Sin
Once upon a time, there was a prince and a princess who fell deeply in love.
Both were of good social standing. Had impeccable breeding. Their parents had high hopes for matches for them; visions of political alliances, corporate mergers, and monetary gain dancing through their minds. There were suitors lined up to meet them, dinners that were arranged, and dances that were coordinated.
But no one had asked the prince and the princess what they wanted.
If someone had, both would have answered that all they wanted, all they needed, was each other. They weren’t interested in the prosperity of the kingdom. They could care less about the dinners, the dances, and the potential matches.
Knowing, though, that no one would condone their relationship, they kept it secret. Like good little princes and princesses, they played their parts with all the thespian skills they possessed, never once letting on that there was more to them than what there seemed to be.
Their love stayed hidden until nature spilled the secret the only way nature is able to in these situations. The princess pleaded tearfully for her brother. And the prince begged shamelessly for his sister. Unable to bless such an unholy union, the parents forbade the prince from ever seeing the princess again. The damage was done, but they intended to stop the sordid affair from continuing.
Unfortunately, they vastly underestimated their children.
Sneaking around to be together as they had so many times before, the prince and the princess embraced each other one last time, whispering between them a plan to stay forever together where no one could separate them. They climbed to the tallest of the tall buildings that they owned, and looked out across this kingdom that they had never asked to rule. If they could not be together in life, they would have each other in death.
Left behind, though, was a token of their love. An heir to the huge corporate kingdom that had lost all meaning to them. A small babe, the product of their ill-fated union.
Their little Sin.
~*~
“Tobin, your appointment with your editor is at ten, you’re to meet your new secretary at one, and the board wishes for you to make an appearance at their quarterly meeting,” Amanda, one of the myriad of assistants at Sinclair Incorporated, told him in lieu of ‘good morning’ or ‘wake up’ as her voice came in through the intercom.
“All right. I’m up,” he mumbled between yawns before pushing the button that ran open the curtains to his penthouse bedroom.
Since the room was situated on the top of the tallest building that the company owned, in the middle of the city that it ruled over, there were no trees to block the sun streaming in through the cloudless sky. Well, no trees except for the ones that had been planted when he’d been born and now stretched up to the tops of the vaulted glass ceilings.
The room hadn’t originally been intended to be a room. When he’d turned sixteen, he’d had the rooftop greenhouse completely enclosed and a portion of it converted to housing quarters. If he had to be Sinclair’s hothouse flower, then he’d intended to live as one.
Stretching, Tobin popped the kinks out of his back and scratched his head sleepily. White hair fell in his face, and he yawned before rubbing the sleepers out of his gray eyes. He’d stayed up too late last night drawing. But it had been a clear night, with the stars shining and a full moon, and the mood had just been too hard to resist. There was also the added bonus that most of the various assistants and CEOs and secretaries went home by seven, nine at the latest, and the building was his to do with as he’d like.
Plus, there was no Amanda to tell him when to go to bed or what to do with his evening. There were the occasional mind numbingly boring dinners, but the board rarely asked that he schmooze anyone given his tendency to accidentally botch the opportunities so badly.
Unfortunately, he didn’t have that luxury during the day.
He climbed out of bed and padded barefoot over to the service elevator that led down a floor to where his old bedroom had once been. It was now a living room of sorts, but it also had the kitchen, the laundry room and the bathroom adjacent to it. The overly pretentious and ornate clock that his grandmother had given him on his fifth birthday was chiming nine, so he had an hour to get ready for his appointment with his editor which was actually the only appointment he had that he wanted to keep today.
The Board could kiss his ass, and he wanted a secretary like he wanted a hole in his head. Unfortunately, this was the life he’d been born to and according to his grandfather it was this or Siberia. Sometimes he thought Siberia would be better. Or at least of change of scenery.
Stretching, he peeled off his shirt and then stepped out of his boxers. He’d have to wear a suit today. Os, his editor, would be shocked. If only because Tobin usually met with him in faded, frayed jeans and T-shirts he’d managed to buy off the custodial staff.
