Short Story - Family Values

As soft sunlight shines through the cracked, grated windows of the abandoned factory, Jacob Leiter, a man in the middle years of his life sits on a broken crate, once used for packaging stuffed animals. He's a tall, well-built man with greying brown hair and a face that hasn't been shaved in mover a week. He's wearing a light grey suit, with a crumpled suit and loosely hung tie around his neck, hanging heaving on his worn figure like like a noose. As he sits quietly contemplating all that's happened in his life to get to this point, all the pain he's caused, the orders he'd blindly followed, he looks at his young daughter, laying on a folded up sheet of cardboard, fashioned into a makeshift mattress. Daisy's her name, she's young, five years old with a pink dress and blonde hair, sleeping peacefully and clinging on to a stuffed rabbit. Wooly, as she calls it, has been with her since her birth, she can't sleep without it, clinging tightly to it as a comforter.
Jacob looks around the decrepit factory they've found themselves in, the dull ache of his head thumping like a jackhammer as he thinks to himself silently “this is perfect”. A million other thoughts race through his mind. Looking around this abandoned factory, he thinks how it is almost a reflection of his own life now. His failing health is almost getting the better of him, and he's lost almost everything he held dear. All that is left now is his daughter and vengeance.
Almost as if she hears his thoughts, Daisy stirs, looking at Jacob and sleepily asks, “Why are we here daddy? It smells funny, and it's dirty, I want to go home... I miss mummy. And Simon and Jonathan.”
“So do I baby,” Jacob replies sadly, “so do I.”
He thinks back to himself on that fateful day, all the ways that things could have changed. If he'd just followed his orders this one time, listened to what he'd been told and done his job, his wife would be with them, and he wouldn't have put his daughter in this awful position. He feels the rage building in his blood, he starts seeing red and then suddenly the anger changes to pain. It pulses through Jacob's body, he stumbles to the floor. His vision begins to blur over and the room begins to spin. He tries to stay steady, but the feeling of nausea is rising once again. Daisy stands in mute shock as she watches her father, unable to help in any way.

“Baby, do me a favour and go play in the other room for a little while please? Daddy needs a few minutes alone right now.” Jacob sputters out, not wanting his daughter to see him like this.
His young daughter silently obeys her father's wish, picking up her stuffed animal and walking into the adjacent room, kicking debris as she goes meekly.
The nausea being suffered by Jacob suddenly gains the upper hand, causing him to collapse to the floor once again, violently vomiting, until there's only dry heaving left in him. He kneels there for several minutes, waiting for the feeling to leave him, waiting for the dizziness to subside and for him to recover.

Several minutes pass, Jacob finds his composure and goes into the adjacent room, finding Daisy sitting quietly, leaning against a wall and talking to her doll softly. Jacob walks towards her, shuffling as he does so, and sits down beside her, leaning against the wall too.
“You know, Daisy, back in the day my father used to work in a place like this, all my friends fathers did too. You need to understand that sometimes things just change, and sometimes there's just nothing you can do about it. But I want you to know that whatever happens you'll be safe. I've made arrangements for you, okay?”
She looks at him, confusion spreads across her face. He knows that she doesn't fully comprehend what is happening to him. Or that her mother is now gone, as are her brothers, but she understands that things have changes.
Jacob looks around the room once more, thinking to himself of all the horrible things he's done in the past, all the lives he's ended and families he's destroyed, regretting every moment of it. And thinking once again “this place is perfect”, knowing that there's just one more life he needs to end.