He must admit he finds the thumbscrews quite amusing.

Draco plods up the main staircase, pausing at the landing to examine his own reflection, beamed out for the world in the gold-leaf embossed frame of a mirror nearly four-metres high.  He scrubs a hand through his pale hair as if hoping to shake loose stray grains of sand, then yawns and stretches, scratching at his chest. 

Though they regard each other with the detached ease of long-time flat mates, Lucius loves his only son….in his own way.  There's envy there, too—co-mingled with a pride so fierce that Lucius feels very nearly sick from its hardening grasp.  Draco lives the life that Lucius himself always dreamed about, spending all his days as a playboy layabout; a money-burning, beach-bronzed decadent.  As of late his new goal in life is building his very own yacht, following straight off a set of blueprints that Lucius himself drew up while just a Hogwarts' schoolboy; when the beast is finished, Draco plans to marry the lovely Somae DeSilver and float down to the coast of Italy, where they can toast their glasses of pellegrino together night after night, then lie back and bob under the stars.

It's an easy life for Draco, and Lucius wants to keep it this way—everything cushy and moving along in wee, predictable doses.  He's pushed Draco before.  Has even shouted and smacked the boy in moments of outrage, because even with his soft little existence, Draco must be taught when a line has been crossed, when he's broken a rule irreparably.  He wants the boy to be comfortable, but not completely naïve, after all.  And let's face it: if he could help it he'd even stop pimply spots from breaking out on the boy's delicate backside.

But now Lucius must choose: should he go on protecting the luxurious life he's made for his son, his wife, and himself?  And does he honor his own son, or uphold the long history of powerful Malfoys who came before him, all of them pale and whispy from years of inbreeding, long-suffered by gout and consumption--bless their little hearts that once pumped such pure blood. 

When he took the Dark Mark, it was in part for Draco's own sake, and thusly functioned as insurance for the entire generation of Malfoys who would come after him.  Lucius had to admit that being a Death Eater wasn't a bad job, exactly.  Just tiresome, at times.  All those dark revels and bloody balls to attend did tend to put a damper on his free time; not to mention keeping up the gruelly façade of being a normal, up-standing citizen.  He had talked his way out of standing trail and spending time in Azkaban more times than he cared to remember, and it was usually his money that had done the most persuasive bit of finagling.  More than anything, he wondered just how long he must continue to pay for the mistakes of those Malfoys who were already dead and buried—long forgotten by almost everyone, save Voldemort himself.