping for the best but expecting the worst.

The doors fly open.
He doesn’t enter with the doctors. Standing in disarray, sweat
begins to trace a path down his face. He wipes it away
and walks through the doors.

Sierra is fine.
She opens her eyes and looks at him with a smile on her lips.

“Chad, is that
you? I’m so glad you came.”

He goes and sits
by her. His silence speaks volumes. His thoughts are distant; he cannot bear to
look her in the eyes. He finally speaks.

“I am sorry,
Sierra. This is all my fault. If I hadn’t let you go none of this would have
happened. There is something I need to tell you and I will understand any
action that you take.” Chad tries to summon the courage to tell her the truth
of what he had done.

“Do not worry,
baby. I also have something important to tell you too. I’m sorry that I ruined
your room,” she says. He laughs at her naivety in bringing up unimportant matters
when grave matters are at hand.

“Shhh, do not
stress yourself, Sierra,” he tells her. He wants to tell her the truth but the
way she stares at him doesn’t allow him to. So he reverts to telling her
another truth that is much easier for him to say.

“All I wanted to
say is that I love you and I lied earlier when I told you that I didn’t. I don’t
want to lose you again. I was afraid of accepting the fact that I loved you. I’m
afraid to let anyone in. I find it hard to trust people because they always betray
me. I know you’re different and that scares me because I’m not used to someone
like you.” He stares at her with a distant look in his eyes, waiting for her to
say something as the silence overwhelms the room.

“I promise not
to hurt you, Chad. I want you, I need you, baby. I’m scared too. The people
that kidnapped me, they … they told me not to go anywhere near you, but I can’t
control how I feel for you.” He knows that there is something she’s not telling
him.

The truth is she
refuses to tell him that they threatened his life, because she loves him and doesn’t
want to worry his already worried mind. But deep down in his mind he already
knows. Her look says it all, but he does not let her know because he does not
want her to worry. He can take care of himself, but he knows that she is frail.
New York is his kingdom and Chad believes that the subjects cannot overthrow
the king.

He is overcome with
an emotion he has never felt before. Her brown eyes invite him to her. There is
something he desperately wants to tell her but he puts it on hold. “I can’t
promise to be the man you want me to be. But I will try every day of my life,
babe. I may get angry or moody, but it’ll not stop me from loving you.
Understand that this is something I’m not familiar with. I wasn’t loved as a
child so I never learnt how to love. My mother was a drug addict and an
alcoholic, so too was my father. My mother’s clean now, but her past affected
my future.” He stops for a second and looks up at the ceiling, almost confused
at his revelation to a woman he barely knows.

“I have never loved
or even remotely liked a woman before. I only loved the idea of a woman needing
me desperately, like the drugs my mother needed. When my world was in turmoil,
the desperate pleas of a woman when I was in her would sometimes bring me
comfort.

“Am I a sex
addict? No, far from it. Most of the time I just do it because the women are so
willing and desperate to give it to me. I had been without sex for four years
straight until my twenty-ninth birthday. A man that cannot control his penis is
not a man at all, but an animal that does not bear an account of what it means
to be a man. A man should have self-control and be able to tame his innermost
desires. People, and perhaps even myself at one point, believed women were my
addiction, but it was only a means of temporary escape. Sex does not mean a
thing to me, because no matter whom I had sex with, it still left me
inexplicably empty; the reason why I would never see them again, because they
never fulfilled me.

“I only wanted
to be something that women needed desperately. Knowing that I will never need
them back, knowing that I will only break their heart in the end, just like my
father did to my mother. She loved and needed him, but he never felt any of
those things for her. In turn, my mother became like that towards me. I loved
and needed her, but she loved and needed drugs instead. So, in turn, I became
like both of them – someone incapable of love, someone that only used women for
sex because they would willingly allow themselves to be used in the hope that I
would love them in return, which I never did.

“That was, until
I met you. With you I feel that I am the one desperate for your loving. I am
the one in need of you saving me, changing me and making me a better man.

“Sometimes I
pretend to myself that my money makes me happy … but can I bring you in on a
secret, Sierra?” She looks at him longingly with childlike eyes and it brings a
sad smile to his face. He kisses her hand; his voice is filled with emotion.
“The truth, Sierra, is that my money does not make me happy, it consumes me,
deceiving me in accepting what is bad for my being, almost like the devil. It
corrupts the deepest parts of who I am.” He begins to speak quietly, as painful
memories reappear in his head. Sierra is silent. He looks at her and sees the
sadness of his heart visible in her eyes. He knows she loves him deeper than he
can fathom, as he sees that she feels every fibre of his pain within her gaze.

Chad grips Sierra’s
hands as he speaks with deep emotion in his voice. She cries as he is incapable
of tears. A man like Chad does not shed tears.

“I never talk
about my past, Sierra. The memories are too painful. I don’t want to be the person
that I am any longer. I want to be able to love and be loved back, but I’ve
never been able to experience that. Sometimes I hate myself for feeling so
empty. Women throw themselves at me but I never feel anything for them. But
here we are. I think I fell in love with you at the restaurant. Everyone that I
ever loved has hurt me. My father left when I was only a boy. I remember crying
every time I saw a green-eyed man walked past me. I used to think it was my father
walking past and ignoring me. I still loved him and wished he would love me
back, but he never did. That was when I finally stopped loving love.

