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Sylvester
Have you ever wanted to punch a billboard? No? Then you’ve probably never had to see the smug face of your evil biological half-brother grinning down at you from thousands of them, every corner you turned in your city of residence.
Yeah, that’s the situation I was facing as I was chauffeur-driven through the city to my apartment, where I was due to meet with my brothers. The non-evil ones. Every time I thought we’d finally gotten into a zone of the city unencumbered by the lying face of Apollo Brock, there he was again, smirking from an advertising screen.
The radio in the car blared out: “And now, an interview with the surprise bestseller of the year, Apollo Brock, whose memoir swept straight to number one in the charts and who is now a household hero for his exposé of the lives and lies of his brothers, Jude, Forest, Winston, and Sylvester...”
I craned forwards to the driver, speaking more snappily that I usually would. “Turn that off, would you?”
The driver, startled out of his driving reverie, almost swerved into the other lane of traffic in his haste to switch off the car radio. “My apologies, sir.”
“Don’t sweat it.” I relaxed into the backseat and closed my eyes, toying with the rings on my fingers, trying to picture things that weren’t Apollo’s face. Fluffy bunnies. Marshmallows. Cats playing with string.
It was no use. I was decidedly stressed. And I didn’t like to be stressed. My general aim was to coast through life, not sweating things, living a life of leisure with not a care in the world.
Apollo had been putting paid to that for years now. One by one, he had come after my brothers, intent on revenge for the sole reason that we didn’t agree with his business practices.
Our biological father, Emory Brock, was dead in his grave, but all five of his illegitimate sons had made a pact to make up for the evils he had done unto the world by using his businesses to do good. Everything had changed when Apollo retracted his agreement and thereby made us into his enemies.
His plots against the other four Brocks included a public smear campaign against Jude, sending a spy to seek intel on Forest, and teaming up with Winston’s manipulative mom to kidnap Winston’s son, no less. All of his plans had failed in the end, but so had our retaliations. We’d come close to getting him put away for the conspired murder of workers in one of his factories, but in the end, all the evidence had gone missing. Strange.
Since I was the last remaining brother he hadn’t personally targeted, I knew I was next in line for Apollo’s campaign of vengeance. Maybe that’s why his face, plastered everywhere I looked, was putting me on edge.
The driver pulled up at my apartment block, where my security team were waiting to escort me safely inside. I’d gotten used to the constant presence of bodyguards and security teams by now: firstly, when I’d become famous as a rockstar, and then again when I was announced as one of Emory Brock’s illegitimate sons and therefore heir to one-fifth of his business. Yeah, I’d had my fair share of fame.
But recently it was something else. What with knowing I was next on Apollo’s shit list, and the recent ‘memoir’ bringing all the brothers more publicity than we’d like, I’d doubled my security. Quadrupled, even. Though I still swanned around pretending I was king of the world, I was decidedly more cautious, though I tried to ignore the constant presence of threat.
My security led me through the building foyer, where the porter who liked to think he was a Victorian butler waved us on with a stiff ‘Queen’s wave’. I sent finger guns in return. I liked to come up with a different greeting for him every time I entered, just to keep both our lives interesting. He’d not enjoyed the ‘secret handshake’ I’d invented for us, or the time I’d come through bouncing a basketball and lobbed it over to him. The ball had bounced off his chest and into a priceless vase. Not his best morning, but one of my personal faves.
Then it was up in the elevator, surrounded by men and women whose height and muscular width could make even me jealous, if I so chose, and then down the hallway to my penthouse apartment.
At last, I was deposited securely inside. In the luxury of my own home, I had privacy – if I could ignore the guards stationed outside who would come running at any noise from within the apartment. As it turned out, this included when I accidentally grated my finger instead of some expensive cheese during a date, at which point I’d had to sheepishly explain myself in front of a squadron of security guards while totally nude.
I was early for the meeting, so to calm my definitely-not-nerves, I pulled out my old electric guitar, plugging it into the speaker by the entrance to the balcony.
Even as I twanged the out-of-tune strings to tune it by ear, I felt a serenity wash over me that I hadn’t felt in a long time. The calluses on my fingers may have mostly healed from my life of wealth and leisure, but my hands had the muscle memory of songs I’d not played in years.
There was a favorite song of mine that had never become a hit: a fifteen-minute song that was just my electric guitar and my voice. The band called it my ‘vanity song’. They’d meant it fondly, while we’d still been on good terms. Then after the band had split up, they’d called it that bitterly, in interviews with the press.
My voice wasn’t warmed up, but five minutes into the song I was hitting my stride. It was like I was no longer in my apartment. Instead, I could almost taste the sweat and stale beer fumes of a crowded stadium, and I could almost hear the roar of the fans as I got stuck into my favorite guitar solo. I imagined the flash of cameras, the sweeping lights that I had to squint to see past into the faces of my fans.
Eventually, the song drew to an end. My whole body was alive with rhythm. Music was the language I knew best. Everything else in my life was like speaking in a non-native tongue. I thought in music. But I rarely got the opportunity to make my thoughts a reality these days.
I paused to consider what to play next, and in the silence I heard a pounding on the door. Oops.
I opened the door to see all three of my brothers’ scowling faces. Oh, they were charmers, they were.
I grinned at the assembled brothers. “Ready for the inaugural Brock Brothers Book Club?”
Jude pushed past me into the flat, surly. “We’ve been ready for about ten minutes now.” The ex-Navy SEAL was renowned for his dislike of being early to meetings, so it must have stung that he’d arrived probably five minutes late, only to be held outside waiting.
“Yeah, and I hope it’s theonlyBrock Brothers Book Club.” Winston slouched after him, possibly tired from a long day of... whatever it was doctors did. Cutting people open?
I raised an eyebrow. “I thought youlovedreading, Winston?”
He shot a dark look at me as he searched my fridge for beer. “This has done absolutely nothing to endear me to the hobby.”
Ever polite, Forest waited for me to step aside so he could enter the flat. “I don’t know, it was fascinating, in its own way.”
