Second Sight by George D Shuman Page A

earliest manifestation of the social disorder, as he stood before the judge, remorseful, meek, breaking down only when he mentioned his mother’s alcoholism. The judge released him to the custody of his stepfather and recommended counseling.
    A year later the girl who had accused him disappeared. Try as they might, no one could ever connect Troy to a crime. Shesimply vanished. And then the other girl’s parents moved to another country.
    In college there had been an accusation of date rape, but victims rarely remember the hours after they ingest Rohypnol. Rarely can they say how they had been given the drug. Prosecutors refused to present it.
    Case was sure the stories were true, but by then Marlo’s drinking was spiraling out of control and Case had been meeting with old friends about a new defense contract coming on line. Case was far too busy researching his way toward becoming a pharmaceutical magnate. He had no time for either of them.
    After graduation, Troy escaped to New York City, and Case hadn’t seen him until he showed up in Amagansett for his mother’s funeral in 2001. What the boy did or didn’t do during his time alone in the city, buffered by a substantial allowance, he didn’t want to know. But it was there, at the funeral, that Case saw a change in the boy. He was only twenty-six, undoubtedly unchanged, but he had lost all the rough edges. He had learned to present himself properly in front of others. Whatever rage he bore was suppressed, and he spoke with a degree of class and refinement. Perhaps, the old man thought, he had acquired his mother’s acting ability along with all that motherly hate.
     
    Troy stepped onto the patio and nodded to the blonde. Wendy had been a model in her teens, yet became more beautiful with each year that passed. Case had surprised her on her twenty-seventh birthday—last month—with a trip to Cannes and a movie contract. Troy knew what that woman and her contract had cost his stepfather. Case had been courting her since his wife’s death, and while the papers made much ado over the young woman’s intentions with a decrepit old scientist, he was indeed widowed and entitled to see whomever he wished.
    Troy knew she was loyal. Loyal like Troy’s mother was loyal,because with Ed Case, there was no other choice. Loyalty was rewarded in the Case mansion and treachery was grounds for unspeakable retribution.
    As a teenager he had only considered his mother’s self-hatred and her low self-esteem, how she projected her extreme dislike of herself onto him and caused him to act out. She had had the opportunity to protect him, but chose instead to retreat into bottles and the beds of strange men.
    Nothing had really changed over the years, only the way he reacted to her now. He still saw her in every dark bar and behind every sloppy smile and lipstick-smeared glass. He still reviled the weakness that made her vulnerable to all who’d chosen to use her. But now he understood why his father had refused to let her go. She was his first lady, and first ladies were never permitted to divorce midterm.
    Edward Case had managed to become one of the world’s most successful CEOs because he kept his house in strict order. There were no scandals for the tabloids. He was legendary for establishing a foundation that patronized the needs of America’s war veterans. He was loyal to his wife and her son no matter what their personal excesses, and who in these times could hold the father to blame for the sins of the son or even his mother? When you were as clean as Ed Case you could hold hands in every White House, be it Democratic or Republican. And you could continue a sixty-year legacy of providing American’s most secret weapons.
    Wendy brushed past Troy and leaned to kiss Case on the cheek. Her towel came open, water beads falling from her breasts, blotting the arm of his Dolce & Gabbana shirt. “Are you joining us?” she asked, looking into Troy’s eyes.
    He shook his head.