Gramps' Legacy Ch. 01

In the wake of a pair of tragedies, a young man makes a common promise to his grandfather, to take care of his grandmothers and mother; to do for them whatever the grandfather would have done, and is rewarded with an unusual legacy. It is a story about an incestuous family, with overtones of mind control, or could be seen as a mind control story with a large dose of incestuous sex. Not a lot of sex in this chapter, but it's coming (no pun intended). Votes and comments welcome. Enjoy. Jb7

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I was twelve when my dad died. He was 22 when I was born, just out of college. He went to work in his dad's business--multi-line insurance-- and had earned his CLU and broker's license by the time he was thirty. Gramps had given him a full partnership the year before, the first year he made the Million Dollar Club.

That same year, Gramps had taken out a $1M life insurance policy on him, naming the agency as the beneficiary, and insisted Dad take out one naming me and Mom. Both of them carried double indemnity clauses in case of accidental death.

Mom worked for Gramps, too, as the office manager. She held an agent's license so she could handle renewals on non-life policies, and accept premium payments or policy changes along with other related detail work. Her license probably wasn't strictly necessary, but Gramps insisted, just to be safe, he said. I don't think there was ever a problem, but it was useful and necessary after the accident.

My little sister, ten at the time, was going to camp for the summer and needed a couple of items from the out door store. Dad had driven her. On their way home from the mall, a speeding charter bus, full of tourists headed for the Falls, skidded through a red light, hitting them in the shotgun door. The police investigating the accident told us Judy probably died on impact.

Dad survived for a little over a week----long enough for us to get to see him while he was conscious. The last thing he said to me--"William Henry, (that told me what he was about to say was important. He only used my middle name when it was important or I had done something really bad) you are the man of the house now," he said, gripping my arm around my elbow. "You take care of your Mom. Whatever she needs, whatever she wants you to do, understand?" He gave my arm a squeeze, and it felt like he hit my funny bone--that feeling like an electric shock, you know.

With a lump in my throat, I nodded. "Say it," he said. "Tell me you understand; that you're going to do it for me."

"I understand, Dad. I'll take care of Mom. Whatever she needs or wants me to do--I'll take care of it."

"Good boy; good man," he said, gripping my hand. He closed his eyes then and went to sleep. Mom, Gramps and I stood around and waited a few minutes, then slowly left the room. I glanced back at Dad one last time as I went out the door. I saw him once more before he died. He was talking to Gramps, gripping his arm really hard. I heard him say, "When he's ready; promise me."

Gramps nodded, and repeated, "When he's ready."

I'm not sure how all that affects the story I'm about to tell you, but I thought you should know the situation which led up to my conversation with Gramps just before he passed on.

The next nine years just kind of slipped by, the way they tend to do. I did okay at school after adjusting to the loss. I didn't really need to study much; things just seemed to come easily to me.

Mom continued at the agency, handling all the walk-in business when all five agents, including Gramps, were out of the office. She even managed to sell a couple of life and medical policies each year, as well as several auto and home contracts. She also supervised the clerks and the receptionist.

Not that we needed the money. Under the conditions of the partnership agreement Gramps had written for Dad, Mom was entitled to half the proceeds from the company's insurance on Dad, in return for the share of the agency she inherited. Knowing how difficult it was going to be to replace him, she settled for $500K. Gramps wanted her to take all of what she had coming, but with the $2M from Dad's personal insurance and the $7.5M from the bus company, we didn't need any more.

I suppose we could have moved into a tonier neighborhood, but we both liked where we lived, so we stayed put, not even buying better cars or any of the other outward signs of wealth. Sometimes, Mom talked about changing jobs, or stopping work, but it was just talk--idle dreaming. The few times we went on a trip for a vacation, it was to go with Gramps, Gramma and Nana, Mom's mom.

On those trips, each of the adults made sure they spent at least one day alone with me, exploring whatever city or park we were visiting. Even in my later teen years, I never had the feeling that I was being handled, or that they were trying to hide something from me.

