Participants:
| Scene Title | Your Rightful Place |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Leonardo's year keeps getting stranger. |
| Date | February 15, 2019 |
Staten Island Trade Comissission
The sound of screams of pain from a grown man fill the air outside of the Staten Trade Commission. It's a cold night, that's not saying much it's always cold this time of year but a light fog has drifted in from the waters around the island. It's almost midnight but the scream continues. Followed by a series of curses that get cut off.
Almost immediately, guards start following the sound of the screams, guns out. This is Leonardo's primary territory, and the Staten Island Trade Commission is like trying to enter a stronghold. So anyone starting unsanctioned violence faces all the guns they're swarming the parameter with.
Leonardo is still sitting in his living room, with a gun in his hand. The time that Keira snuck in made his security even tighter. There are more strict protocols now.
The man that's howling in pain happens to be laying there in the center of the place, clutching his leg which seems to be bleeding, and a large red welt on his head can be seen. This bald man has not had a good time. As the men swarm with their guns, there's a call from somewhere off to the side. "I'm not here for you," calls out a voice, female, small sounding but with an edge that would flash in the moonlight if possible. "Fucking bitch." The man on the ground grits through his teeth.
"Showed up outta nowhere, was going to march right past me. Swung a—" there's a loud, exaggerated yawn coming from that place off to the side. "I said I'm not here for you," as if she's said this more than twice, something with weight is dragged across pavement outside. "You should get your boss," the voice calls out.
"Before I get more bored."
It takes a few minutes, after he gets a call, but soon Leonardo is outside, standing in front of his men and holding a glock up. Behind him, his men are looking around, making sure no one's sneaking up on them. But he's focused squarely on the woman. "You have one minute to explain yourself or I'm going to shoot you once for each second you wasted of my life. Men, please prepare some ammo clips. No… just hand me your guns as I run out of ammo."
The click of heels can be heard and black boots become visible followed by ratty black jeans with holes in the knees, followed by a torso covered in a black shirt and an old black leather jacket. Sensing a theme here? The locket that hangs in the hollow of the neck of the teenager that stands before Leonardo and his men is the only piece of clothing on her of color, silver. As is the color of the aluminum bat she drags on the ground behind her though judging from the battered marks and dried, old blood that can be seen it's a wonder it has anymore shine to it, also the pistol in her other hand is silver. Sensing a theme here? "Waste your life? That's rich." Blue eyes access the man that's now in front of her and they widen a bit as she looks from Leonardo to the locket hanging at her neck but her resolve quickly returns. "I thought you'd be taller," scoffing as she thinks about the bet she would lose.
Athena Green only had a minute.
But it's hard to say what you want to say even if you've been practicing for as long as you remember. Athena realizes in that moment that she didn't know what the fuck she was doing. Slamming that man in the knee with her bat, she could have just politely explained but that just wasn't in her nature. Blame it on her blood she would laugh to people in school before the war. Twisting her grip on her bat she grinds it into the ground with a grating sound. "Your man got in my way. Are all of your guys that stupid?" swallowing a tuft of wind blows her light brown hair every which way, there's dirt on her face. Clearly she's a street kid. There's something familiar about her face though..
I needed to see you in the flesh." Her expression a shifting mess but she walks forward a little closer, she's been wrong before. "Where'd you go to school?" The question is direct and, random?
"I could shoot you." Leonardo says, raising his gun up to fire once into the air. But as he firmly feels himself with the upperhand, and his men generally aren't ones to act without being told, unless directly defending his life, he considers the subject at hand. "I went to Cornell University. You know, most people have to schedule a meeting. Are you an assassin? I had a feeling some might be coming after I outed myself to the public."
"Just tell me so I know if I should shoot you dead or just shoot you so that it really hurts." he insists, briefly looking up at his building. "I've taken to watching my sister's entertainment, I've gotten a little bored with my books. I'm in the middle of something called American Horror Story."
Gunshots don't scare her as much as they should. A hint of the life she's been living on the streets but her body still reacts out of fear. Before thinking Athena raises her gun in the air above her and shoots as well. The hand shakes but she tries to stay steady, she can't afford not to. Rolling her eyes, "I'm not most people." Cornell University. Shaking her head Athena seems angry at the thought, how could he be so stupid? Well she's not done. "Wrong school, earlier years." She's desperate but she doesn't want to show her cards. There's impatientence in her tone as if the teen hadn't just committed transgressions against a crime lord.