Os wasn’t big on ceremony. It made him nervous.
“Os’ll just have to live with it,” he mumbled to himself as he rubbed his eyes and flipped on the lights in the bathroom.
“Well, I imagine if this is the show he gets, he ought to be quite happy.”
Tobin let out a less than dignified squawk as he flicked his hair out of his eyes to see a complete stranger sitting on the edge of his bath as if he had every right to be there. The three-piece suit of designer quality made Tobin think the man had to be affiliated with the corporation somehow. The messy black hair and the devilish smirk that went from thin lips to pale green eyes made Tobin wonder if maybe a loose cannon somewhere had decided to take the words ‘hostile takeover’ to a new level.
“And you are?” he demanded to know, a pale eyebrow raised.
“Someone who’s really appreciating the view.” The stranger’s gaze went from Tobin’s head to his toes, lingering in places Tobin rather wished it wouldn’t. Feeling the blood rushing to his cheeks, he tried to scrape together as much dignity as he could and grabbed a drab gray towel off the counter and wrapped it around his naked waist. Dammit. Didn’t they have security for these kinds of situations? God only knew security was good at keeping him in, couldn’t they keep people out?
“That still doesn’t answer my question. Who are you? And how did you get in here?”
“I wish I could stay and chat,” the dark haired, pale-eyed stranger told him with that same irritating smirk as he brushed past Tobin, “but I have somewhere I have to be.” He shut the door behind him and Tobin turned to scowl at it.
Right, he felt so much better now. And safe, of course. Shaking his head, he tossed the towel back on the counter. At least the man had been here in the bathroom instead of upstairs.
*****
“Os!” Tobin hugged his short, geeky editor to him enthusiastically, a genuine smile on his face.
“Man,” Os’s voice was muffled by the designer fabric of the butt ugly suit Tobin was sure was giving him a rash. “You really need a dog or something.”
“Dogs like going outside,” Tobin returned with a small half smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. It was the only draw back in seeing Os. He never failed to mention something that would remind Tobin of just how big of a glass prison he lived in. Os was a short little man with the scruffy beard and thick glasses, but there was an air of confidence about him even as he shrugged and sighed.
“Fine, I’ll bring you a cat. My sister’s Maine Coon just had a whole litter,” Os said gruffly, by way of apology. “And did you have to wear the damned suit? You know I hate ‘em.”
“Yeah, I’m meeting a new secretary after this and then there’s a board meeting after that, so if you could stall or keep me or you know, kidnap me or something, that would be great,” Tobin told him, flopping down on his bed.
“Yes, and face your grandfather’s wrath? Do I look suicidal to you? Stronger people than me, or than all the heroes you read about in comic books, have tried to take on that man and failed. And by failed, I mean died. He’s ruthless,” Os said flatly.
“You’re exaggerating,” Tobin laughed halfheartedly, knowing that in all likelihood that Os wasn’t. He got up from the bed to start pacing. Of all the topics in the world that there were to discuss, his grandfather was among his least favorite.
“Look, Sin, if you ever fire me, I’m a dead man walking,” Os told him in all sincerity, stopping Tobin in his tracks. “After I met you that first time, he had people completely ransack both my place and my sister’s and he made it very clear that if I ever even stepped wrong with this corporation or with you that my ass would be grass.”
“You never told me that,” Tobin murmured, plopping back onto his bed a little shocked. He’d known Oswald since he was fifteen. In fact, it had been the proceeds-the couple pennies he’d made in actuality-from his first graphic novel that had helped him convince his grandfather to let him live in the greenhouse. But he hadn’t actually met his editor in person until he’d been eighteen. They’d exchanged emails, talked on the phone, and done the whole videoconference thing with webcams, for years. And it had taken a lot of begging and pleading to get Os to agree to come and finally meet him.
Maybe Os had been right to be so hesitant.
“It wasn’t important,” Os dismissed. “I knew what I was getting into when I agreed to come see you.”