When I was old enough, I went to work at the Agency, as a clerk; part time during the school year, and full time over the summers. That schedule continued until I turned twenty-one, my junior year in college; then I was old enough to get an agent's license. I think that year I must have set some kind of record. I averaged eight to nine policies a week, selling to senior college students, and even some of the faculty members. They weren't huge policies, five or ten grand each. Gramps, I think was impressed. Sometimes I would catch him looking at me, rubbing his arm where Dad had been gripping it.

Just before I graduated from college, Gramps had been diagnosed with the aggressive form of prostate cancer and was supposed to be taking it easy. One Friday, I was delivering my latest bunch of sales reports and applications. Gramps was in the office and said we needed to talk, privately, and asked me to follow him home. . I followed him and caught up to him in his study.

Gram was there, and he asked her to make us some coffee. As she headed to the kitchen, he said to her, "Rose, I need to speak to the lad, man to man. Best if you're not here. And don't listen outside; we're going to be talking about you."

When she was gone, he turned to me and said, "Sit down, Will. What I have to say to you is important." I found a chair and sat down. "Do you remember the promise you made to your dad the last time you talked to him?"

"Yeah; I promised to look after Mom, doing whatever she needed or wanted me to do. Why?"

"Because I need you to renew and expand that promise for me. You need to include your grandmothers. Can you do that?"

Puzzled, I nodded. "Sure, Gramps; that shouldn't be a problem."

He looked at me over t he top of his glasses. "Hmph," he snorted, "let me explain what I'm asking, and why." He poured himself a glass of sherry and held up the bottle, asking if I wanted some. I shook my head, and he sat down, looking into the fireplace.

"Back at the end of the Great Depression, in the late '30s, my Ma was working as a housemaid for a businessman named Ward and his family over in Georgetown. The wife was sickly, couldn't have children, and, from what Ma said, couldn't be much of a wife most of the time, either. Ma was a fairly attractive young woman, full of life and good humor, and caught the eye of the husband. That wasn't all she caught from him.

"When she told him she was pregnant, he was happy as a pig in shit, and told his wife. She wasn't as happy, but agreed to pay Ma's medical bills and keep her on until the child was born, then she'd adopt the child. It was a boy and they named him after his father's father--Lucas.

"Ward made arrangements for Ma to go to work in one of his stores and kept seeing her. Six or seven months after Luke was born, she caught me. When the wife found out, she was more than a little pissed and made him sell his businesses and home, and they moved out West somewhere. They were gone before I was born.

"During the war, Ma met and married a young Marine. He died on Guadalcanal, but his family took her in and helped support her, treating me just as if I was their true grandchild.

"Ward had insisted on enlisting at the beginning of the war and made it into the Air Corps. During the war, Luke and his ma moved back to Georgetown to be close to her family. As it happened, they settled on the same block as me and Ma. Luke and I were close enough in age that we became good friends without knowing our true relationship.

"His ma was kind of cool toward me when she learned who Ma was, but accepted the situation as some kind of weird fate, and even had us over for a picnic a few times. Ward stayed in the service after the war and saw some action in Korea. He wasn't home much, and I never really met him. He did get home for Luke's eighteenth birthday, but his flight back to Hawaii disappeared in a storm they had tried to fly over."

Gramps stopped and looked at me. "Have you guessed who Luke was?" he asked.

"Mom's dad was named Luke. Is that..."

"That's right. We didn't find out we were brothers until...well, until your ma was pregnant with you. Luke went off to college and got married to a girl still in high school. I went into my step-grand dad's insurance business and married Rose, who was a clerk there.

"Luke came home and went into business. We picked up as if there hadn't been any time apart. The girls became good friends, and we all became like family. Luke seemed to be a natural salesman, able to sell anything to anyone. It was the '60s and sex was in the air. He convinced the girls to try swapping one weekend, and it soon became a regular occurrence, but never outside the four of us.

"Pretty soon, Rose wanted to start a family. I couldn't. A teenage case of mumps...She had noticed how much Luke and I resembled each other, and on one of our swapping dates, which she had planned with Bess to fall during her mid cycle week, she left her diaphragm in her dresser drawer.

