Chapter 41 Double The Pain
Chapter Forty-One
For a moment, Zach stared down at Lucian, blinking in absolute shock.
“Wh…what did you just say?” He asked after a few minutes, “Nathan Graves? Your brother?!”
Lucian winced, then looked up at Zach with a frown, “Step-brother.” He corrected icily.
“But…” Zach was confused, disbelief swimming in his eyes. Suddenly, he scoffed, laughing bitterly at the situation, “You’ve got to be kidding me.” He said, his expression turning grim, “How dare he?”
Lucian shrugged, crossing his arms across his chest, while looking relaxed, “He wants the Empire.” He answered simply, “Apparently, he wants to take my place.”
“As if he ever can,” Zach scowled in disgust at the thought, “He can’t even manage the little subsidiary in his control, placing the Graves Empire in bad investments and he wants to take over the Empire. Hah! What a joke!”
He was still steaming mad, when all of a sudden, his brows came down in a frown as he realized something.
“Hold on a second,” he asked, pointing at Lucian, “How did you know all this?”
Lucian only blinked in reply, his expression completely neutral.
Zach was bamboozled, “If the accident happened to you, and you went into coma immediately, then how did you come about all this information?” He asked, then suddenly narrowed his eyes at Lucian, looking hurt, “Do you have another person working for you?”
Lucian rolled his eyes, tired of Zach’s antics. He decided to just tell him the truth there and then.
If Zach believed or not, that was on him.
“When I was in a coma, I was actually conscious…” he started, but Zach held up a hand to stop him, his face squeezed with confusion.
“Wait. What?!”
Lucian sighed, “Can you just let me speak?” He asked in exasperation, “Do you really want to know all about it or should I just keep mum?”
“But you’re confusing the hell out of me!” Zach yelled back in frustration, “What do you mean when you were in a coma, you were conscious?! How is that possible?!”
Lucian looked at Zach, shaking his head in dismay.
What the hell was wrong with this man?
He sighed and decided to try to explain once more.
“There is something called covert consciousness,” he started, his voice tight with fake calmness, “When a person appears to be fully unconscious but their brain is very much aware of things happening around them.”
Zach’s mouth dropped open as he heard that, “How’s that possible?”
Lucian shrugged, his face turning grim, “It can happen when a person’s awareness is locked in.” He looked at Zach’s face and sighed at the expression of confusion still on his friend’s face, “I’m talking about induced coma.”
Zach blinked at that statement and his brain seemed to click correctly then.
“You were forced into a coma?!” He asked, his voice ringing out across the room.
Lucian glanced at the door quickly, then back at him, “Keep your voice down,” he whispered fiercely, “What the hell is your problem?”
Zach immediately clamped a hand down on his mouth, whispering apologetically, “I’m so sorry. I was just so shocked!” He was breathing hard from anger and sympathy as he looked at Lucian, “How could Nathan Graves do that to you, though?”
“I don’t know how he did it, but he did it somehow,” Lucian uttered, his voice returning back to his normal tone. His hands clenched into fists by his side, “He said so himself. He came here everyday to remind me of it!”
Zach swallowed hard at what he was hearing.
He could not imagine what it would be like to be trapped in your own consciousness, while enduring mockery from the very one who placed you in a coma.
Zach had not actually thought much of the other man. He’d merely known him as Lucian’s half brother and while he kept a respectable front, Zach could not help but feel uncomfortable with Nathan’s vibe.
Nathan himself, always looked down on Zach.
As though being Lucian’s friend, suddenly made Zach his underling.
Zach also noticed that Lucian steered clear of him. When he probed further, Lucian revealed his childhood experience to him.
This further deepened Zach’s dislike for the man, but Lucian had told him Nathan had been on his best behavior as they grew up.
“Just ignore him.” Lucian would say, “He’s nothing more than an attention seeker.”
But that harmless attention seeker whom they had dismissed as hardly a threat, had actually caused such a huge accident.
Not only that, he had placed Lucian under an induced coma for three years, plunging the entire family into despair.
Zach understood that Lucian could have woken up after his accident back then, but whatever Nathan did had delayed the process, while he wallowed in guilt on the mountains.
The thought brought tears to Zach’s eyes and he sniffed to Lucian’s surprise.
“Stop looking at me with such a pitiful gaze, you punk.” He ordered, eyeing Zach in surprise, “What, are you crying? God, you’re like my wife.”
Zach sniffed, and reached to hug Lucian but an icy glare stopped him in his tracks.
“Don’t you dare,” Lucian said through gritted teeth, “What the hell are you crying for?”
“Oh you cranky fool,” Zach uttered, blowing his nose in an handkerchief, while Lucian waited in frustration for him to be done with his theatrics, “Oh, you’re so pitiful.”
“I’m not,” Lucian shot back, grinding his teeth, “Look Zach, enough crying. I did not call you here for tears, but to think of how we can get back at Nathan Graves.”
Zach nodded, wiping his nose completely as he suddenly became serious once more.
“Yea, that’s exactly what we should be discussing.” He said in a grim tone , “What do you have in mind?”
“What else?” Lucian uttered, his neon eyes looking utterly terrifying as he sat back and smirked, “I want to reduce him to absolutely nothing, then have him endure the same pain I did all those years. Double.”