Daredevil Excerpt
“Of course,” Wilson admitted, “but as much as it could be seen as an acknowledgement of weakness, I love your mother. It unfortunately took her issuing an ultimatum to force my hand and evaluate my priorities. Despite your fears I can quit cold turkey and revel in my empires destruction knowing that nobody could do this job better. I may miss it, or I find I may not, but either way I will enjoy the comedy found in the chaos that will ensue in my absence and the headaches it will give my enemies to sort it out.”
Richard chuckled. “I think you’ll find more to life that’s worth enjoying. I’m glad we’ll get the chance to explore that before it’s too late.”
Wilson’s face darkened and to Richard it almost looked like it was a struggle to speak the words that would leave his mouth next. “Me too, son. Me too.”
A heavy groan rumbled low in his throat a fraction of a second before he stirred back to life, his eyes snapped open - the after image of his father’s office still lingered in his vision - and it took a full three and a half seconds for his mind to struggle to remember where he was as the memory of being in New York City faded to allow the realization of his surroundings to settle in. His lungs pulled air deep into his lungs with the thought that the breath of air would energize his body, but the last six attempts to do so have failed as he awoke from what had to be the seventh time he had fallen asleep in the last ten minutes.
“Oh, God,” he complained as he straightened his neck and stretched his limbs out after being slumped over in the increasingly uncomfortable red leather chair. His ass felt like he had been sitting on sandpaper for the last three hours. Richard Fisk yawned and looked to the grandfather clock across the room from him: it was near midnight. “Damn it,” he hissed as he continued to shake the dream - or was hallucination a better word to use? - from his micro-nap.
Richard was tired. Not so much physically tired as he was mentally tired. Almost like he had spent the last three months since the botched assassination attempt on his father awake for every minute trying to solve every one of the world’s problems. The dim light in the room almost made him think for a moment he was in his room, which would’ve been on the floor below, but as his brown eyes laid onto the enormous bed in front of him, that he had been watching vigilant over, and the massive boulder like, blanket covered shape in the middle of it he knew he was wrong.
Bitterly wrong.
To Richard it had almost looked like God has scooped up the Rock of Gibraltar and dropped it in the bed, but covered it with a hand-woven blanket made out of the finest Indian silk money could buy to mask its true nature. Richard spat as he reached over and snatched the short glass of whiskey - once on the rocks, but the ice had long melted - and took a quick sip of the warmed Scotch. Of course, the Rock of Gibraltar wasn’t alive and didn’t need the required aide of a breathing machine to perform the most basic and involuntary actions a human was programmed with; a human like Wilson Fisk.
The bellows squeezed shut, then expanded back open. Richard had only just realized that the repetition of the machine subconsciously forced his breathing to sync with its monotone rhythm, almost like somebody were playing them like a broken accordion that couldn’t play music anymore, but remembered a time when they still could.
He went to take a second sip of the Scotch, and paused as he waited for something to wet his tongue. After a second he pulled the glass away and looked inside: it was empty; which was the opposite of his soul that felt burdened and raging with a storm of emotion over his struggling indecision of what to do now that his life’s goal was robbed from him, never to be achieved.
“Would you like another drink, Mister Fisk?” asked a woman’s voice in German.
Richard jumped, startled, at the sudden interruption. He must’ve been so deep in introspection that he didn’t hear the maid enter the room. It took him a moment to debate it before settling on an answer.
“Yes, please.” he replied back in the maid’s native tongue. Richard was an educated man, fluent in three languages - German, French and Italian - on top of his native born tongue. His parents had shuffled him across the pond from the comfort of New York and his friends who were all too privileged to realize just how firmly they had the world by the balls. And for the most part he loved living here in Switzerland to make new friends who weren’t aware of his families alleged criminal ties and to take advantage of the willingness of certain nannies to take extra care of his needs. Sure, he guessed part of him resented his parent’s decision to cut him out of their everyday lives to only be happy with the scraps of loved they fed him when only his mother made the trip across the Atlantic to visit.
It was then that something clicked in his head that made his mind clear and sharp, erasing any lingering fog from earlier. A certainty filled his soul and he knew in that moment what he had to do. His mother was the catalyst for everything he strove to do. Richard saw the selfishness in his father and he tried to shift Wilson’s attention back to his family, but as he remembered back to when he was six and they lived in that shitty apartment in some debilitated borough of the city he could see now that his father had always cared more about power, stature and influence than his own family.
Faking his death in a skiing accident, reinventing himself as The Rose and partnering with the Hobgoblin in some elaborate scheme to steal his father’s empire from him were doomed from the start and if he had known that then as he did now he probably could’ve saved himself a lot of heartache for it and just had the time of his life banging Swiss broads and travelling the world.
Richard smirked as he ran a wide hand through his thinning hair; clarity told him what the first step of his move needed to be. It would help strike a stake through the heart of those that needed to be held accountable for their transgressions.
The hard sole of dress shoes clacked on the marble floor to attract Richard’s attention. He expected to see the maid return with his drink, but saw his mother, Vanessa, instead. She carried his glass in for him.
“I saw Elena preparing you a new drink,” his mother said as she dropped the full glass onto the coffee table next to Richard’s chair. The ice clinked against the glass. “You really need to get out of this room, get some fresh air. You’ve been in here for way too long.”
“You’re right, mom, I have and I do.” Richard stood up and drew in a deep breath that puffed his chest out, it felt good to have a new purpose and it was time he announced his intentions. The tone in his voice would give his mother pause as she never heard so much confidence, intent and certainty in her son’s voice and in so few words.
“I’m going back to New York tonight.”