Ballsy.
The man who has a battered leg groans and crawls towards Leonardo slowly, passing him to join the others if they would help him. "Sorry boss." He whispers looking down towards the pavement, Athena laughs an empty laugh.
"If I were a assassin I wouldn't have drawn such a crowd. Clearly I wanted your men to witness this," Spreading her arms wide she flashes a grin, heart thumping loud in her chest but Athena can play along can mask her fears. The tape that circulated the news is what alerted her but she doesn't want to say so, it's obvious. She knew it was him but she was still afraid. "Well I was raised to believe you were a piece of shit from a common, tasteless family," Athena says it as if it's one of the most revolting things she's ever heard, "And had died years ago."
She almost sputters, American Horror Story ironically she had caught some of the earlier seasons and wasn't ashamed to say it was one of her favorites. It made her more mad at Leonardo, how dare he enjoy the same things as her. "She always said you got bored easily." The mask slipping and there's a flicker of pain in her eyes.
"Well I am getting bored right now." Leonardo confirms, allowing the other men to show concern for the man on the ground. He did get himself taken down by a girl with a bat, that's his own fault. "New York University as an undergraduate. You have another minute, I'm running out of patience." He starts to fiddle with his gun, cocking it for no particular reason as his men start to whisper amongst themselves. "If I'm bored by your next answer I'm shooting."
"Summer of 2001," She's quick with that answer and that's just the first brick but once that proverbial brick has left her hand Athena doesn't find it hard to let loose the others. "Eunice Green." Stalking forward she looks at the gun in his hands and it makes her angrier if it's possible, shouldn't he know wasn't there some kind of link or some shit? Athena was growing tired of his slowness as he was growing tired of her evasiveness, not that it's a fair thing. It's not entirely Leonardo's fault any of this happened, her mother was one that made these decisions and her mother wasn't here for her to yell at anymore.
"She was pretty.. Sometimes really sweet. Always very selfish. I heard that's the type of women you liked, she fancied herself your white whale. Delusions were normal for her." The bitterness in her tone is evident and she stares down at the ground with a hard expression, "I called her a tart the night before she died." She's classy, Athena. "But before she died, she kept me with my grandparents. Boarding schools, she would never tell me who my father was though. Just that he was a sniveling coward that couldn't take "real power", just an unfortunate donor of DNA." The teenager rolls her eyes at the thought of Eunice, she missed her but her mother really had been a bitch. The gun in her hand is stuffed in her waistband as she rips the locket open and shoves the thing in Leonardo's face.
The picture inside is old, wet and almost ruined save for the faces of Leonardo and a dark haired woman with light eyes.
Athena's eyes are pleading in them, please remember. Please be my dad. Please don't let this photo have been fucking photoshop this whole time. "Am I still boring?" That pleading slowly begins to shift to defiance.
Leonardo considers what she's telling him, his gun lowered as she opens the locket and it sort of hits him. "The Deveaux Building girl! I remember that pretty vividly, she had very strong hair." He puts his gun away, running over the proper things to say in his head. "I'm not entirely sure where she got the locket, but yes, I do remember that incredibly long day on top of the Deveaux Building very well."
He orders, without looking back, "Send a doctor up to my penthouse, have a blood test ready. And someone lay out brandy glasses, we're certainly going to need those." But, as if it just hit him, he draws his gun again, fires it into the air, then declares, "If this is, in fact, my daughter, and anyone so much as breathes on her, I will shoot you and have you fed to the wild dogs while you're bleeding out."
"Inside." he says with a commanding tone, turning around to begin the trip back upstairs.
It takes a few minutes, because of the layers of security between going inside and going up the elevator to his penthouse. But once they make it, it is an extremely stark contrast to the majority of New York, let alone Staten Island, looking like any other swanky rich person's home.
The Deveaux Building gets a twitch of her nose, "I'm happy she left an impression." Athena was the lasting impression that Leonardo never thought about. Her own hand goes to her gun and she fires off bangbang or dingding you're a winner rings in her head. She found him, she really did. Looking sheepish at the men as her father orders his men about and threatens them. Scrambling to keep up she holsters her gun and hefts her bat so it doesn't drag.
