enjoy, darlings
[See author note for content warnings]
Duke Edmund Seamus Hale was dying.
Derek had been uninterested in his father’s ailing health, even when cautioned that the Duke could be experiencing the last of his breaths. He sat in a chair lingering on the outskirts of the room, his head resting in his hand as he listened to his mother’s soft weeping.
His mother had been humiliated in retrieving her wayward eldest son from one of his establishments. Her tears did little to hide how appalled she was by the capital venture that had been sustaining her eldest.
Gambling dens and brothels were the underbelly of such societies, and were viewed as shameless regardless of the elite status of many of Derek’s clients.
And Derek was pleased by her disgust.
“Derek, please,” Talia had hissed under her breath as he forced her to stand in the welcoming parlor of the gambling hall. “He won’t last through the night.”
“Devils last longer than that,” Derek had huffed, retrieving his watch from his waistcoat. He grimaced at the timing. “Fine,” he growled. He gestured for his mother to head towards the exit. “If they are truly his last breaths, I can hardly risk missing them.”
Despite his current status as excommunicated from the Duke’s good graces, the truth was blatantly obvious: Derek would always be welcomed back.
The eldest son returned at his dying father’s firm and urgent request. If Derek had to miss one night of profit in order to witness his father’s death, it would be money well lost. He trusted his people to handle anything that arose in his absence.
Derek had forgotten that despite his father’s death rattles, he would be enduring his mother’s sobs. He had grown tired of the theatrics, impatiently checking his watch once more.
“Perhaps we should ask the healer back,” Laura sighed.
“They said there wasn’t anything else they could do,” Cora replied.
“I meant perhaps they could give mother something,” Laura grumbled.
Derek’s eyes flickered between his family members present.
Laura looked ever the stoic eldest daughter, her mourning veil carefully draped over her face as she nestled her newborn daughter in her arms. She had been widowed months ago, and had expressed a disheartened sigh when realizing she would have to prolong the mourning period should their father actually be taken by death this time.
Cora tapped her thumb against the porcelain of her tea cup, uncaring when her younger brother cast a sharp glare at her, as if the faint noise of her impatience would insult anyone with how hidden it was by their mother’s sobs. She had been adamant that Derek not go alone, though was regretting her choice once she realized she would have to stay. Being younger and female helped to hide her from their father’s expectations.
Erol, youngest and most treasured by their mother, was the only child who dared to show any type of respect to the dying Duke. It had been the norm over the last decade, a majority of the Hale children finding no comfort in the presence of their father.
Of course, Erol was under the delusions, and likely the false promises of their mother, that the Duke would consider changing how his title passed.
It was pure arrogance on Erol’s part.
Despite Erol’s constant and unwavering loyalty to the Duke, the man would never change tradition and bypass his eldest son. Besides, the Duke passed on some of his own vices to his youngest son, and knew there would be ruin for the Hale name with Erol at the helm.
It was why Erol hated Derek, and had been vocal of his hopes for Derek’s death to come from one of his more than shady connections.
Derek didn’t assimilate to the rules of the underworld after leaving the cage of his father’s orbit, he had become a foundational pillar to it. He clothed, fed, and housed the misfortuned poor—he gave money to the orphanages when his father had cut funding in government; he gave transport of medicine at no extra cost on his shipping vessels when the pandemics worsened; he gave disabled soldiers jobs in his gambling dens that kept them from the streets and poorhouses.
The truth was blindingly clear to all in the sharp reality of the Duke’s impending passing—Duke Edmund would never give his title to Erol, despite the latter’s asskissing.
Derek’s eyes landed on the one person he had been hoping to see.
[Continue reading in its entirety on AO3]
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