"As soon as she told me she was expecting, I knew what had happened, but kept quiet. I don't know if Bess ever caught on or not. When she saw little Dan, she wanted a baby, too, and pretty soon Connie was on her way."

"Whoa, Gramps! Are you telling me that Mom and Dad were half brother and sister? That makes me...something weird."

"It makes you just what you've always been, Will--the son of two people who loved each other very much. They never knew. Connie still doesn't, as far as I know. I've never said a word to her about Dan's parentage. And if you're as smart as I think you are..." He paused to cough, hawking up a large glob of phlegm. After spitting it out, he continued.

"When she was three or four, Luke developed lung cancer. He must have been 29 or 30. Several months after it was discovered, he and Bess came over to the house and told us it had spread to a bunch of places, none good. Then he took the girls hands in his and looked at me.

"'Thad,' he said, 'in a few months I'll be gone. Bess and Rose are two of the loveliest women on this planet, and you are going to have to keep them both satisfied. I want you to promise me that you'll visit Bess at least once a week to fuck her, for as long as you are able to get it up. Is that okay with you, Bess? Rose?' My goddam jaw must have dropped into my shoe when they both nodded."

Then Gramps got up from his chair and walked over to me. He gripped my arm around my elbow, just like Dad had so many years ago. I felt that same shock, only this time it felt like someone had handed me a pair of bare wires which had been plugged into the wall. I yelped like a dog caught by a rocking chair.

Gramps grinned. "That's how I felt when Luke passed it on to me. That soreness will pass pretty quickly, but in a few minutes you might get a throbbing headache which will pretty quickly settle into just a dull ache which nothing can help. That'll last four or five hours, and you'll just have to tough through it; then tomorrow, you should feel like a million bucks, like you can do anything you can think of. And you probably could. I'll get back to that.

"After the girls agreed that I was to fuck Bess every week, he had them leave and passed the family legacy to me, just like I just did with you, with instructions I was to pass it to Dan when he was eighteen. 'I want my son to have it available when he goes to college,' he said, acknowledging for the first time that he knew about Dan. I nodded and promised that I would. He and Bess left a little after that. The next week he went into the hospital and died a few days later.

"Meanwhile, I was feeling like I could out wrestle the entire Notre Dame football team. For the next twelve years, I never had a sick day, cold, head ache or upset stomach. If I expressed a desire, or offered piece of advice to someone, it happened. If it was advice, it always worked out. People benefitted.

"When Luke died, we learned that he had been involved in some shady dealing. He was in cahoots with some developers and used his ability from the legacy to get control of some public land to build low income housing, which turned into middle income housing by the time the projects were done.

"In a similar vein, Dan had also used his abilities to convince several women here and in some other, nearby cities to go to work for him providing, uh, high priced escort services, if you get my drift."

"Dad was a pimp?" I blurted out.

"I guess that's as good a word as any. He kept it hidden and separate from everyone in the family. I found out after he died when several of the women approached me for money they claimed Dan owed them. He had transferred the legacy back to me to keep for you, so I was able to convince them to give me time to look into it.

"At the same time, recognizing your mother's needs, he convinced her to count on me for her, uh, carnal needs."

"What the hell are you saying, Gramps? That you been shtupping Mom for the past ten years?" I sputtered, shock at what he had revealed choking my words; "and Nana Bess for..."

"Settle down, Will! What I've done; what the women have done; none of that matters now. What matters is what you're going to do; have to do. You have to be a better man than I've been; than your Dad, or his father. Each of us faced temptation, and sooner or later, succumbed to it.

"I was able to resist until your Dad asked me to take care of your mother. Even when she was growing up, I thought she was the prettiest little girl I'd ever seen. There have been times, I'm sure you know, she wanted to move, get out of this town, get another job, another house, almost anything for a change, to get away from the memories. Using the legacy, I changed her mind, kept her here, for me. I also took over your Dad's escort business, and convinced the women to work for less money, while charging more for their, ah, ministrations.

"I'm sure those ladies will come to you, wanting to know if their arrangement with me will continue, with you controlling operations. Your grandmothers have already agreed to accept you as the source of their physical gratification, but your mom? I implanted the suggestion that she would find you sexually attractive, and could use your services if she needed to, but it was her decision whether or not to do so."