Following inside… "Now this is living. My grandparents had a penthouse looking over Central Park once." She walks up to the window to look outside but the view outside is lacking so much, she didn't even know she needed. Athena takes a breath and whips around. "I'm not sure why my grandpa hated you so much. They would never say your name, I think mother made that decision." It's weird thinking about that time, she was younger, smaller, more naive. "But I knew you were out there." She doesn't explain how she learned his name in the first place until she's leaning her bat against the wall, trying to trust this already.
Thinking better of it she snatches it back off the wall and bangs it on the floor for good measure with a raised eyebrow, "I saw the video, knew that was the face in this locket and then I beat and slammed my way all the way to you." Athena would have done more if possible.
"This is the best that I can do for now. It's much like slumming it by my standards, but it's fine for now. I intend to build a large empire again, and the start of that is reclaiming my name." Leonardo snaps a finger as a doctor in casual clothes heads over to her. He's a middle-aged man who motions for her to remove her jacket.
"Let him take your blood. We'll have this paternity nonsense solved quickly." he says in a gently commanding tone, an almost contradictory tone that he's quite mastered when he needs it. "If you are my child, these clothes are unacceptable. What exactly have you been doing out there? Begging? Who do I have to kill?"
Slowly removing her jacket while holding onto the bat is a process and Athena rolls her eyes in frustration and throw the bat one the nearby couch with a good look up and down with those blue eyes at the doctor. Holding her arm out to the older man, "If you miss my vein I will peel the skin from your eyelids, understand?" Vicious.
Looking down at her clothes, she grimaces. "It's Fashoinnova." Cheap, "The vintage Gucci was stolen along with all of other things, my family things." She sighs with a frustrated look and looks appalled at the notion of she, Athena Green doing anything of that nature, "Me begging," she scoffs. "Hardly. I stole, made "friends", stole again, made some more "friends", rinse and repeat." Athena looks proud of herself. "I'm good at it, everyone wants to help a poor defenseless teenage girl." Raised eyebrows with a cheeky grin.
"Yes, I've been on the receiving end of that sort of behavior. You'll have to earn your place here. Sorry, a certain street rat ruined it for you. We'll see what you're capable of, and what you need to be taught." Leonardo watches as the doctor draws her blood, then nods.
"I'll have the results as soon as possible." the doctor assures, heading for the elevator as the rest of his security follows with him. The door automatically locks behind them.
"So, let's assume that you are my daughter." He walks to the couch, staring at the bat. "That bat is filthy and on my couch." he says, as if implying that she should remove it. "Anyway, what exactly is it that you want? I don't want to assume, and I'm not exactly going to throw you out on the street, but I'd like to hear your motivations."
"As for why they didn't want you to know me, your mother and family, I don't know. I doubt it was some altruistic reason. Maybe she wanted to avoid scandal, maybe she realized I wasn't the greatest person. Or maybe my parents paid her off to keep quiet and simply didn't tell me. I've heard of parents doing it before." he considers, shrugging, apparently not all that concerned. "But those clothes have to go. I'll have someone get you something more presentable."
Blinking, "Here I thought you'd be a wise man and I'd have to win you over anyway only to find out that you just let in strays." Maybe her mother was right, halfway at least. "What's this street rat's name? I can handle them." Flexing her free arm as the doctor finishes his work and disappears along with the rest of his men leaving them alone, Athena walks slowly over to the dirty bat on the couch and she frowns over at the man.
"Blink is a noteworthy companion and has saved my life on numerous occasions don't belittle her with that look," and she leaves it on the couch for good measure, sitting next to it but not disturbing the space it occupies with a squint towards Leonardo. When asked what her motivations are, the young woman shrugs, "I've just been surviving. Would be nice to do that with one of my parents, the only one alive."
It could really be that simple.
"Well chop chop I'm eager to see what kind of clothes you have laying around. Did you say you have a sister? That must mean I have an aunt." Athena says this as if it's the greatest epiphany shes ever realized.
"Yes. I'm adopted, so you aren't related by blood, but you'll certainly treat her as such. And said street rat's name isn't important, what is important is that I was soft and showed a rare lack of judgement." Leonardo looks her over, then shakes his head. "You're too short for Margaux's clothes. Odessa's currently indisposed, so you can try her clothes." he offers, but holds up a hand.
"Not yet though, first I want to know what exactly you've been taught. What kind of education do you have, how were you raised?" These are all important questions to a person like him, her character must be assessed.
