Page 2 of Marcellus: House of Drakos

Niko was so shocked to see his father in his apartment that he leaned up on his elbows. His already big eyes stretched even larger. “Dad?”

Marcellus stood at his bedside with a concerned look on his face. But Niko was in pure shock. His father didn’t make house calls. Not to any of his children’s houses. Not ever. But yet he was at Niko’s house. Had he changed? Was he turning over a new leaf?

But when Niko saw what his father was wearing, he knew he wasn’t turning over shit.

The fact that his own son was a designer of high-end suits himself, but he preferred to wear somebody else’s label, was telling to him.

As if his clothes weren’t high-end enough for his taste.

As if he wasn’t established enough. As if he and his father would never come together because of too many unresolved issues.

But the shock of his father’s mere presence remained on Niko’s face even as he laid back down. Savannah could see it all over him. It was as if the last person on earth he expected to be inside his apartment was his father. Which, she felt, was an indictment of his father.

But that was their business. She went back to the guest bathroom to grab the bowl just in case Niko needed it sooner than usual again.

“What are you doing here?” Niko asked his father.

“You missed the family dinner. As you know that’s not allowed.”

“Olivier and Freddy didn’t tell you I was ill? Kalayna knew too. And my mother.”

“They all told me, yes. That’s why I’m here.”

“So I’m excused for missing dinner?”

Marcellus didn’t respond to that. That went without saying. “Your maid said you was improving.”

“Doesn’t feel like it to me,” he said. “I’m dying here and she tells jokes.”

Marcellus found himself smiling. “She seems like a handful.”

“Oh she is. She’s something else. She’s also the only human being on earth I can truly count on.”

It was a searing indictment of him, as his father, and the rest of the family too. It felt like a gut punch to Marcellus. “You need to rein her in,” he said.

“Rein who in?” Savannah asked as she entered the room with the cleaned bowl in her hands. “I know you aren’t talking about me.”

Marcellus could not believe this woman. “You’re rather forward for a maid. There are certain matters you have no business commenting on.”

“So you wasn’t talking about me?” Savannah asked him.

Marcellus frowned. “Yes I was talking about you, as it happens.”

“But I’m not supposed to comment on comments about me? Is that it?”

Niko smiled, and then started coughing.

Marcellus didn’t know what to say to that.

Then Niko stopped his coughing. “How was dinner?” he asked his father.

Marcellus lingered in his look a moment longer with Savannah. Then he looked at Niko again. “It was as it always is.”

“Everybody was there except me I take it.”

Marcellus didn’t answer that question. That went without saying too.

Then suddenly Niko jerked upright. Savannah hurried past Marcellus, startling him, and placed the bowl under Niko’s chin.

Niko threw up mightily in that bowl and for several seconds.

Marcellus backed up, fearing his twenty-thousand-dollar suit could take a hit.

But Savannah, who didn’t seem repulsed in the least, remained right by his son’s side.

She rubbed his back. She placed a cold compress to his forehead.

She was there for him. Marcellus was touched.

When Niko had finished, she wiped his mouth with a cloth, held a bottle of water for him to clean out his mouth and then spit out the contents into that bowl, and then she left the room with the disgusting liquid. Niko laid his head back down.

“She’s been here, doing this, all three days?” Marcellus asked him.

Niko could barely nod he was so weak. “Yep.”

“Why don’t you have a private physician here attending to you? Or a nurse?”

“I don’t need a doctor nor a nurse. I’ve been having these bouts every year since I was fifteen. It’s a chronic condition. It’ll pass. It just hurts while it’s passing.”

Niko, nor any of his half-siblings, ever lived with their father. And because their mothers were still in love with him and wanted to stay in his good graces, they never told him the bad stuff. They never wanted to scare him away.

“What about your maid?”

Niko looked at him. “What do you mean?”

“Is there more to your relationship than worker and boss? She’s going above and beyond it seems to me.”

“She always does that,” said Niko. “That’s just how she is. And no there’s no relationship like you mean. She’s way older than I am.”

“Not that much older surely.”

“She’s twenty-nine, Dad,” said Niko. “That’s six years older than me.” He said it as if it was a lifetime of a difference. Marcellus shook his head. The foolishness of youth. He wouldn’t give a damn to be that age again.

“And she’s not my maid,” Niko said as if he meant to say it earlier. “She’s my secretary.”

Marcellus looked at him. “Your secretary?” he asked as Savannah returned to the room with a clean bowl. “Why didn’t you correct me?” Then he looked at Savannah. “Why didn’t you correct me?”

“Correct you about what?”

“The fact that I mistook you as Niko’s maid when you’re actually his secretary.”

Savannah was dumbstruck. “What difference does it make?”

Marcellus couldn’t believe this woman. Most secretaries would view it as quite the difference. But she didn’t, as if titles didn’t matter to her at all. He stared at her.

Then Niko started breathing heavily. Savannah sat the bowl on the nightstand and picked up another cold compress and a thermometer. She placed the cloth over his head and the digital thermometer under his tongue.

“What’s wrong now?” Marcellus asked.

“Signs of a fever,” Savannah said. When the thermometer beeped, she took a look at it.

“Is it in danger range?”

“No,” she said. “But it’s slightly elevated. You need to get some sleep,” she said to Niko.

“How can I sleep in all this pain?”

But Savannah left the cloth on his forehead and sat down in the chair beside the bed. She was dead on her feet. Marcellus looked around and sat in the chair against the wall. He crossed his legs and stared at her as she stared at Niko.

When Niko finally fell asleep, Marcellus could hear her let out a relieved exhale. And then she stood up. “I’m going to go take a shower,” she said. “Keep an eye on him. If he raises his head, put that bowl beneath his chin.”

Marcellus was astounded. “You expect me to . . . ?”

“To care for your son?” Savannah finished his unfinished sentence for him. “Yes.” She looked at him as if that went without saying. And then she left the room.

It had been decades, when Marcellus was a poor kid running around those backstreets of Paris beating up his mother’s pimps and stealing her away from them, only for her to run back to them, since he’d been treated so shabbily. Who did she think she was?

But the more he thought about her, the more he inwardly smiled. The more he liked who she was. He’d never met anybody like her. And he couldn’t hold it in any longer.

Wow.

He finally said the quiet part out loud.