At the billionaire's feet

ChapterThree

In the River’s mansion you could find silence over the place. It was in the corridors where your footsteps sounded really loud. It was in the dining room where meals were always served on time.. In that dining room people never showed enough affection. That was where he grew up in. He was surrounded by a lot of wealth. This wealth could buy him anything he wanted.. There was one thing that all the money in the world could not buy for Williams. Attention and love that felt real. The attention he got always felt like he had to do something to get it.

The billionaire's son, that is what people called him. It was like a shadow that always followed him. It affected the way teachers treated him, the way his classmates felt about him, so either they were scared of him or they really liked him. When strangers found out whose son he was, they would smile at him really fast. Nobody ever asked the billionaire's son who he actually was. They just assumed things about the billionaire's son. Williams found out that it was easier for people to use these assumptions against him than to use the truth about him.

By age twenty-five, he had gotten really good at being the person the world thought he should be.

Rude. Arrogant. The rich playboy.

This guy had a lot of confidence. His dad forces him to always wear suits, he smiled like he did not care and said sharp things that hurt people. He said these things in a way that made it seem like he never thought about how they would affect others. When he was mean, to people they said he was just being honest. When he did not want to talk to people they thought it was because he was a billionaires son. When he hurt peoples feelings they said it was going to happen. I mean what do you expect from the son of a billionaire? The son of a billionaire is always going to do what he wants.

Williams allowed them to think that was true. Williams did not say anything to make them think otherwise about it. Williams just let them go on believing what they wanted about the situation.

It is easier for me to be the villain than to be the boy who used to wait by the window for my father who never came home before midnight. Being the villain is simpler than being that boy who stood by his parents door, hearing his dad beat up his mum. The villain is what I am now, not the innocent boy who couldn't protect his mum.

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His father, Mr Rivers was a man who really believed in being strict and in charge. He liked things a way. He wanted control over everything. For Mr River’s, the way to show love was by getting things done and doing well. When Mr River’s was happy with you he would give you a job or a great opportunity or he would promise you something valuable but only if you did what he said.His father expected people to listen to him and do what he wanted.

His father always said that feelings are not what build empires. He would say it like that "Feelings don't build empires."

Williams heard that sentence so many times that it really got stuck in his head.

When he was a kid he really tried. He got grades and had perfect posture. He was always polite to the people his family did business with, the ones who would pat him on the head like he was something they could invest in, not like he was their son. He learned to talk when people talked to him, to never do anything that would make his family look bad, to put on a happy face even when he was really lonely because showing sadness was seen as a weakness. He had to be strong all the time and that was really hard for him, the family name was everything.

The house felt really cold when his mother passed away. His mother was the one who made the house feel warm and cozy.The house just did not feel the same without his mother.

Nobody said a word about the cause of her death. Everyone kept quiet.

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At boarding school, Williams found out about the power.

This is not the type of powerful person his father looked up to. His father liked the type of person who works in an office.. He was a different story. He was the kind of person who got respect because of who he was. People were afraid of him. They knew that the rules did not apply to him in the way because of his last name. His teachers let him get away with things. The other students did what he said. All the girls were into him, they found him very attractive.

He did not try to get people to like him. He tried to take his mind off things.

Flirting is like a game to him. He gets into relationships that're short and really intense but he does not let them get too serious. When someone starts to get really close to him he takes a step back. If someone wants more from him he gives them less. He knows how to make people like him without caring about them.

People said that he was a playboy. He had a reputation for being a playboy.

Williams never corrected the people who were wrong. Williams just let things go on like that.

It was better than being called broken. That is what I thought to myself when people said things about me.

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Now Williams is grown up. He walks around like the whole world is his. He acts like he owns the place and, in a lot of ways, the world of Williams is really his.

Luxury cars were always waiting for him whenever he wanted to go. He had jets too and they were always ready to take off. He liked to live life to the fullest. His nights were usually a blur, he would go to parties. Meet people but by the time the morning came around he could barely remember who they were or what had happened. Luxury cars and private jets were a normal part of his life and he got used to living this way.

He was with a lot of people but still felt lonely.

When he woke up in the dark his heart was racing fast and he could not remember his dreams very well. He would stand in the shower for a time letting the water cover up the thoughts that he did not want to think about. His father would call him. He would feel bad before he even said hello to his father.

Being the heir meant he had to live up to a lot of expectations that were not really his. The company was supposed to be his,he was supposed to marry someone his family liked and he had to clean up his image.

His father always said to him, "You are not a kid anymore." He said it in a cold way. "You need to behave like a River’s."

He just laughed instead.

That laugh was sharp and careless it was his way to defend himself. He liked it because it kept people from looking closely at him. They did not notice the way his hands got all clenched up when arguments got really quiet. They did not see how much he hated disappointing his father, a man who never seemed satisfied with anything he man did.

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Despite everything, Williams was not heartless.

The man has a side but he does a good job of keeping it hidden.He was a big tipper not because he wanted people to notice him but because he knew what it was like to be ignored. The scholarships he funded were always anonymous so his name was never on the papers. He stood up for the staff when his fathers friends talked down to them which was really cool of him.

Nobody had any idea what was going on. The fact is no one has a clue about any of this.

And that was the point.

Williams did a lot of things but he did not talk about them. On the other hand when he did something bad everyone found out about it.

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Family gatherings were the worst.

They told him that just because you are related by blood does not mean you belong. His family members spoke to him in voices but their eyes were sharp and they were judging him. Every time they looked at him it seemed like they were comparing him to the family name. This made him feel bad about himself and the family name.

At night he would think about his life and wonder what he would be like if his father had loved him in a different way.

But wondering changed nothing.

He recalled the way his mother used to laugh. The thing is, he could not remember her last words..

William’s carrying trauma wrapped in designer suits and deflection.

The life he built on being full of himself and running away from things was starting to need more from him. He had to face the fact that his life of arrogance and escape was not going to be easy to keep up.

The question was not who Williams pretended to be. The main thing now was what Williams was like. The question was what was he hiding.

It was who he would become when pretending stopped.