“You did?” Tobin was less than convinced. He arched an eyebrow.
“Well, there was some that surprised me. Your confinement, that they ransacked my sister’s house, and that you had three story arcs under your bed that you hadn’t bothered to show me.” Os shrugged.
“Those stories were underdeveloped and you know it,” Tobin shot back, unwilling to go into the rest.
“Whatever, Sin. They were too personal, maybe. Hit too close to home. But underdeveloped? They were anything but. I still can’t believe you won’t let me get them published. They’d fly right off the shelves.” Os snorted, kicking off his shoes. Frowning at him, Tobin decided to ignore the comment and fished under his bed for his latest pages.
“Well, you’re getting these instead,” he plopped them down in front of Os, getting down to business.
*****
“Your secretary?” Amanda favored him with a confused look. “He said he’d talked to you already.”
“He did?” Because Tobin really didn’t remember talking to his secretary. Or even meeting him. This day was beginning to take a bizarre turn. Not that flashing a stranger in a suit this morning had been the epitome of normalcy, but still. And of course, since he’d be heading to the board meeting after this where he would get to sit silently and not move for four hours as they discussed everything from stockholders to advertising portfolios, the day wasn’t looking as if it were going to get any better. “Uh, so where is he now, exactly?”
“You don’t know?” Amanda raised a perfectly manicured eyebrow as she looked at him as if he were stupid. Of course, since she wasn’t too happy with carrying the brunt of the workload that stacked up for him in the last couple weeks, he supposed she was entitled to be a little pissed. Except it wasn’t like he asked for a lot, and since he couldn’t leave the building, it wasn’t exactly as if he had a thriving social life that needed to be kept track of on a daily basis. In fact, he spent most days just drawing, which was part of the reason he hated days like this when he had to play the mini-corporate doll.
“Humor me.”
“He said he was running an errand for you. I offered to show him around, but he said you’d already given him the grand tour.”
Lovely, so his brand spanking new secretary had just invented a reason to leave the main office and had gone AWOL on his first day. Well, it didn’t really matter anyway. Most of his secretaries quit within a couple of weeks out of sheer boredom. The rest were usually canned for surfing for porn on the Internet on company computers or stealing office supplies.
“Great, tell him once he’s done with that, he can go home for the day,” he nodded in what he hoped was a refined and authoritative way. The effort had to have fallen flat though because Amanda looked a lot less than impressed, or maybe it was just that she’d seen him running around in this place enough times in ragged jeans and old shirts to know that the suit was a temporary fixture.
“You’re the boss.”
Great, now she was just making fun of him. Sighing, he walked out and down the hall to face the next trial of the day.
*****
“Tobin, a word?”
Tobin almost cringed at the gravely tone as he stopped up short at the elevator and turned to face his grandfather. “Sir?” Even in the softest of lights, the man still looked austere and foreboding. And he never failed to make Tobin feel like a backwards five year old.
“It’s about next week, my boy.” His arm fell on Tobin’s shoulder. “Twenty one years old, right? That’s a big milestone in a man’s life.”
Right. Maybe in some men’s lives, but since he was more like a caged canary, the passing of time really didn’t seem all that important. The custodial staff might throw him a small party-Miriam in housekeeping on the fourth floor had been celebrating his birthday for him since she’d started fifteen years ago. His grandparents never failed to get him some kind of worthless pretentious gift that supposedly displayed the depths of their love and affection for him in an appropriately detached and clinical manner.
“I suppose,” Tobin returned cautiously. “It is the legal drinking age.”
He got a stern look for that. As if he hadn’t been sipping wine like a pro at dinners since he’d been old enough to get dragged to them.
“It’s an important age in any man’s life, and it has little do with getting drunk like a naïve little fool. You’ve noticed that I’ve been requiring you to attend more and more of our meetings in the last few years?” His grandfather raised a stern eyebrow, leveling his gaze directly on Tobin.
Tobin resisted the urge to fidget.
