Location: A moving car / Ren's West Village Townhouse
Year: 2011
POV: Blair
The drive from Teterboro airfield to the West Village was the longest of my life. I sat in the sumptuous silence of the limousine, a universe of leather and glass separating me from the outside world. But within this universe, the tension was so dense I could feel it pressing on my lungs, making it hard to breathe. Beside me sat a ghost. A man who was a complete stranger to me, yet whose DNA was etched into the face of the man I loved.
Kaito Ishikawa, or Ken Tanaka as he had called himself for most of his life, was taut as a piano wire. His hands, which were strikingly similar to Ren's—long, capable—were tightly clasped in his lap. He stared out the window at the passing city, but his eyes saw nothing. They were lost in a thirty-year-old past, a past filled with regret.
I felt a surge of sympathy for him, but I pushed it away. My loyalty was not to him. It was to the man we were going to see. My king. My job now was not to comfort this phantom, but to prepare him for the storm he had unknowingly created.
"How is he?" he finally asked, his voice a rough whisper, as if unused for years. "Truly?"
I turned to look at him. His eyes, Ren's eyes, were filled with desperate pleading. He deserved the truth. A harsh, unvarnished truth. It was the only way.
"He's not well, Mr. Ishikawa," I said, my voice calm and measured, the voice I used in the most critical negotiations. "To understand Ren now, you have to understand the lie he was built upon."
He flinched, but didn't look away. He listened.
"His entire life," I began, "the engine that has driven him has not been ambition as we know it. Not the desire for wealth or status for their own sake. It has been hatred. A pure, focused hatred, directed at the father he believed had scorned and abandoned him."
I saw pain flicker in his eyes, but I continued, relentless. "That hatred was his fuel. That scorn was the reason he got up in the morning. Every company he built, every enemy he defeated, every millimeter of power he accumulated... it was an act of defiance to his memory. It was his way of screaming at his phantom: 'Look what you threw away. Look what I've become without you.' It gave him purpose. A dark, painful, twisted purpose, yes. But purpose nonetheless."
I leaned slightly towards him, ensuring he understood the magnitude of what had happened. "His wife's letter didn't just reveal a family truth. It stole his life's purpose. The very foundation of his identity has crumbled. The man he hated didn't exist. The abandonment that defined him was a lie. Right now, he's not simply sad or angry. He's lost. He's adrift in an ocean of 'what ifs,' and there's no land in sight."
Kaito closed his eyes, the weight of my words visibly crushing him. He understood. He understood the profound, unintended but catastrophic damage his promise to his wife had caused.
"I just wanted him to be safe," he whispered, the words an epitaph to his good intentions.
"I know," I said softly. "But sometimes, safety is the most dangerous cage of all."
The rest of the drive passed in a charged silence. As the limousine pulled up to the townhouse, I felt my own heart begin to pound. The calm I had projected for Kaito was a facade. Inside, I was terrified. Terrified for Ren, for the pain I was about to unleash.
Arthur met us at the door, his face a mask of grave professionalism. "Ms. Waldorf. Mr. Ishikawa." His use of Kaito's real surname was subtle, but significant. "The master is in the main suite. He hasn't left the room."
I nodded. "Thank you, Arthur. We'll take it from here."
The ascent up the floating staircase felt like climbing to a gallows. Each step was heavy, each breath shallow. Kaito walked behind me, his steps those of a man heading to his own execution. I could feel his fear. It was an echo of my own.
We reached the tall doors of our suite. They were slightly ajar, a sliver of darkness inviting us in. I took a deep breath, steeling myself, and gently pushed the door open.
The room was dim. The heavy curtains were drawn, blocking out the daylight, plunging the vast space into an artificial twilight. And in the midst of that dimness, he was there.
Ren was not in bed. He was sitting in a leather armchair in a corner, fully dressed in yesterday's clothes. He was unmoving, his hands resting on the chair's arms, his gaze lost on the wall opposite. But he wasn't seeing the wall. He was seeing thirty years of a life that could have been. He was so still, so empty, that for a terrifying moment, I wondered if he was breathing.
Our entrance broke the spell. His head turned slowly, lazily. His eyes, normally so full of life and power, were dull, like dying embers. They landed on me first. And then, they moved past me, to the man standing in the doorway.
And then, everything changed.
