William's Game

By Matteo Raso

After the death of tycoon William Schulz, five people receive a letter saying that they are receiving a portion of William's fortunes in the inheritance. When the five people meet at the mansion, they soon find themselves in a sadistic game of William's imagination. Locked inside, they have to find the murderer and kill them before they are killed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Matteo Raso
• Release date: Dec 10, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370382460

Book preview

Prologue

Seymour waited outside the bathroom door for his boss. His boss was holding a fancy dinner party, where everyone puts on their best clothes, scarfs down foamy atrocities the chefs dare to call food, and makes a mess for him to clean up. After giving the golden doorknob a short jiggle, William Schulz stepped out of the bathroom. How do I look, he asked. Seymour took in William’s attire, from the gold Rolex on his skinny, spotted, left wrist, to the black bow tie that looked ever so slightly too tight, to the tuxedo that hugged his slim figure.

You look wonderful, Seymour lied. Seymour felt vomit build up in his throat as he complemented William. He always felt like that when he had to complement his boss. Seymour was not a bad man. Seymour made sure to be kind to everyone he talked to, even those who have wronged him in the past. His boss though, that was a different story. His boss worked him like a slave, making him do far more and paying him far less than the average valet. The sooner I stop having to work for this cunt, Seymour thought, the better.

William grunted at Seymour in acknowledgment and ran a comb through his thick white hair from his forehead to the back of his neck before gelling it in place. William reached into the back pocket of his tailored dress pants and pulled out a golden locket. The golden locket was the size of his thumb above the second knuckle and was engraved with the Schulz’s family crest: two spears crossed, with a bear’s head impaled on the left point and a dove on the other. He gave a quick glance inside the locket of his father, mother, and siblings before placing it back in his pocket. William stepped out of his bedroom and walked to the connected dining hall, filled with the wonderful smells from the kitchen directly across from the bedroom and built with high, white, walls and illuminated with chandeliers, which reflected off of the marble floors.

Everyone stopped talking as soon as he stepped in. This charity dinner was ostensibly about finding a cure for cancer, but nobody had come for charitable reasons. Everyone in the room, barring the servants, who were easily identified by their white dinner jackets, was a CEO, CFO, or fund manager. They had all come to do business. Soon, William was swarmed by people hoping to make a backroom deal with Schulz Inc., as William had suspected would happen.

William glanced around the room as he began to mingle with the guests. He was always glad to do business with them, but he set up the dinner party specifically to talk to the one person. After briefly talking to three businessmen and making a promise to meet up for a backroom deal with another one, he finally spotted his target. As he briskly walked towards the man, avoiding conversation with everyone in his path as politely as he could, the man he was looking for turned around to face him and sighed. What was it now, he thought to himself.

When William was a few yards away from him, he opened his arms to embrace him. The man, who was one of William’s many enemies in private but one of his few friends in public, returned the embrace.

How’re you holding up, Robert, William asked as he gave a short pat on Robert’s back. Not bad, not bad at all, Robert said as he ended the embrace. Robert’s attire was nearly identical to William’s with the exception of his watch, which was silver rather than gold. Robert himself had a full head of thick black hair like William himself had when he was younger, was fairly tall, being able to see eye to eye with William, and was rather fat. Robert had been quite skinny when he started his company, but as his wealth grew, so did his tastes for rich food. He often told himself that he would start working out and dieting any day now, that he would shed those pounds, but he never did. One of the few excuses William gave when the few who knew that he and Robert were enemies asked him why he hated Robert was that he had no self-control. William hated people who could not control themselves.

William stopped smiling and began to get serious. Hey, I need to talk to you, but you know how I feel about crowds. Do you mind following me for a moment? This shit again, Robert thought to himself. Whatever. It’s not like I have anything to lose here. Sure. William began to walk back towards his bedroom as Robert followed.

As soon as he had closed the door behind them, Robert began to speak. You need to stop it with this shit. William took a seat at a chair beside his dresser against the wall and pulled out a Cuban cigar. Want one? No? Alright then. William cut the cigar and put the other half back into the box. He lit his half of the cigar and took a long drag, let the cigar smoke linger in his mouth for about two seconds, and allowed it to float out of his mouth. I’m not going to stop, Bobbie. Robert’s fist clenched when William said Bobbie. Robert never reacted well to being antagonized. My name isn’t ‘Bobbie,’ William. I’m not going to sell you a controlling share in my company, not at such an absurdly low price. You might not realize this, but not all of us are wiping our asses with toilet paper made of gold. I have a mortgage, a family to feed. I’m not going to throw everything away just because you want me to.

William grinned from ear to ear. He reached into his back pocket, pulled out four polaroid photographs, gave them a quick glance, and tossed them to the floor as he tried to stifle his laughter. Robert hesitantly picked up the photographs and looked them over. The first two were normal photographs of the interior of his penthouse. How the fuck did you get this!? William began to laugh loudly, not being able to stifle it any longer.