“My mother tried
the best she could to raise me after he left. But it wasn’t enough. She was
incapable of loving me so I overcompensated by loving her more than she
deserved. I longed for her to love me the way I loved her. She’s fine now. I
made sure I provided everything she needed when I made my first million. She
acknowledges the role she played in the somewhat cold man I am today. But how
can I be angry at the woman that gave me life? It’s not possible. Now do you
see why I’m a man empty of love?”

She nods her
head and softly kisses him on the lips.

“Don’t hurt me,
Sierra. I won’t be responsible for my actions if you do. If you feel you’ll
hurt me then please tell me now and allow us to properly say our goodbyes. But
if you know you’ll love me the way I’ll love you, then please stay. I’ve never
asked a woman to stay. But I’m begging you to stay yet again.”

“I want to stay.
Just like you I also want to love and be loved back. I once had a boyfriend whom
I thought I loved, but he never loved me back. He broke my heart. He made me
incapable of feeling love till I met you.”

He hears the
hurt and anguish in her voice. Something hits him deep in his heart as he feels
her pain, but in the shape of his mother and father.

He looks at her
and realises that they are both similar people. Both have been hurt by love.
Though his pain is more profound as it began in childhood, he understands the
pain that love had caused her. He sees her desperation to run away from love,
and it makes him love her more as she is holding a darkness within her that was
caused by love, just as he is. He kisses her. Knowing that they are both
wounded souls makes him want to heal her. Just like him, he knows there are
dark secrets she keeps hidden.

As he hugs and
kisses her lovingly, the doctor comes in and tells her she can be discharged.
All her tests are clear. “Don’t drive or lift any heavy objects for a week.
That is your only requirement. All the best.”

The doctor
leaves the room.

Before they
leave, Chad asks her something.

“Tell me
something, Sierra. Are you willing to do anything to get to the top, I mean
anything, regardless of its repercussions and the many people you may hurt and
betray along the way?”

She looks at him
and her eyes seem filled with a certain greed that he cannot explain, but it
intrigues him.

“Yes, yes, I am,”
she says quietly, as if she is ashamed to admit her greed. He looks at her with
a pleasant surprise in his eyes. The weak-looking Sierra suddenly looks strong
and bold, with a fearless streak in her. The desire for power is potent in her
eyes, and in that moment she reminds him of his younger self – a man hungry for
power and wealth, and willing to do all it took to gain them.

“Good, that’s
what I like to hear, because I too will do whatever it takes to remain at the
top.” He smiles, knowing that he brings out the darkness within her and awakens
her deepest desires.

Chad and Sierra
leave the private hospital and make their way to Chad’s other apartment after
collecting all the necessary things from her place.

****

Situated on the 53rd floor on
West 89th street, his Upper West Side penthouse is special to Chad. Since he
bought it, he has only slept here five times, even though he bought it for sixty
million dollars. The condo overlooks all of New York with its 360-degree glass
wall view that lets him see the world but excludes him from it as one cannot
see inside from outside. The door number is made of pure gold. The ceilings are
high to create an airy and spacious feel. It has three bedrooms, five bathrooms,
a terrace, a wine cellar, roof pool, bar and lounge, private lift, custom black
marble staircases and a 40-foot gallery with black paintings to mimic his mind.

He
remembers not having shown much interest in the Van Gogh painting in his Fifth
Avenue penthouse. But there is a particular painting in this penthouse that he
holds close to his heart. He takes her hands and shows her a different painting
by the artist. This particular painting is one that he’d bought at a rare art
auction, and he made sure to personally outbid every bidder in the room as it
was a painting he wanted. It is of two worn-out boots that look as if they may
have been worn by a peasant.

“This
is one of my favourite paintings,” he states, as he looks intently at the work
of art.

“But
they are just a pair of shoes,” Sierra says.

“No!”
he shouts. “No,” he says again, this time in a quiet and controlled tone.

“They
are not just a pair of shoes,” he says quietly, as his blue eyes spark with
calm fury in her direction. He rubs his hand across the painting as if he is
caressing it. He closes his eyes and starts to speak. His voice is deep and
calm as if he is in another place; his hand moves across the painting as he
feels the texture of the artist’s paint.

“This
… this painting depicts more than just a pair of shoes, Sierra. It depicts the
image of a man that has walked the rough and hard grounds of the earth, a man
who might possibly be haggard-looking, tired from the toil of hardship, slaving
to salvage a better living for him and his family, if he had one. A man
possibly tortured by the politics of his day, a man in need of brighter days,
in need of greener pastures.” His voice is filled with emotion as his lips
softly quiver and he inhales slowly.

“I
feel like I was the man in these boots. I grew up in hardship, working
relentlessly for a better future for myself. I walked and worked till my boots
were almost unrecognisable, scavenging in the heat, and the bitter snow and
windy weather. I worked. I made sure I passed every exam with straight A’s, did
menial jobs that paid pennies and took abuse from people that could not
comprehend how great I was back then.”

There
is deep emotion in his demeanour and the way in which he expresses his words. His
voice is sad. He feels what the artist has depicted in his painting; he feels
he has experienced it, as he continues.

“But
my boots, the only shoes that I had, helped to transform me from a peasant to a
king.” He exhales deeply and finally opens his eyes. Sierra appears to be in
awe of him.

“Follow
me,” he says. They go to his room. He opens a safe with a gold key, takes out a
leather bag and opens it. Slowly he reveals to her a pair of worn-out boots.

“These
are my boots, Sierra. My most prized possession. These boots have seen my
blood, sweat and tears, the only piece of my childhood that is still physically
with me.” He holds the boots close to his heart and then puts them back in the safe.