New Eden: Live to Play, Play to Live



The statement in itself was nothing surprising. But what did surprise Alexander was the lack of loathing or hatred contained in the words.

This was the first time someone told him they disliked him with such a straight face.

"I had assumed as much, Mr. Bellemare."

Richard raised a hand, silencing Alex.

"Let me finish. I don't like you. But many observing parties have brought to my attention that my daughter has taken a liking to you .

"It would be quite easy to get rid of you entirely and be rid of the sore sight you bring to me. But I would be a terrible father if I deprived my daughter of one of the few good friends she has finally made.

"I would also be a bad husband if I were to go against my wife's words to leave you alone.

"Now. As things go, I already have racked quite the roster of poor decisions and bad faith from my family in recent times, and I wish not to elongate that list. So you and I need to come to certain terms."

"I will gladly discuss this with you, sir."

Richard glared at Alexander, shutting the latter's mouth once more.

"You have a bad habit of interrupting adults when they speak. I'll tell you when you can speak. For now, you listen. Understood?"

Alex wanted to rebuke that he was also an adult. But Richard's glaring and Alfred's snicker from the side made him understand he was in no position to argue at the moment.

"I'm sorry, sir. Please, proceed."

Mr. Bellemare nodded his head, satisfied that the boy had finally grasped his role in the conversation.

"Good. Where was I? Ah, yes. We need to come to terms with our problem. I dislike you, and I will probably never like you. But since my wife has asked me to play nice, and my daughter almost idolizes you, I have to make concessions.

"But I don't just make concessions for anyone, and much less without a price, in this case. Do you understand where I am going with this, Mr. Leduc?"

Alexander frowned a bit.

'A price? What price? It's not like I'm the one asking him to play nice…' Alex thought.

But he kept those thoughts to himself.

"I'm not quite sure I do, sir. Could I ask you to get to the point?"

'So he does have a spine. Hmm. Good,' Mr. Bellemare thought.

But his face stayed still as a statue.

"Then so I will. You have a problem on your hands. A problem that has now spilled onto my family, as my daughter was affected. Now, I could ask you to compensate for the mental trauma you put my poor Violette through, but it seems that ship has sailed."

Richard leaned in on his desk, interlocking his hands together, and a small grin made its way to his face.

"So I have another proposition."

Alexander wasn't sure where this was going, but seeing the demeanour change in Mr. Bellemare was a good cue as to his change into business mode.

***

Meanwhile, at the other end of the mansion, the lady of the house was taking tea on her little terrasse, just outside of the view of Richard's study windows.

The older head servant was standing near the woman, ready to answer any of her queries. But Katherine enjoyed her tea in silence, with an open laptop on the table.

On the laptop's screen, a few different windows were open, showing different things. One window was a set of cameras, currently following her daughter around the house, making Katherine smile as she looked at her daughter having fun getting chased around by the younger of their maids.

In a second window was a single camera, with no sound, showing her husband's study. The angle of the camera was a downward view, with a narrow view, giving the impression it was not a camera in the open, but a dissimulated one.

Katherine kept tabs on the general feel of the room, making sure her husband respected her wishes for being lenient on Alexander.

And many other windows were open behind those, with data and messages defiling at a baffling speed, all of which were also being sent directly to Katherine's neuro-phone. The content of most of these messages would look like gibberish to anyone, but not to the woman.

And she finally received what she had been wanting for the last two weeks.

'I have you now, you slimy bastards,' she thought, her face distorting from a calm smile to a maniacal grin.

***

Alexander sat silently, waiting for Mr. Bellemare to state his proposition. He didn't want to make the older man snap at him again.

Richard didn't make him wait too long.

"Before I tell you what my proposition is, I would like to ask you what you know about the Bellemares, Mr. Leduc."

The question took Alex by surprise, as it was out of the blue. He also didn't have much of an answer, since he never really dug into Violette's family.

"From what I gather, sir, you are a prominent entrepreneur, with good money and solid connections. But aside from that, I'm afraid I don't know much."

Richard grinned a little wider.

"Good. If you had given a more detailed answer, I would have been worried. In this case, let me educate you a little. Let me give you a quick history lesson."

Alexander almost gulped. No good information ever came after those words.

"My family has been around for a long time, and we have spent a lot of this time forming connections to business branches around the world. The Bellemare's rich history has flourished, especially in the last three centuries, when my ancestor Jean Bellemare joined the fight in the American Revolution, on the side of the French.

"The connections he made during that war later translated to a business partnership with some major American factions, and the birth of the Bellemare's lasting company. Since then, the money we made in those enterprises was enough to fund our expansion in many other domains, making us the company we are today."

Alexander was already getting confused and bored with the 'little history lesson', and wondered when it would get to the point. But he didn't dare say as much.

Alfred coughed lightly from the side, bringing Richard back to focus. The butler knew that his boss tended to become enraptured when he talked about his family's history, so he tried bringing the conversation back on track.

He had heard this story a million times and wished not to hear it again in all its length.

"Ahem. Excuse me. I got a little riled up. Let me shorten this for you. My company deals with personnel. Para-military personnel, to be precise. And I have an offer for you."