Keep looking through the photos. Robert tossed the two photographs to the ground. The next photograph was of him talking to his personal secretary, seemingly taken from the security camera mounted over the door to her office on the top floor, parallel to her. Robert tossed the photo to the ground and screamed. The final photograph was of his personal secretary bent over his bed, the same bed he slept on every night with his wife, naked. Behind her was Robert, whose clothes were clumsily tossed to the left of her, in mid-thrust as his personal secretary was moaning. The photo was clearly taken through the slits of his closet opposite to their faces.

W-what, what the fuck is wrong with you? No anger or shame was present in his quivering voice. The only thing Robert felt at that moment was fear. Did you have someone break into my house!? William gave a short chuckle. You weren’t going to sell any other way. Really, the blame lies on you. Robert began to pick the photographs off the floor and tear them to shreds on the off chance William had forgotten to make copies. I would never had guessed you were in an open marriage. I taken you haven’t told your wife you were in an open marriage? Now that’s hardly fair to her, don’t you think?

Robert wiped away the tears that were beginning to pool in his eyes. It was a mistake, I broke off the affair, I swore to never do it again, and I meant it. William tossed the cigar onto the wooden floor and instantly stomped it with his foot. Just because you’re never going to do it again doesn’t mean you never did it.

Robert got to his feet. He quickly ran into the open bathroom connected to the bedroom and knelt in front of the toilet. The bathroom’s walls and floor was covered in milk-white tiles, with the occasional blue or green tile. The ceiling was plaster, slightly whiter than the tiles. On the right side of the bathroom was the shower, which stretched from wall to wall. At the far left corner of the bathroom was the toilet. To the left of it was a bidet. To the left of that was a stack of towels and finally, there was the sink.

Robert felt the vomit work its way up from his stomach to his throat as he retched, but nothing came out. When the dry-heaving had stopped, he walked back into the bedroom. William was sitting on his bed, facing the desk where he had placed the contract Robert would have to sign to sell off his company to William. As Robert picked the pen to sign away his life as he knew it, he turned to William. Why are you doing this? Why would you go through so much effort to get my company? You’re not even getting anything out of this. William shook his head. You’re suffering. I got that, didn’t I?

Robert swiftly signed the contract and quickly walked, almost as fast as he would move if he was running, and quickly left the mansion in shame, anger, and disgust. As Robert left through the front door, one of the servants rang a silver bell. Time to eat, William said to no-one in particular.

In between the third and the fourth course, William took the pills that kept him alive and got up to make a speech, sure to be the highlight of the night. I want to start off by thanking everyone for generously attending this dinner. As some of you may know, I am a cancer survivor. After a year of chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and multiple surgeries, I went into remission, and it’s stayed that way for the past six years. After my treatment was over, I decided to use the life that I nearly lost to make sure no one had to go through what I had to go through.  That’s why I set up the William Schulz Fund to...

William stood there for a few seconds, frozen. Then he fell to the ground and began to seizure. Immediately, everyone pulled out their cell phone and began to call 911. The paramedics were able to arrive after twenty minutes. William had died after three.

The business world was changed instantly. Articles detailing William’s life spread like wildfire, becoming almost omnipresent on the internet. Letters from fans, financial analysts, and MBA students about how William Schulz inspired them and how his investing advice helped them out were regularly published in business magazines. Sales for his numerous books began to surge while the stock price for W.S Inc. began to plummet. Amid all this turbulence, the biggest thing on everyone’s mind was what happened?

People beg to speculate immediately on why and how William died. Some people tried to dismiss it as death by old age, ignoring the peculiar way he died. Theories on the internet began to circulate about William being assassinated by the Illuminati, Freemasons, or some other shadowy organization. The most common theory and the theory spread by all major news organizations was that William had died of cancer.

The mansion where William died was surrounded by reporters trying to interview the servants about William. While a few servants jumped into the arms of the media in the hopes that being interviewed would make them famous, most of them stayed inside the mansion, where they lived with their families to avoid being harassed. William, who had starved during the war, was very paranoid about running out of food and saw to it that the pantries were over-supplied. The servants would be able to last longer than the media’s interest in the death of William.

The only people in the mansion other than them were the police, who were searching the premises and interrogating the servants. One day, as the police were searching, a young officer began to have a seizure. This time, they managed to get the patient to the hospital before he died.

When they arrived at the hospital, the doctors immediately recognized the patient. The officer was a frequent flyer, often coming in complaining of pain and requesting medication. When he was awake and lucid, the police began to interrogate him. After seven hours of interrogation, most of which was spent telling him that they knew what he did and assuring him that he would not lose his job, the officer admitted that when