Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 77171 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77171 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
“That’s a convenient philosophy when you’re the one holding the knife.”
I tighten my fingers around the glass. Like I said, Nate notices everything.
The bourbon sits heavy on my tongue. I set the glass down before I decide to throw it at the wall. Even so, my harsh action makes a bit of it spill. Liquid gold worth more than what most guys make in a month seeps into the carpet.
My brother isn’t wrong. That’s the irritating part.
Delaney is after something.
But I can still see her at the table, candlelight moving over her face, all that cool composure with a live current humming underneath it. She didn’t flutter. She didn’t perform. She looked at me as if she understood I was dangerous and she chose to stay anyway.
I wanted to touch her. God, I still do. That, more than anything, should tell me to keep my distance.
Instead, it makes me want to know how long she can hold out before she stops pretending my presence doesn’t affect her.
Nate shifts his weight. “What did she ask?”
“Nothing direct.”
His lips thin. “That’s not reassuring.”
“I’m not here to reassure you.”
He looks away for a second, toward the closed door. Then, “You know what Father would say.”
I’m about to retort that I don’t give two damns what our father would say when a memory crashes through my mind.
I’m nineteen. I stand in my father’s study with blood drying in a split over my left brow and my right hand swelling under torn skin across the knuckles.
I don’t remember the other guy’s face. Only the dull satisfaction of having put him on the floor after he made the mistake of testing me twice in one night. My father doesn’t ask if I started it. He doesn’t ask if I finished it. Those questions don’t matter to him.
His study smells like paper and the rustic scent of Cuban cigars. Floor-to-ceiling shelves line the walls. Rain taps at the windows.
Arthur Vexley sits behind the desk in a dark suit and white shirt. His tie isn’t loosened even at this hour. His prominent jaw, along with his eyes—dark brown, almost black— make him look almost like the devil himself.
He looks at my hand first.
Then at my face.
“You won,” he says.
It isn’t praise. It isn’t a question. It’s just a simple fact.
“Yes.”
“Did it cost too much?”
“No.”
He opens the top drawer of his desk and removes a small black box. He places it on the blotter and slides it across the wood toward me.
“Open it.”
I do.
The ring sits inside on dark satin. It’s dull as old iron. Not polished bright like a college heirloom. Not showy. It looks older. Rougher. As if it’s been pulled from the ground instead of made by a jeweler’s hands.
I lift it out.
It’s colder than I expect.
The face bears an engraving—a narrow-headed key.
I turn it once between my fingers. “What does it open?”
My father’s expression doesn’t change. “If I thought you were ready for that answer,” he says, “you wouldn’t need to ask.” He rises then and comes around the desk, not close enough to touch me. My father doesn’t touch. He dominates without touching. “Power isn’t given, Samson. It’s not inherited. It’s not deserved. Many of those who wield it don’t deserve it.”
I slide the ring onto my finger. It fits perfectly.
“Power is taken,” he continues. “And once you take it, you don’t get to pretend it came without a price. You carry what it cost you. Every decision. Every consequence. Every line you crossed to keep it. If you hesitate, someone else will take it from you, and they won’t care what it costs you to lose it.”
I look down at the metal on my hand. The key catches the light from the desk lamp.
When I lift my gaze again, my father is watching me.
Is he waiting for me to say something? To show him that I understand?
I do.
And I also don’t. Not completely. But in this house, some lessons are never explained. They are left in your hand for you to make sense of them.
So I nod.
Nate is still standing near the desk, his face unreadable now.
I’m still touching the ring. Nate wears an identical one. So does Cain. So does our father.
I let my hand fall. “Father says a lot of things,” I say.
“Yes.”
“Most of them are useful only in retrospect.”
Nate doesn’t argue. He knows our father taught by breaking things and leaving us to figure out why.
“What do you want me to do?” I ask. “You told me to pay attention, so I did. And now you want me to stop seeing her?”
He draws in a breath. “That depends on what you think this is.”
I almost laugh. I have no idea what she is. But I know what she’s not. She’s not easy. Not harmless. Not impressed enough by my name to forget herself.