FOR ONECORONADO. BY JULIA. SUMMARY & INTRODUCTORY DRABBLE UNDER THE CUT. CONNECTIONS A WIP.
Dominic du Bois, fifty-eight, has called Coronado home all of his life. As the Chief Executive Officer of the Clarion News Network and head of the du Bois family’s empire, his world is steeped in the even-handed spread of a deck of cards, an indulgence in the finer things (taken for himself, but not without cost), and kerchiefs to wipe one’s hands clean of gunpowder and ink. Often found in his office with a phone tucked between his ear and shoulder, rolling his own cigarettes, he moves through life with Gospel for a New Century by Yves Tumor in his ear.
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SUMMARY: As a young man, the disappearance of a close friend spurs Dominic du Bois into putting his family's legacy and resources into one ultimate goal: seeing the Del Bosques and all those who are allied with them toppled. To do this, he builds his own army, plays whatever role is required of him to do, and in the meantime spends his days as an effective and charming executive with little need for external affirmation.
He doesn't pretend to be above violent or ugly practices in pursuit of that goal. And while every disenfranchised soul in Coronado believes he's fighting for them, Dominic is careful to make sure he doesn't let himself believe that. In the evenings he's a hands-on leader. He relies heavily on his family to help see their goals through, and cares deeply for them as much as he does use them and their social positionings to his advantage.
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He is stooped over the bathroom sink, head tilted at an angle, eyes closed and lip curled—split, yes, and bloodied, but curled. Behind him, he's backed by the only man in the world he truly loves and truly fears: his father. He doesn't need to look to see the heavy draw of Franklin du Bois' brow, the circles beneath his eyes, the disappointed pull to his mouth. He's seen it enough times he can put the picture together in his head.
"You're going to get yourself killed," Franklin murmurs. He's got a voice like gravel, deep and low in his throat, the same one that Dominic has inherited—though Dominic has also inherited his mother's Mill-lulting accent, softening and smoothing the edges of every word, widening some of the vowels until they all sound like one.
"I didn't do it for me," Dominic answers, and that's the end to the conversation. Lizabeta had been a writer, yes, an investigative reporter, and missing for thirty-three days the way plenty of people from the Mill just go missing, but first and foremost she'd been his friend, and she'd had questions about the Del Bosques, and everyone knows what happens to people who have questions about the Del Bosques.
He thinks he's going to be sick again. He grips tight to the edge of the counter. He hates this: this is weakness, this grief, this desperation. He'd been lucky to live, lucky to get away with a broken nose and a split lip, too well-known to just make disappear—
"Son," Franklin starts, and for the first time in a long time Dominic feels the press of his father's hand to the center of his back. He hasn't done that in a long time. Franklin is a good man, but he isn't an affectionate one. Every piece of praise he's ever given his middle child and least favorite son has come with what always felt like sacrifice.
Finally, he lifts his head. In the mirror: himself, a face he recognizes, his father's dark eyes and his mother's jowls, a broken, swollen nose that shows up in every grainy photo of Lorraine du Bois he's ever seen. (Ruined, he thinks, now.) The only thing that belongs to him is his desire to see the whole fucking island tilted up and over until the del Bosques and Shibatas alike are washed away into the frothing sea.
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The simplest answer, Dominic has always thought, to the complicated question of what makes a good man, is this: they don't really exist.
He doesn't tout himself to be one when he draws in his lieutenants and builds the underground up into not just a messaging machine, but his own army. He doesn't position himself as a great man when he sits down for interviews, or photoshoots, when he sends his children and nieces and nephews out into the world to make their own mark on the social scene in his name, or corrupts his grandfather's once-righteous cause for the gain of revenge. (Not just his, he tells himself.)
This, he thinks, is what makes him strongest among the rest: not the attempt at being a good man, but in admitting that he's incapable of it.
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POSSIBLE PLOTS: I'll come back to these soon. <3
