Steven
I'd decided to keep
Long Management
alive. After reviewing their performance, it was clear that they knew their stuff and had done a good job in keeping the family fortune together over the decades through the use of some very safe and wisely chosen long term investments, and the right decisions regarding the few lucrative business interests the family still owned. Their part would from then on be a supportive role, as it would have been impossible to handle everything myself. The structure and complexity of business had changed considerably since Rebecca and her mother were able to run things themselves, and that type of management model was simply no longer realistic in today's world.
Though Ashleigh did have some business acumen, even she wouldn't have been enough help and, besides that, her interests were much more centered on Sera, the family's personal issues and her ongoing investigation of our history. Apart from sometimes acting in an advisory capacity with regards to which of our politicians were good for what, she left business to me.
Besides, despite my raw talent and Sera's added intuitions, I wasn't kidding myself where my lack of actual experience in running a business was concerned, especially one like what I'd inherited. In addition to serving in their supportive role, I knew what a valuable resource
Long Management's
experience would be in teaching me all the realities that I'd have to know and could never otherwise learn on my own. The business courses I'd begun through distance education (University would've been way too risky for Sera) would teach me a lot that my high school courses didn't cover, but nothing, not even university degrees can take the place of the real world training and experience that
Long management
had to offer me.
Something else that
Long Management
had to offer was Alyssa Raitt. This very talented, very attractive, thirty-two year old brunette had been recruited by them five years before, and was the perfect assistant and advisor while the reigns of the family business were being slowly passed to me. She came with an auburn haired secretary that looked as good as she did and, of course, they'd both been properly influenced by Ashleigh back on the first day of their employment because that's just the way of things.
Mum had quite naturally fallen into the duties of running the house with Sheila as her assistant. After learning quite a bit about how to use Sera from Ashleigh, she converted the entire staff to her control, made the policy changes that suited her, and even opened her own office a few doors down from mine, carefully ensuring that it was bigger and more nicely appointed than Ashleigh's. From there, she handled not only the house staff, but every jot and tittle from food deliveries and uniform replacements to cleaning schedules and daily menus. She liked it, probably the control and the opportunity to once again mother a house being the big reason she did but, most importantly, it kept her and Sheila busy.
Kitten, my cousin and beautiful wife, spent a lot of her time in the old cinderblock garage while I worked. She'd finished revamping it with new lighting, plumbing, insulation and heat, along with a septic system that necessitated the total upheaval of not one, but two of Ashleigh's prize flowerbeds, and had a small office of her own there in the side tower. As Mum had taken over the house, she'd taken over the maintenance and landscaping of the entire estate, ordering a new, larger supply warehouse and equipment shed built close to the service gate behind her office with an additional security wall around that to control access of outside delivery personnel. She could often be found directing the groundskeepers, running some piece of heavy equipment, or actually digging with a shovel right alongside her labourers, usually topless. In fact, it wasn't uncommon to see her happily working at some menial chore or other, wearing absolutely nothing but her leather tool belt and a pair of steel toe hikers. God, how I love my funny little Kittenface. No matter how many women I get to use, none of them can, or ever will compare to her.
Sometimes I like to take a break and visit her, assuming she isn't way in back of the huge property we occupy, cutting new paths with the little dozer. Preferably, she'll be in her private shop, working in her office, or at her hobby, that of slowly restoring our Great Grammie Samantha's old
Dodge Wayfarer
. On these occasions, I'll sometimes fuck her senseless, sometimes just sit and talk. We get along great and I couldn't imagine life without her.
As for Sera, the reality of her presence has been accepted by all of us, even taken for granted as time started to pass. Without each other, she would have always been that thing that controlled us, threatening to destroy our lives and making any kind of life impossible but, together, she was no more than what we were.
This said, I often consider her lack of control over herself, the way the evolution of what she is and has been in each of us has always been so governed by our Human portion of the equation and how necessary that's been for Sera.
