I kept playing and Tatum didn't push me as I considered whether there was much merit to her observation. I hadn't been sitting here feeling sorry for myself per se, but I supposed I had been lost to my thoughts and memories, aching for this outlet.
"When I was a boy," I said eventually, keeping my eyes on the keys. "Ten years old, to be precise. My father went away on a business trip. So I decided to take it upon myself to figure out one of his secrets."
"What secrets?" Tatum breathed and I shrugged.
"I have never been allowed to know too much of anything the man is up to. He is something of an enigma - or at least that is what he attempts to be. But I'd been observing him closely, studying my enemy if you will, and I believed that I had figured out the combination to the lock on his filing cabinet. I'd been summoned to his office earlier that week for a lecture on the importance of hierarchy within an empire and I suppose I was a fool for not realising that had been a warning, but-"
"But you were just a kid," she supplied, and I nodded once in acknowledgment of that even if it still irritated me.
"Anyway, I waited until the dead of night when all of the house staff would be asleep and my mother would be half comatose after taking her nightly sleeping pills, and I crept from my bed. I slipped along the dark corridors and made my way to his office. The door was unlocked, which again should have clued me in, but I foolishly believed I was just lucky." I scoffed lightly at how naive I'd been. "I headed into his office with a little flashlight I'd taken from the kitchen drawer that morning and I flicked it on. I crept across the carpet in my flannel pyjamas and bare feet then I made it to the filing cabinet."
I breathed out slowly and continued to play, lost in the way a chill had caressed my skin as I stood there looking at that drawer, how cold the metal handle had felt against my fingers and the way my heart had raced with the idea of finally getting one up on him.
"What was in the drawer?" Tatum asked when she couldn't take it anymore and I offered her a smile which I knew didn't reach my eyes as I shrugged a shoulder.
"A letter. I can still see the words of it as if I took a damn photograph and plastered it to the backs of my eyelids. ‘What did I tell you about respecting my privacy, boy?’"
"He set a trap?" she gasped, and I nodded again.
"There was a camera recording the office. I suppose it had a motion sensor and a delayed timer on it because as I threw the drawer closed in alarm, his computer monitor flashed to life and showed me the feed from it. I could see myself standing in the centre of his office, the camera angled down to record the entire room. I turned and fled, fear consuming me as I raced all the way back to my bedroom, flung the door closed behind me and dove beneath the sheets."
"What did he do to punish you?"
"He didn't return from his trip for three more days and I am still unsure whether those seventy-two torturous hours were worse than his actual return. I was beyond afraid of what retribution he'd demand of me and the fear made me throw up every time I tried to eat." I shuddered at the memory of the bile coating my tongue and my stomach rumbling pitifully as I failed to keep anything down. "When he finally returned, he didn't speak a word to me. He removed his gloves and coat then strode to the dining room silently, not even casting a glance my way as I was forced to hound after him. He sat down with my mother at his side and ate his dinner, ignoring me while yet again, I failed to eat mine. I just...waited."
"Saint," Tatum murmured, reaching out to stroke my face again and I leaned into her touch as I continued to play.
"He laid his knife and fork down carefully, pressed his napkin to his lips then looked right over my head as he said in a firm voice, 'I do not wish to have a son who does not respect me or my privacy. Therefore, until