From my Bully to CEO

Chapter 10

PAST

GRAYSON’S POV:

“Dude!” Nate exclaimed from the bed behind me, tossing his controller aside. It bounced twice before landing on the edge of the mattress.

I couldn’t help the grin that spread across my face as I whirled around in my chair to face him.

“You clearly cheated,” Nathan said with a roll of his eyes but his smirk gave him away.

“Aww come on, Blanchard,” I drawled, stretching back in my chair. “Sore loser isn’t a good look on you.

He snorted, opening his mouth to retort but the door was pushed open and both of us froze in our places.

Nate, who was laying stomach down on the bed immediately sat up straight, legs tucked underneath him with the reflex of someone who'd been caught doing something illegal.

“Hello, Mr Vexley!” He said quickly, voice too loud and cheerful like he was trying to fight the sudden chillness in the air with it.

My dad completely ignored him and the chillness returned ten folds until I was drowning in it.

Nathan’s gaze darted from the doorway to me, a flicker of pity - or maybe warning - passing across his face.

“Father.” I forced the words past my lips. They tasted bitter on my tongue.

“Grayson.”

Dad managed to grace me with a single nod as his eyes took in the condition of my room like he was documenting it all down for later, when he could sit me down and tell me what a huge waste of space I was.

I didn’t know why he was home.

Hell, I never really knew why he ever came back at all. Except to sleep, of course. He came in too late and left too early. It had always been like that.

There was a time I used to hate it. Used to hate how the only proof I even had a father was the faint trace of his cologne still in the air in the mornings.

But eventually, I got used to it. Got used to the silence, the absence. Got used to having a father in name only. Someone who existed just to sign my report cards or permission slips.

Because that’s all he really was. A stranger who’d given me my blood and my last name and a place to live.

Everything else - the growing up, the figuring things out - I did on my own, raised more by a revolving door of nannies than anything resembling a parent.

Most of all, I’d grown up in the shadow of a mother who’d walked out of our lives without a backward glance.

“Are you available right now?” He asked, not even looking at me as he adjusted the already immaculate cuffs of his tailored suit. The cufflinks caught the sunlight streaming in from the window, glinting like something dangerous I should always stay away from.

The question threw me off - not because I wasn’t accepting it. I was.

Dad only talked to me for one reason nowadays. Our monthly father-son performance review. And apparently, it was time again. I hadn’t even realized a month had gone by since I’d last seen him.

But what caught me off guard was the formality of it. The fact that he’d asked. That had never happened before. Usually, he summoned me like I imagined him summoning all his employees. A text. A word to the housekeeper. A sharp knock on my bedroom door followed by, “He’s waiting in the study.”

Once, when I was twelve, he asked his driver to bring me to his office downtown instead because he been too busy to come home. That might’ve been the worst memory I had with my dad.

Of walking through his office doors while his employees stared at me like I was royalty. I remembered his corner office with floor to window ceilings behind his desk as I sat across from him, knees bouncing frantically. Of wondering if the others saw the rot that lingered behind the too polished glass and marbled floors or if it was only me.

“Yes, of course,” I replied. It wasn’t what I wanted to say but I knew it was what he wanted to hear.

And I long since learned to speak only the words he wanted to hear. Never the ones that lived in my chest and clawed at my throat everything I saw him standing in front of me. Even now, the truth clawed until I was bleeding. Until I had no other option but to swallow it down, lock it in cages it was never allowed to get out of.

I’m not available, I wanted to say. Scream it in his face. Never for you.

“Good,” he replied. That one word was all I got before he turned and started walking down the hall, expecting me to follow.

I hadn’t realized when I stood up in all this time, except that I had and now my feet were moving as if my father had a line attached to me and was pulling me behind him.

“You okay, man?” Nate asked and I blinked, only just remembering that he was here too.

I turned my head towards him and managed a nod.

“I’ll be back in an hour,” I said.

There was no point in lying to him. He knew. Those three were the only people who knew. My masks came off entirely when I was with them. I grabbed my school bag from the floor near the door as I left, knowing that the reports would be all he’d ask for.

Nate nodded, a concerned frown buried in his gaze. It followed me until I disappeared down the hall and still, I felt it burning in the back of my head.

The Vexley mansion was all cold hallways and louder silences. Endless corridors lined with tasteless art, rooms nobody ever stayed in. At times, it felt more like a museum than a home.

I hated this place and I loved it all at the same time.

It had been a constant reminder of how I wasn’t loved enough. Of how my mother left because I was too much. Of how my dad still hated me for it. Maybe always will.

Still, not all memories here were wounds, gaping and wide. Some were stitched with laughter and warmth. Those memories, I’d made myself.