Yet, what if Marie Roy hadn't been Schizophrenic? Or, what if Seraphine had the opportunity to grow up in a controlled environment like our other ancestors had? Of course, that would have been impossible but, hypothetically, what values could have been impressed upon her? What if she'd had a Human soul to live with like all of her predecessors had? Would she have seen how wrong it would have been to run her adoptive parents the way she obviously had? Would it only have become necessary anyway in order to protect herself from them once they realized just how different and potentially dangerous she was? And perhaps the biggest question of all: What the devil had ever happened to her?
You see, while one of Sera's gifts was perception of others, and while Ashleigh and Kitten certainly had that in spades, I only had a smattering of it. What I had instead was more of an inner perception, an intuition if you will, and possibly the real identity of that other me I often spoke to, since not all we of Sera talk to ourselves. And this intuition, this gut instinct, as one might call it, often wonders about Seraphine, the last great mystery of what we are since Ashleigh had shared with us her knowledge of the abilities Sera provided with age.
Seraphine was the last shadow in my mind where Sera was concerned, the last dark corner of the unknown where some terror, real or imagined, might hide. I never really spoke of it to the others because I didn't want to upset them, or make them think that I'd in some way reverted to my old lack of acceptance of what I am, but it was an issue that would sometimes surface in my mind. And every time it did, whether it was on a bright sunny day by the pool while my mother enjoyed my cock in her mouth, a quiet moment in my office, or the dead of night while I lay awake in bed beside my Kittenface, it always came with a subtle, insubstantial and nerve tingling fear.
Was Seraphine that greater sense of awareness over the family that Kitten and I could feel when we bonded? Was she Sera herself? A literal part of each one of us that directed our actions from a different plane of existence in a subconscious manner that none of us could suspect, slowly forming some ultimate plan of hers by the use of our bodies and lives? And exactly who, or what was it that Coby and Marie would often whisper to in the basement? As homicidally insane as they were, did they harbour some knowledge that the rest of us didn't have? When Grammie Marie told me that she knew things, could teach me things that Mum couldn't, did she simply mean that Mum was too young to have the abilities she'd had, or did Marie know things that we don't?
As many questions as had been answered by my arrival at the estate, there were still more within me, and most every one of them were as dark, worrisome and even frightening as some of the answers that I'd already had to accept.
Kitten
"Fourteen people..." I breathed, shaking my head and seeing Auntie Kathleen in a whole new light.
"Yep," he quietly affirmed, idly inspecting his beer can.
I could only stare at him. If I didn't know better, I'd have insisted he was lying and nothing would have convinced me otherwise, but it just isn't like that between my Stevie and I.
We were in our apartment, a larger one that Auntie Ashleigh had set up for the two of us as a couple before we ever even arrived at the estate. Stanley and Mr. Sparkles were play wrestling in the elaborate, carpeted cathouse that I'd built for them. Stevie and I had just finished 'play wrestling', and were lounging in each other's arms on our big, plush couch. Because of our bonding, I knew that there were things he was keeping from me and, being a woman, I just couldn't let that go.
So, after a little bugging on my part, he related the full story of what all had happened to him in Saint John. He'd mentioned parts of this story before, things about his pastor friend, Audrey Chapel, our grammie Marie and the disastrous mistakes he'd made that people had paid dearly for, but this was a much,
much
more detailed account, a shocking tale of fear, abuse and murder during his search for an explanation to what was happening to he and his mummy. It began with the changes he started seeing in her upon their arrival and ended with her revelations to him in the motel room where they'd received their invitations to the estate.
Auntie Ashleigh had told me some time prior that he'd been through some stuff, but I had no idea how intense his experiences were until he'd really opened up about it that evening. If I had, I'd have understood right away why he was the way he was when we'd first met, so quiet, brooding and dark. I'd have understood why he treated me the way he did and why he was often such a depressing downer, if not an outright jerk.