I saw the moment he recognized him. Not as the man in the photo, but as a flesh-and-blood truth. I saw pure, disbelieving shock flood his features. I saw his dull eyes ignite with a storm of conflicting emotions: confusion, pain, disbelief, and, beneath it all, a volcanic rage that had been dormant for decades.
Kaito, trembling, took a hesitant step into the room. He extended a hand, a pleading gesture. His voice, when he spoke, was a shaky croak of hope and terror.
"Renard..." he whispered. "Hello, son."
The word was a match thrown into a powder keg.
Ren moved. It wasn't a human movement. It was an explosion. It was the unleashing of a force of nature. He crossed the room in a blur of motion so fast it took my breath away. Before Kaito could react, before I could scream, Ren was on him.
His hand shot out and grabbed Kaito by the collar of his shirt—not his throat, but the fabric over his chest—and slammed him against the wall with a force that made a nearby painting rattle.
"SON?!" Ren roared, and his voice was not the voice of the man I knew. It was a raw sound, torn from the depths of primal pain. Kaito's face was inches from his, and I saw terror in his father's eyes, but also a strange acceptance, as if he knew he deserved this.
"YOU DARE COME HERE AND CALL ME THAT?!" Ren shrieked, his body shaking with the force of his rage. "WHERE WERE YOU?! WHERE WERE YOU WHEN SHE WORKED THREE DIFFERENT JOBS UNTIL HER BONES BROKE JUST TO KEEP US AFLOAT?! WHERE WERE YOU WHEN I LEARNED TO SEW UP MY OWN CUTS BECAUSE WE HAD NO MONEY FOR A DOCTOR?! WHERE WERE YOU WHEN I NEEDED A FATHER?!"
Kaito could only gasp, tears streaming down his face.
"A letter! You let a damn letter explain everything!" Ren sneered, his voice dripping venomous contempt. "'She was afraid!' Fear is not an excuse! You could have fought! You could have been stronger than her fear! You could have come back for us! You could have tried!"
The rage reached a fever pitch. "DO YOU KNOW HOW MY MOTHER DIED?!" he screamed, his voice cracking on a sob of pure agony. "THE DOCTOR'S REPORT SAID HEART FAILURE, BUT IT WAS A LIE! SHE DIED OF EXHAUSTION! SHE DIED FROM THE WEIGHT OF BEING TWO PARENTS AT ONCE! SHE DIED MAINTAINING THE DAMN LIE THAT KEPT YOU AWAY FROM US! SHE DIED ALONE AND TIRED, AND YOU WEREN'T THERE!"
Strength seemed to leave him all at once. His grip loosened, and Kaito slid down the wall to sit on the floor, sobbing. Ren stumbled backward, his chest heaving, the volcanic fury having burned itself out, leaving only a desolate emptiness.
He ran his hands through his hair, looking at his father on the floor, and all the rage vanished, replaced by the raw, bleeding wound that had been underneath all along. The wound of a little boy who had waited by the door for a father who never came.
His voice, when he spoke again, was no longer a roar. It was the quietest, most heartbreaking whisper I had ever heard.
"Why... why did you never try?"
Tears now streamed freely down Ren's face, carving paths through the fury and pain.
"I missed you..." his voice broke, and the next word was torn from the deepest part of his soul, a word he had never allowed himself to think, let alone speak. "Dad... we missed you."
And with that word, the king shattered.
Renard Ishikawa, the man who had built an empire, the man who made nations tremble, folded in on himself, his knees giving way, and he collapsed to the floor on his knees. His body was wracked with sobs that seemed to tear him apart from the inside, the sound of thirty years of unexpressed pain finally released in a devastating wave.
Kaito, on the floor, could only watch, his own heart broken by the pain he had helped create. He was paralyzed, useless.
But I was not.
In that moment, my purpose became crystal clear. I was no longer a queen, nor a strategist, nor a socialite. I was an anchor.
I crossed the room, my Marchesa dress whispering against the floor. I walked past the sobbing father and knelt on the floor in front of my broken king.
I said not a word. Words were insults to pain so profound.
I simply opened my arms and wrapped them around him. I pulled his trembling head against my chest and held him with all my strength. I held the broken pieces of this extraordinary man as the storm of his life finally broke.
And as he wept in my arms, the sound of his broken heart the only sound in the universe, I did not cry. I held strong. I became his rock. I became his sanctuary.
The long, painful task of healing had begun. And I would be there for every second of it. Holding him. Anchoring him. Loving him through the ruins.