“Yes, sir.” Of course he’d noticed that his presence was being required at more and more of these stupid meetings. They’d made him nervous, to the point of nausea most of the time. They cut into the time he spent working on layouts and drawings for his next issue. Os had complained more than once in the last couple years about how deadlines hadn’t been met and how it had gotten in the way of the conference calls and scheduling needed for the movie that had recently come out based on his first graphic novel.
A movie he wouldn’t even be able to see himself until it came out on DVD.
“I’ve invited a good number of the shareholders to dinner tonight. We’ll be dining with those who hold almost half the control in Sinclair Inc. and it is up to you to impress them tonight. If all goes well, I plan on announcing at the party your grandmother is throwing in your honor, that you will officially be joining the Sinclair team as my right hand man.” His grandfather gave him a toothy smile, and it was only years of experience at carefully hiding his thoughts from his grandfather that allowed Tobin to not let the disgust he was feeling appear in his expression.
Impress them? He didn’t want to have anything to do with the shareholders. For people who had never once celebrated a birthday of his, was he supposed to be impressed himself that they’d remembered his twenty-first?
No.
He didn’t want to join Sinclair. He didn’t want to be his grandfather’s right hand man. There was nothing for him in this world, and there never had been.
Tobin wondered briefly if this was maybe what his parents had felt.
“Yes, sir,” he said quietly. Protesting wouldn’t do any good. There was nowhere to go and very few people willing to listen should he rail against his place in this universe. He’d attempted protests in the past only to have them fall on uncaring ears and fail in effectiveness.
As long as he could still draw, he’d survive. So he kept his protests to himself.
*****
Tobin didn’t bother flipping on the lights as he got out of the service elevator and stumbled into his room. The board meeting had been followed up with three hours of soul deadening chitchat. None of which Tobin’s first seventeen or eighteen years of life in isolated seclusion from all but the occasional nanny and the custodial crew had prepared him for in the slightest. The last couple years filled with meetings hadn’t done much to assuage the situation either.
He was hopeless at it. Which was further compounded by the fact that he didn’t care.
And of course, milling about when one had absolutely nothing of interest to say or contribute wasn’t enough. Oh no. They had to have a five-course dinner. And talk about stock options and shares and something involving lots of letters that when strung together and spoken after a couple glasses of sherry, still didn’t make a damn bit of sense to Tobin.
The moon was half full, and while the jacket to the hideous suit he’d actually worn all day was crumpled in a ball downstairs in the kitchenette, his tie was getting flung on a couple of rose bushes. He popped a couple of buttons in his haste to get out of the starched, long sleeved shirt and his belt clacked loudly against the glass walls as he tossed it off as well.
To think, when he turned twenty-one next week, he’d get to do this full time. For the rest of his life. God, what a depressing thought.
He flopped onto his bed and stared up at the stars shining through his ceiling.
“I have to admit, I thought the apartment downstairs was pretty sweet, but nothing beats this.”
Tobin froze. The bed dipped, and he held his breath. The sheets rustled, and a warm hand landed on his shoulder. He could feel his heart pounding hard in his chest, and he had to blink twice to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating the sight.
Sitting on his bed-as if he had every right to be there-was the smirky businessman from earlier. Except he wasn’t dressed in business clothes anymore. From head to toe, he was clothed in black. A harness hung off his shoulders, clacking slightly as he moved to grin down at Tobin.
“Hi,” Tobin managed to squeak before he passed out from lack of oxygen. This seemed to amuse the man even more, and Tobin sucked in a succession of shallow breaths in an attempt to regain his equilibrium.
“So, you’re the famous Sin, are you?”
“Who are you?” Tobin wanted to smack himself silly. Some stranger came into his room, invading his privacy and his space and the biggest protest he could mount was a pithy greeting and an inane question? It was amazing to him, in that moment, that more people hadn’t tried. For all that his grandfather hated him and his grandmother abhorred his presence on the planet, a kidnapper still could have gotten a great deal of cash out of them by kidnapping Tobin. He was the only heir to their multimillion corporation, after all.
“Gino.” The man shrugged casually.