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Keyon backed out of the room and rushed down the corridor. He descended the stairs and was about to leave this abominable place forever when he saw Grace, his trusted advisor, bent over some books in a room that looked like a study.
“What are you doing?” Keyon growled. “We should get out of here.”
“Look at this,” Grace said in her usual calm tone.
Keyon walked inside, twitching in irritation. “What?”
“Look!” Grace pointed at the numbers in a journal. “Look how lucrative this place is.”
“You know full well it will take me longer than one moment’s glance to understand any of this. You know even better that I’d rather set this place on fire than even think about how lucrative it is to abuse children.”
Grace straightened and looked him directly in the eyes. “I meant blackmail. People who use this place were blackmailed by the owners for years, yet they kept coming. We can use this information to get whatever we want.”
“And what is it you want, Grace?” Keyon stepped closer to her, intimidating her with his size.
“I want a house, a place with a bed in it. I want to stop robbing people on the streets,” she said quietly.
“And what are you willing to pay for it?” he growled.
“I am not willing to pay for it. But I am willing to steal for it.” She waved her hands at the room. “Steal all of this. Do you know how many people’s information is in here? Do you know what we can do with it? Open our own hell, like you always said you would. Only one where people will be safe from monsters.”
Keyon grimaced and looked away.Monsters. By chasing the revenge that would never bring him peace, he had become the thing he feared most. Perhaps it was time to stop. To settle down. Keyon nodded and looked around the small, stuffy room.
“My own hell.” He smirked.
“What would you call it?” Grace asked, tilting her head.
Keyon thought for a moment, looking around the office. His hell. This place had literally been hell for him, so he’d name it appropriately. “Hades,” he said.
“You can have it,” Grace said. “If we use this information to our advantage, you can have anything you want,Hades.”
Keyon cocked his head. “I like the sound of that.Hades.”
“It suits you,” she said with a smirk.
“You like it here, don’t you?” he asked.
Grace shrugged. “It’s dirty. If we washed it with running spring water for five years, then maybe I’d like it.”
Keyon smirked. This stuffy little room was full of knowledge. Grace was right. The knowledge would help them get to wherever they wanted.
Blackmail. Keyon had taken valuables from people by threatening to literally take their lives. With the information in Grace’s hands, he could take enough valuables just by threatening to air their dirty secrets.
“Grace,” he said uncertainly.
“Yes?”
“Do I look like a monster?”
She looked at him in her usual manner, direct, like a man would. “Yes,” she said firmly.
Something twisted in his gut. “I do not want to be a monster. I went through hell in this place. I was afraid of people like me. I do not want to become them.”
“What you want is not the same as what you need, Keyon. And you need to be terrifying to survive in our world.” Grace answered. She narrowed her eyes in thought before continuing, “But you can look like a monster without becoming one.”
“How do I do that?” he asked.
Monsters kill. The girl’s words rang in his mind. He’d killed enough people to qualify as a monster, he supposed. However, it wasn’t the people he killed. It was the people who remained who would label him thus.