Throughout this speech, Gramps had been coughing sporadically. When he started talking about letting Mom make her own decision, he began coughing so much, he could barely finish what he was saying.

When he seemed to have the coughing under control, I said, "Let me get this straight, Gramps. I'm expected to have sex with both Gramma Rose and Nana Bess, and possibly my mother, and manage a shady, at best, escort service. Is there anything else?" I'm afraid my tone was more than a little sarcastic. I wasn't sure whether to believe him or not.

He nodded, but before he could explain, he began coughing up blood. I shouted for Gramm and got Gramps to his bedroom. When Gramm saw him, she immediately turned to go call an ambulance. "Call Bess to come over," he called after her. He turned his eyes to me. "Go get your mom. I don't have much time left."

He knew I had driven us to work that morning and Mom didn't have a car available to her at the office. It was late afternoon, right at the beginning of what passed for a rush hour in our small city, so what had been a ten minute drive from the office to Gramps house was a fifteen minute drive going back. I pulled into the parking lot behind the office, and was a little surprised to see a car still there.

About three years earlier, Gramps had hired an agent that rubbed me the wrong way from day one. Harry was in his late forties, tall, about six-one, dark haired (dyed, I was willing to bet), and, I must admit, good looking, in a soft, rounded, sort of Italian, way.

He had this way of walking on his toes, as if he were wearing high heels, which pushed his hips forward, emphasizing the seemingly perpetual lump in his pants. I guess he thought it was sexy. From the women's giggles and expressions whenever he left the common room, he was a long way from correct.

It was his car still in the lot. I let myself in the back door and headed for Mom's office. I was about halfway down the hall from it when I heard her say, "Take you hands off me!" There was a laugh, then she said, "What do you think you're doing? Let me go!"

By that time, I was at her office. She was bent over her desk, her back to the door, with Harry bent over her. She had hold of his hands, trying to keep them off her, but she didn't have the strength or leverage to get away from him. In three steps I was behind Harry, and let him have a closed fist, hammered right above the belt line, on each side of his back, as hard as I could.

He fell to his knees, gasping for breath. I grabbed him by the collar and pulled him away from Mom and dropped him so he lay on his back on the floor.

"What's going on?" I asked Mom.

"I...I...I don't know; nothing," she stammered. "He just walked in and surprised me," she added, lurching around her desk to sit down.

I walked to her, lifted her face to look in her eyes, and asked again, "Mom, what happened?"

Her eyes widened, as if in surprise, and then I saw her irises dilate and all the tension seemed to go out of her body. "He came in and grabbed me from behind, grabbing my breasts. He said it had been a long time since 'the old man' had been around, that he could take care of me." Then the tears started and she began to sob softly.

I nodded and kissed her lightly on the forehead, then walked back to Harry. He had caught his breath and was struggling to sit up. I put my foot on his chest and pushed. "Why don't you just stay there until I'm done with you?" I suggested.

He looked up at me, anger clouding his face, and his brain. "You little shit! If you hadn't caught me from behind, I'd wipe the floor with you..."

"Harry, you couldn't wipe your ass with a corn cob. You're lucky we don't call the cops to have you arrested for sexual assault, but you are fired because of sexual harassment."

"Go ahead; fire me," he laughed. "When I get done telling everyone how that slut was fucking her father here every night, this place will be out of business in a month. I know, 'cause I saw them."

Somehow,I resisted the urge to stomp his balls, and pushed the anger down. In an icy calm voice, I replied, "You repeat that slander, and you'll spend the next thirty-six months trying to protect your asshole from your fellow inmates. Connie and Thad may have been having sex, but there was nothing like incest involved. She's his son's widow; no relation."

I reached down and grabbed him by the tie and lifted his upper torso so I could look him in the eye. "You never saw Connie and Thad having sex; you were attracted to her, got drunk and lost control of yourself." His irises dilated and I felt his body slump. I let go of his tie and he fell to floor. "Now, get up and get out of here. You can pick your shit up Monday when I'm here."