Ryiot's Vantrell's mansion sat at the end of a private road behind gates that opened before the car fully stopped.
It was enormous. Everything about it said power without saying it out loud.
The numerous staff moved through its corridors the way water moved through pipes, purposefully, without idling, each person exactly where they were supposed to be.
As the car entered the compound, one of the men in suit positioned at strategic corners of the mansion had sharply walked towards the car.
The man opened the door for Ryiot barely a second after the driver stopped the engine.
Ryiot walked inside and the house absorbed him.
Laura was supervising the dining table when he passed the corridor.
She didn't call out to him, didn't need to. She simply looked up from the arrangement she'd been checking and watched him walk past the open doorway - the pace, the set of his shoulders, the particular quality of his silence, and that was enough.
She'd worked in this house for ten years. She knew every version of Ryiot Vantrell that existed. The version that ate without looking at the food. The version that didn't eat at all. The version that sat at the head of that table and conducted business between courses without blinking. She knew which version walked through that door on which kind of evening.
Tonight's version didn't eat.
She straightened up and looked at the assistant chefs behind her.
"Clear it." She said flatly.
The newer one - still learning to keep his mouth closed at the right moments, started to say something. She fixed him an intense glare and he stopped.
"Peterson." She turned to the young chef at the far counter. "One of the Burgundy reserves... Take it to his study. Ten minutes."
Peterson was already moving before she finished the sentence. He'd been here long enough to know the drill. When Ryiot was in one of those moods, he didn't eat.
He would drink something expensive and sit in the dark and work through whatever was in his head until he was done with it. Laura's job was to make sure the wine was cold and the glass was clean and nobody knocked on that door unless they were being summoned.
She turned back to the dining room and began directing the clearing with the same efficiency she'd directed the setting.
Some evenings were like this. And Laura simply adjusted, without asking any questions.
~~~~~~
Davina was already in her corner when Ryiot came into the bedroom.
She'd been in this role three years. Long enough to understand that her job in this room was to be useful without being present - to do what needed doing so smoothly that it barely registered as being done at all. She stood still while he moved, because he always needed to move first.
The slow walk around the room was thinking. She had learned not to interrupt thinking.
He did one full circle tonight before he stopped.
She moved then and stood before him with her head bowed. Her fingers worked on pulling the jacket off his shoulders, cufflinks set aside, each step of it done quickly and without sound.
Afterwards, she knelt down to remove the trouser and everything else at the lower part, all while keeping her eyes on her work.
When she was done - Ryiot was left in his underwear, and she stepped back.
He headed for the bathroom without a word. Normal. She was folding the jacket over her arm when his voice came - quiet, not really directed at her, more at the room itself.
"The bathtub tonight, not the shower. Prepare it properly."
She paused.
He added, almost under his breath: "I was in the presence of embarrassment today. I need to scrub it off."
She didn't respond to that. It wasn't the kind of thing that needed a response. It was the kind of thing a man said when he needed to say it out loud to make it real, and the room happened to have someone in it.
Without a word, she went to run the bath.
~~~~~~~
Peterson had left the wine at the ten minute mark exactly, bottle, single glass already poured, label facing out, and was gone before the minute turned.
Ryiot sat in his study, with the lights completely switched off, only the windows were faintly lit from outside.
He picked up the glass, swirled it but as an afterthought, put it down then picked it up again.
He couldn't eat. Fine. He established that as a fact and moved on. The cause was equally factual, one eighteen-year-old with the nerve of someone twice his age and twice his size, who had stood on a public campus and taken Ryiot apart sentence by sentence in front of a lot of people.
Nobody did that. Not ever.
He took the glass to his lips and drank.
The thing that kept returning wasn't even the words. It was the chin. The way the boy had tilted it up slightly to hold eye contact because of the height difference, and hadn't adjusted anything else, and stayed there, like the height difference was a minor logistical inconvenience rather than a signal he should have been reading about the kind of man he was standing in front of.
Ryiot turned the glass in his hand.
At that moment, his phone lit up. It was a message from one of his men who had been instructed to run a background check on the 'nobody with too much nerve.'
Ryiot opened it slowly and read through;
Ciel Calloway.
Eighteen. First year. Full merit scholarship. Orphan. Both parents dead within months of each other, two years back. No guardian. No emergency contact. Part-time job at a restaurant on the east side, seven shifts a week. Hostel room on campus.
Ryiot read through it again, for the second time as if there was something he had missed.
Then he set the phone down and looked at the wall as he analyzed what he had just read;
A nobody. Absolutely. Nothing behind him - no money, no family, no connections. Just a scholarship and a restaurant job. A nobody walked onto this campus on his first day and looked Ryiot Vantrell in the face like he was something unremarkable?
"What builds a gut like that in someone with nothing." Ryiot wondered aloud, quietly.
He didn't have an answer. He wanted one. Not for any reason he was prepared to examine right now, he just wanted it the way you want to understand something that doesn't make sense yet.
"Does he think he's something? Like he amount to anything?" The question rang in Ryiot's mind and a scoff left his throat in incredulity.
He squinted his eyes thinking, then after a second, his eyes gleamed with darkness.
"Okay, let's see how far this nobody can be stretched for him to realize he's indeed a nobody."
He picked up his phone again and dialled a number.
The receiver picked the call immediately.
"Yes, sir?"
"Get in touch with the owner of 'Maple eat' restaurant. Let them know they won't be needing the service of one of their new part-timers. His name is Ciel Calloway." Ryiot said. Easy. Conversational. The tone of a man mentioning something of no particular importance.
"Understood, sir." The man from the other end replied immediately.
Ryiot ended the call and set the phone down. Then he poured a second glass.
"A nobody..." he mumbled as he brought the glass to his lips. He gulped the content down in a one go.
"He will learn!" It wasn't a threat. Coming from Ryiot Vantrell, It was a promise.