Theo’s ridiculous impersonations, Josh making pancake towers at 3AM, Nate passing out mid-sentence during all-nighters. Those people had lived loud in a house that demanded silence. I knew they did it on purpose. Yelled crude song lyrics at the top of their throats and laughed extra loud only to fight the silences I was drowning in and I loved them all the more for it.

There had been parties that spiraled out of control, middle school heartbreaks that had us swearing off love forever - right up until the next weekend. In those moments, it didn’t feel like my father’s house. It felt like mine. It felt like ours.

But today wasn’t that day. Today, the house stood tall and silent. A reminder that in the end, it was still my father’s empire.

The door of his study was half open when I reached. I slipped inside and closed it with my foot.

He was already seated behind his desk, fingers steepled, gaze fixed on the thick file in front of him. He glanced up, barely a flick of his eyes before he sighed, closing the file with a snap that echoed.

“Sit,” he said, reaching for the glass of scotch next to him.

Three in the evening and he was already drinking.

I did. The leather was cold underneath me, biting the exposed skin of my arms.

“Started class tests?” He asked, blue eyes - ones I could never stop seeing every time I looked in the mirror - stared at me with so much intensity it felt like it was going to rip through my bones.

I tried not to shudder.

“It’s only the first month of the semester,” I said, dodging his question.

He raised an eyebrow, catching up to the weak attempt of escape too quick.

It wasn’t that I was afraid to answer. I wasn’t. I had nothing to hide. My grades were good.

It was just a little rebellion - something to remind me that I was still human, still someone with a mind of his own and a heart that demanded more.

“Calculus and History,” I said as I unzipped the bag resting on my lap and pulled both the test papers out.

I thrusted them in his extended hands.

His eyes skimmed through the test questions on both of them before stopping at the grades at the top of the paper.

“And this was the highest score in the class?” He asked.

The question sent a jolt of fury through me. He didn’t even care about the grades. He only cared about me always being at the top. How can the son of the perfect Daniel Vexley be anything but the best at everything?

He might’ve died from the shame alone if I wasn’t.

I bit the inside of my cheek so hard I tasted the coppery taste of blood on my tongue as I swallowed my words down.

“Yes,” I said.

Not entirely a lie. I’d gotten the highest in History. I tried not to think about Selene and the Ninety Eight in calculus.

Dad didn’t need to know about that.

He looked up slowly - almost dangerously. His lips curled into a barely there smirk, like he was trying his best to cover it but was failing.

“I have contacts in your school, Grayson,” he said smoothly, leaning back in his chair. The leather groaned beneath him.

My spine stiffened. The bastard let that sentence hang in the air like a threat and warning all at once until I was choking on it.

“I know about the new girl. I know she has beat you.”

My jaw tightened, my pulse skittering.

“She didn’t beat me.”

He smiled, a proper smile that would’ve been warm had I not known the meaning behind it.

It was a smile that told me he’d found my nerve. The exact point he needed to prod to get under my skin. I'd given it to him by answering too fast, sounding too defensive.

And of course, it had to be Selene Hale.

“She beat you and worse - people saw it.”

I tried not to react, to keep my mouth shut. Maybe he’d get bored of this game and let me go.

“Was that not humiliating for you?” He asked, voice too soft. “And how did my son - Grayson Vexley - let some pathetic little orphan put him on display like this.”

I flinched as his voice rose.

God, I hated that man.

Every muscle in my body tensed.

He shook his head slowly, like he couldn’t decide if he pitied me or despised me more.

“You’ve got my blood in your veins,” he said, pointing a finger at his chest. “And you let her walk into your school, your world, and strip you of the respect I spent years building for you.”

I stared at the floor. Because if I looked at him, I might say something I couldn’t take back.

“You want to be more than a shadow?” he snapped. “Then start acting like it. Because right now, all I see is a failure trying to wear my name.”

The pressure was suffocating. Like a hand around my throat, tightening with every breath I dared to take.

“Grayson,” he said, voice softer now. That cruel, practiced softness that always came before the killing shot. “Look at me.”

I did. I’d never felt so small. So insignificant. So worthless.

It was just a test, I wanted to tell him. I didn’t dare.

“She’s a nobody,” he said. “You get that?”

I nodded numbly.

“She has nothing, no one. She can’t beat you. Not in the school, not in anything else. Not unless you let her. You understand me, son?”

I nodded again. My heart was too loud in my ears and still, his voice tore through the din, feeding the demons in my chest.

“Say it, Grayson,” Daniel Vexley said, still in his chair like he hadn’t torn through his son without lifting a single finger. “Say you won’t let her.”

“I won’t let her,” I repeated. The words weren’t mine but they were still carved into my skin now, burned into my soul.

Maybe I didn’t fully mean it yet.

But I would.

Because I knew dad was right and it needed to be done.

I wasn’t just going to get her off my back.

I was going to break her. Completely.

Then maybe I’d finally be enough for him.