"That's fine. We're almost ready to vacate it in one way or another."
They heard Violet sobbing in the background.
"Really?" he replied, turning his eyes first towards the crying sound and then to Roxanne. "Well, anyway, there's something else here that belongs to me, in addition to the building."
Joseph didn't know what he was referring to.
"Just like those gentlemen there," he explained, pointing at the fiancés that were going in and out of the castle rooms. "I too have been waiting years for my sweetheart to bloom."
Celeste, who had remained, in general, averted, more so after Mr. Harris's sudden appearance, tightened all her muscles.
"She's not going with you," said Roxanne, more courageously than she really felt. "She doesn't want to, and she won't."
"Well," said Mr. Harris, laughing condescendingly. "I'm afraid that's not how it works. When two men reach an agreement… they stick to it."
"Father will have something to say about this!" shouted Celeste, turning to a last resort. "He never said he'd force us to get married! It was always understood that we were OK with it! If things have changed, he has the right to state his opinion again."
"You, silly fools… Can't you yet see he doesn't give a shit about you?" he replied, much louder than the girl in blue. "Are you really that stupid? Leonard has got rid of everything - you first of all. And he couldn't care less whatever happens to you from now on. You were only an expensive diversion and a worthless bargaining chip. And you can only give thanks that I'm taking you with me."
Joseph stepped forward, till they were eye to eye.
"You can't treat them like objects."
"I think," said the man with the shiny hair and the leather suit, laying a hand on his shoulder, "you've spent too much time on Earth and it's made you lose awareness of how things are done here: there is no rule of law or two-bit moral beliefs. Here you do what the owner says. And I happen to be the owner."
Joseph stood back a little, with the other's hand still on his shoulder.
"Well, then," he said, "I'll just have to avoid any more banalities and talk to you as a man, as is your wont. There's something I've been wanting to tell you, anyway, when we were face to face, not on the phone… Don't you ever take anything or anyone from my home again."
At once, before Mr. Harris had the time to even be on his guard, Joseph punched him in the face and left him on the floor nosebleeding heavily.