He didn’t ever want to be called nice, kind, warm, loving, not by anyone. Not by his ten kids he never saw, not by any of his ex-wives and certainly not by the people who worked for him. Though after being in the business for as long as he had, he doubted anyone who knew him would call him those names. And he was comfortable with that. Very. Because those names were synonymous with weakness.

Weakness to him was a disease. A disorder. It was what his mother had been, night after night when instead of fighting back, she’d allowed his father to beat her up and then done nothing when his father’s attentions turned towards him and his younger sisters. Attentions that not only included kicks and punches, but also long, painful, drawn-out attentions in the bedroom, day or night.

And it’d been after one particular night when Charlie Eton was just twelve years old, when the friends his father had brought home – to join in with his perversions – had left, that Charlie had first heard his father call him a bastard. And it’d been a revelation to Charlie. Like listening to the sweetest music. He’d seen it as a coming of age. His own version of a bar mitzvah. Because that winter’s day in the cold, cramped, damp two-bedroom house he shared with his parents and four sisters, Charlie discovered that he too had power.

His father had been sprawled naked on top of one of his sisters whilst their mother drank herself into a stupor in the next room. Charlie had seen the fear in his father’s eyes as he held the coal fire’s burning red poker against his neck, and right then Charlie had understood that his father, the man he’d spent his whole life terrified and cowering from, could also be afraid. Could also be weak.

And the weakness exuding from his father had spurred Charlie on, exciting him. Making him feel alive. Making him feel worthy. Strong. Powerful … Untouchable. And for the first time in his life, Charlie had felt a glimmer of happiness. A glimmer of peace. And the more fear, the more weakness his father had shown him, the more it had encouraged Charlie to use his new-found courage to burn and blister his father’s flesh further, smelling the sizzling, stubbled skin mixed in with the smell of his father’s fear. Then it’d happened. The moment when the words, ‘You bastard,’ were screamed from his father’s lips and the moment Charlie Eton knew life would be different.

Although he’d got the beating of his life, ending up in hospital with a broken arm, fractured skull and dislocated jaw, he’d learnt a priceless lesson that had helped his bruises and broken limbs hurt less. He’d learnt that weakness was a man’s enemy.

‘Hey, boss! Boss?’