Chapter 2: Chapter 2: The Cost of Perfection
Elliot stood in his father's office, a mere shadow of the person he used to be. The thick mahogany desk that once separated them now seemed like an insurmountable divide. His father, Jonathan Moriarty, sat behind it, his face stone-cold, eyes scanning Elliot's frail form with a mixture of disgust and pity. Jonathan had built empires, acquired wealth most men couldn't dream of, but his son—his heir—had come back shattered. And Jonathan hated weakness.
"You need to fix this," Jonathan said flatly, his voice cutting through the silence like a knife. "I can't have you walking around looking like… this." He gestured vaguely at Elliot, the disgust in his voice barely masked.
Elliot's eyes darted away, unable to meet his father's gaze. He knew what his father saw—a gaunt, broken man, the scars from his beatings crisscrossing his skin like jagged fault lines. His ribs jutted out, his skin sagged, and his eyes were sunken deep into his skull, haunted by trauma. He had lost his weight, but he had also lost whatever semblance of humanity had once filled him. Now, he was just a collection of scars.
"The press won't stop asking questions," Jonathan continued, pacing the room. "The shareholders are worried. They think you're unstable. We have to present the right image—a strong image. You'll undergo surgery, remove the scars, fix the damage. I'll have the best surgeons handle it."
Elliot's throat tightened. He didn't want this. He didn't care about image or scars. He wanted to disappear, to fade into nothingness. But his father didn't ask—he commanded. And that was Jonathan Moriarty's way. When Elliot remained silent, his father's voice sharpened.
"You owe this to the family. To me. I won't let your… ordeal ruin what I've built."
Elliot felt the weight of his father's words. There was no room for refusal. He was still a pawn, even after everything he'd endured. The scars on his body were a reminder of the horrors he had survived, but to his father, they were nothing more than a blemish on the Moriarty brand.
The following week, Elliot found himself under the harsh lights of a pristine private clinic, surrounded by surgeons. His father had spared no expense, bringing in the finest plastic surgeons money could buy. They were all here to make Elliot perfect again—to erase the physical reminders of his suffering.
Dr. Halliday, the chief surgeon, stood at the foot of Elliot's bed, explaining the procedure in meticulous detail. "We'll be removing the scars, tightening the skin, restoring the areas that have lost elasticity due to your weight loss. We'll also be reconstructing parts of your face—lifting the sagging tissue, smoothing out any lines."
Elliot barely listened. The clinical terms—"reconstructing," "lifting," "smoothing"—felt foreign. He lay there, numb to the world, as if his body didn't belong to him anymore. He was just a canvas, and the doctors were here to paint over the damage. No one asked how he felt. No one cared. It was about appearances, about restoring the image his father wanted.
As they put him under anesthesia, the last thing Elliot thought of was the irony—he was being "fixed" to fit back into a world he no longer recognized.
When Elliot woke, his entire body ached. His face felt tight, swollen, and bandaged. His chest and arms were wrapped in gauze, and he could barely move without feeling sharp pinpricks of pain. The room was sterile, silent except for the soft beeping of monitors.
The nurses hovered around him, checking his vitals, making notes, their eyes cold and detached. Elliot hated the sensation—the way they looked at him as though he were a project rather than a person.
Days passed, and gradually the bandages were removed. Elliot stared at himself in the mirror, his reflection now almost unrecognizable. His scars had been erased, his skin smoothed and tightened, and his face—once gaunt and hollow—now appeared… polished. Perfect, just like his father wanted.
But he felt nothing. The smooth skin where his scars had been was alien to him. His body had been broken and rebuilt, but the soul underneath was still fractured. He ran his fingers over his chest, where once jagged lines had marked the beatings and tortures he'd endured. Now, there was only flawless skin. The pain, the suffering, the evidence of his captivity—it had all been erased.
But inside, it remained. The scars they couldn't see.
Jonathan visited him a week later. He looked Elliot up and down with an approving nod, clearly pleased with the transformation. "You look presentable now," his father remarked, a hint of pride returning to his voice. "You can start attending events again, reintroduce yourself. The world will forget what happened, and so will you. This is a second chance."
Elliot said nothing. His father was wrong. The world might forget. But he never would.
That night, Elliot lay awake, staring at the ceiling. The silence of the clinic was deafening. He felt trapped in his own body, in a new skin that didn't feel like his own. His father thought he had fixed everything, but Elliot knew the truth—he was still broken, perhaps more than ever.
He had escaped the kidnappers, endured their torment, but he couldn't escape his father's world. The scars were gone, but they were never really about the scars. They were about control. About being shaped and molded by someone else's will.
And now, Elliot realized, he had to find a way to escape again—this time, from the life he had once taken for granted.
Weekly Power Status
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