At first glance, the private study of Sir Hugh exuded an air of intellectual refinement. Large mahogany bookcases line the walls from floor to ceiling. Each shelf stuffed top to bottom with rare and expensive books ranging from literature to academic tests. His collection was now coated in a thick layer of dust from years of neglect. He’d never actually read any of the hefty tomes crowding his shelves. He just liked his house guests to believe he was well-read. A man as important as himself had no time for leisure reading. He had business to attend to.
After sunset, the room is so dark one must squint to see anything. The only light in the room emanated from an old reading lamp with a flickering incandescent bulb he’d been meaning to replace for quite some time now. His optometrist would have a heart attack if they knew the amount of strain he was putting on his eyes by working in these conditions.
Behind the desk hung an oil painting of Sir Hugh himself, commissioned by his dear mother before her passing. He was so much younger then, a bright-eyed entrepreneur with an innocent smile and dreams of making it big. He truly loathed that painting. Every time he looked at it, he was met by the disapproving gaze of his former self, judging the man he’d become. He snarled at the painting and clenched his fists. Who was he to cast judgment? He was an ignorant child with no clue what it took to survive in the business!
He drunkenly stumbled toward his work desk in the center of the room. The worn-out desk chair let out a squeak as he collapsed into it. Old documents and business letters were strewn across the desk in random piles. He stopped trying to keep track of them all long ago. Directly in front of him, sat an anonymous typewritten letter that read, I’ll kill you for this! It had arrived in the mail several days prior. This was far from the first death threat he’d received. Everyone from jealous business rivals and jaded former employees to self-righteous reporters and tree-hugging environmentalists were vocal in their distaste of him and the way he ran his company. They simply envied him because they lacked the guts to succeed in this cut-throat world.
Usually, he would simply toss the death threats in the fireplace as soon as he received them, but this one felt different. It felt personal, and that bothered him more than he cared to admit. Sir Hugh sat in his chair, staring blankly at the letter. He had already read it a dozen times, but every time he read it, it made his skin crawl. The words seemed to be mocking him, taunting him with their anonymous sender.
There was no one he could turn to for help. He knew all of his friend’s secretly despised him. He couldn’t blame them. They'd grown sick of his blackmail and lies. The colonel, the professor, the actress, the heiress, the conman, and even his bloody housemaid, eagerly awaited his downfall, like vultures circling a feast. Sir Hugh was well and truly alone in the world.
He sighed and opened his desk drawer where he kept a stale bottle of gin to drink away his troubles, and a loaded revolver for times such as these. He’d always known karma was going to come for him sooner or later, but he wasn’t going down without a fight.
He stood up and slipped his revolver into his jacket. He crumpled the letter in his fist and tossed it in the waste bin. He didn’t have time to dwell on it now, he had a dinner party to attend to.
