The Tycoon’s Wild Card

Long Flight

Percy’s POV:

I stood outside my humble duplex in Rome, just beside the car I was supposed to drive to the airport. It felt a bit surreal that I would be leaving Italy after all these years and what made it even more surreal was the fact that I knew it’d be a while before I returned.

About twenty-two years ago, I’d been dumped here, by myself, with nobody save an elderly woman who had overtime become the person I loved the most in the world.

“You’re still here?” Nonnina Carla spoke as she stepped out of the house, holding a small lunch box in her hand.

“I told you not to pack anything.”

It was quite normal to call Carla the title nonnina. She had asked me to call her that when I asked a long time ago if I could call her ‘mother’. She had smiled then and said: “I’m your little grandmother, so call me Nonnina.”

“You might’ve grown into a young man, but don’t forget it was I who raised you. In my eyes, you’ll always be my little Percy,” She said in Italian while ruffling my hair with her right hand.

Nonnina Carla’s action forced a smile out of me, and I snatched the box from her to inspect what delicacy she’d packed for me.

Arancini. In the whole of Italy, I was certain that there wasn’t anybody who made rice balls as good as Carla, and I knew because I had tried a bunch of places.

Her tone took a somber tone as she caressed my cheek with both hands. “I always knew the day would come when Rome would be too small for you.”

Tears sprang to my eyes, but they wouldn’t drop. They couldn’t.

She clicked her tongue upon noticing. “No crying, remember?”

I gave a small nod. “You could come with me, Carla.”

“And leave this big house to rot? No, I will stay here and enjoy the rest of my days.”

My brows rose at that and my heart skipped a beat, but as always, Nonnina knew when something troubled me.

“Relax my boy, I won’t die now. There are… things I have yet to tell you, things you may need to know, and I have to be here to tell you when the time comes. Eat well and don’t let that witch bother you too much.”

I smiled at that. “I plan on avoiding any interaction with them. Papa may have invited me, but I do not go there solely for him, I am simply bringing my business to the American market. I will come back though, rest assured.”

“If you are not coming with a wife, I don’t want to see you.” She said before opening the door and shoving me inside. Nonnina Carla stood waving at me as the engine of my Ford Mustang spurred to life and I zoomed off, leaving the only mother I’ve ever known behind, along with the great city of Rome.

* * * * *

The flight from Rome to America was the longest flight I’d ever had the ill luck of having. It did not help matters that I took a private jet, the fact that I was in the air for over five hours was worrying for me. I could not sleep and besides Nonnina Carla’s Arancini, I could not seem to keep anything down.

It had escaped my mind to bring a few girls with me, at least they would’ve helped ease some of the tension I was feeling, and the anxiety.

Despite my outward appearance, a mask of perfect calm, I was an emotional mess inside. After landing in America, I would be seeing my father for the first time in almost twenty years.

The first few years after I’d been sent here, he’d stop by every now and then to check how I was settling and then leave the very same day, never caring to spend even an hour with me.

It had felt very wrong, but Nonnina Carla had help me to not think too much of it. I was seven years old when I made the long journey from the United States of America down to Italy, and before then I remembered having an older step-brother who was always too busy having one home teacher after the other, and on the days when he wasn’t with a teacher, he would make it his mission to torment my life.

He did nasty pranks, bullied me out of my things, sometimes he assaulted me physically because he was much bigger than I was, and his mother, or as Nonnina Carla liked to refer to her, the witch, would turn a blind eye, as though she did not know the type of monster she’d birthed.

Declan.

A small part of me wondered if he’d changed now. I knew what he looked like, I saw him on the news, especially the last few months, after he’d somehow managed to accumulate shares from off of Mr. Hooke, and had then forced a hostile takeover from the man.

Despite the cruelty of it, I had to admit that it was a pretty bold and brilliant move. White Corp wasn’t famous for their righteousness anyway; nobody was in the business world. However, as much as I would love to know how he got the board to back him, I suspected I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near Declan.

From off the TV where I watched him in Rome, it felt like the only thing that had changed about him was that he was bolder now. He spoke with every bit of arrogance that he could muster. He looked ridiculously smug all the time on the papers and during interviews too, speaking to anybody that would be willing—and also unwilling—to listen, reminding them with his pride that he was better than them.

I had no idea what to expect of America, despite spending the first seven years of my life here, and as the plane landed, and I stepped out onto the cold, rainy night, I was greeted by a small feeling of nostalgia.

“It’s been a while, brother.”

There was only one person in the world I knew who could inject that much disgust into a word that was meant to be endearing.

I looked down from the top of the staircase to find none other than Declan Henderson with his signature smug smile. He stood wearing a dark coat that stopped shy of his black shoes, a dark umbrella in his hand, and behind him was an equally black limo. He blended in perfectly well with the night.

“Won’t you come? Father said to pick you. I could always tell him you got scared and ran back to Paris, or was it Rome?”

For some reason, I felt the strong urge to slap the smile off his face.