"I always wanted a sister that I could steal clothes and boys from." Commenting whimsically, Athena runs a hand through her hair and squints her eyes at the name Odessa, "Is that the name of your trashy side piece? Are you married?" She has a lot of questions and while he's trying to assess her she's doing the same. It's not nice to not give answers to your host, father, deadbeat not deadbeat daddy. Rolling her eyes, "The Greens expected nothing less than the best. I attended Sir Tully's Boarding School for the Exceptionally Rich and Gifted." That last bit is a joke, but Tully's was where she was for a time.
"Ballet, etiquette, I was being groomed to be a lady of society, my grandfather was going to buy me an island once I graduated." That was.. "That was seven years ago." Still holding her chin up high, the way she speaks is practiced although badly. "My mother spoiled and berated me for the smallest things. My aunt thought I was the devil incarnate because I was well, the "Spawn of the Devil"," The air quotes are coupled with another eyeroll, she should be careful before they get stuck like that one day. Something her grandmother would say.
"After mom was killed. I lived on the streets and took what I needed, never selling this though." Holding up the locket to the light. "I smashed someone's hand so hard when he tried to rip it off of me," Athena had actually broken broken three fingers to teach him a lesson, asshole. "He never touched me again."
"What about you? Did you enjoy being adopted? Do you?"
"Odessa is an employee, though she recently turned herself in to the police. A rather complicated situation, we'll discuss it later." Leonardo answers, as if to imply not now. "I'm not married. There was a woman, I don't know if I loved her at this point, but that's in the past, a very long time in the past. There were other woman, but I wasn't quite the man they wanted to settle down with."
"My parents very harshly taught me to be ruthless in getting what I wanted, to be absolutely cutthroat. I became the president of my company, the one that was stolen from me, because I took it from my father." Taking a seat on the couch next to her, he stares closer, trying to see himself in there somewhere, searching for signs that this is truly something that's come from him.
"My parents pushed me and left little in the way of a reason for me to care for them. All I truly cared about in my family was Margaux. Our parents certainly weren't going to show her any sort of love or compassion. I'm not the best at these things, but I make attempts." He reaches over, unsure of how to actually approach this. His hand rests on top of her head, perhaps bracing himself for the magical moment that he feels the father-daughter bond. "If you are my daughter, and if you refrain from betraying me, I will certainly give you the world as I benevolently take it bit by bit. We will be royalty on this island, if it's the last thing I do. I will bring civilization back."
"Got some goodie two shoes around here I see," as long as this Odessa's shoes fit her feet she didn't really care. Hearing some of Leonardo's story has Athena giving him a closer look, mirroring his searching gaze. Was there something she saw in him that she saw in herself? Ruthless. She felt that. Deeply. "I've had to be ruthless," a pause she looks vaguely uncomfortable, she is still a teenager. "Do things I didn't want too but nobody ever got over on me." Her pride won't allow her to admit just how many times she's been betrayed that is until he makes his declaration of how things could go, should go.
"How badly were you betrayed last? It seems to be the source of discomfort, did they stea-" his hand is placed on her hand and Athena blinks before her gaze flicks up to his hand and she jerks her head away and grabs his hand before it falls, "My grandmother was the nicest of my family. I'm not sure how my grandfather tricked her into marrying him. She didn't talk much so maybe she didn't understand English." A faint thought she had been stewing on but she takes his hand and places it on the other side of her shoulder, "She use to do it like this."
Leonardo pulls Athena closer as he rests a firm yet gentle grip on her shoulder. "I was betrayed quite badly. I tried to educate her, to give her a better life, I even gave her a garden project that she seemed to want. But in the end, she stole money from me and tricked me." he explains with some measure of grief in his tone. "You won't be doing anything you don't want to do here, except perhaps the hard work of lifting yourself up to your rightful place in life."
The teen's brow furrows as her gaze hardens at the mention of whatever former bitch hurt Leonardo, his drawing her close makes her gasp softly. A feeling in her heart that she didn't even know she needed, to be close to him. To know him. Athena was getting her chance finally.
Laying her shoulder albeit awkwardly on Leonardo's shoulder and placing her hand on his arm she closes her eyes trying to be in the moment, to relish his words. Just in case this is a dream and she wakes up in an abandoned car somewhere off the highway. Just in case she's made this all up in her head. "My rightful place…." a slow smile plays on her lips, Athena hadn't realized she was this tired. All of the running. She feels it now deep in her bones, it ages her. Has aged her. "I want waffles in the morning."
Maybe there's a way around that.