by Lily White
Behind my father, the twins’ dad stood quietly, his gaze locked on his sons where they sat behind the pool table. He didn’t look pleased to see they both had a nice buzz going from the beer they’d been drinking all afternoon.
“Come with me, son.”
Expecting me to follow like the trained puppy I was, my father walked off into another room, the heels of his expensive leather shoes clicking on the stone floors. I breathed out a heavy sigh and pushed away from the wall. The sooner I talked to the bastard, the sooner he’d go away.
I walked from the room, making sure to knock shoulders with the twins’ father on my way past, his head turning just slightly to catch my gaze before I rounded the corner and followed my dad down a hall and into the media room.
He shut the door as soon as I passed through.
“Your attitude problems are starting to piss me off,” he warned.
“Yeah,” I huffed out a bark of laughter on the word as I turned to lean against one of the black leather theater seats that faced the full wall screen on the opposite side of the room.
Crossing my arms over my chest, I lifted my head, my eyes pinning my dad in place by the door.
“Well, that makes two of us because I’m a little sick and tired of all the secrets you seem to be keeping these days.”
“Don’t talk back to me like you have a leg to stand on, Tanner. You and I both know that, without me, you’d be working a low paying job in some slum right now, saving up your precious pennies to replace all the luxuries I’ve given you in life.”
I shook my head. “I have a degree from Yale. I doubt I’d be working anywhere for pennies.”
“A Bachelor’s won’t get you anywhere. At least not anywhere that matters. It definitely won’t get you the respect you’ll need if you hope to take over my businesses someday. As it stands now, I’d rather hand them over to Gabriel, or one of your other friends who know how to follow orders.”
Gritting my teeth, I choked back the knee jerk reaction to tell him where he could shove his businesses.
“Why are you here?”
He leaned against the door, his designer suit perfectly tailored, his tie perfectly straight, his fucking Rolex glimmering beneath the low light of the room. Not even a hair was out of place on the asshole’s head, his perfection at odds with the black T-shirt I wore with low-slung jeans.
“Luca Bailey is why I’m here. We told you to get that girl under thumb four weeks ago and yet you haven’t managed to accomplish it. What the fuck is the hold up?”
I rubbed the back of my neck.
“She’s not as easy to pin down as you might think. Maybe if you told me the reason you’re gunning for her, I could-“
He was across the room and in my face before I could finish the thought.
“You don’t need to know the reason. All you need to know is that we want her to answer to us when we come calling. And seeing as how she’s in your line of sight on a daily basis, that makes it your problem to get her under control.”
The tip of his finger jammed dead center in my chest, my jaw locking to keep from knocking the son of a bitch away from me.
The time would come when he’d pay for all the beatings he gave me as a kid, and for all the threats he’d jammed down my throat after I became too big for him to take me on in a fight.
My eyes dropped down to where his finger touched my chest, before climbing slowly back up to his face. I smiled to see the fury rolling behind his grey eyes, to see the red sheen of hatred coloring the lines on his aging face.
His voice a low growl, he ignored my grin, his focus entirely on whatever it was Luca stood to gain for him.
“Bring the bitch to heel. I don’t give a fuck how you do it. Just make sure it’s done.”
Reaching up, he gripped my cheeks with his fingers, the tips of his clipped fingernails digging into my skin, the inside of my cheeks being shredded against my teeth.
I’d inherited my height and build from my father, which meant he wasn’t a weak man. But that didn’t mean I’d put up with his rough handling much longer. I just had to find a way to bring him down.
“You’re a good-looking kid, Tanner. You get that from me. So use the good genes I gave you. Seduce Luca. Fuck her mindless for all I care. Just make sure she’s in our pocket the next time I come around. Because if I have to take care of this shit myself, you won’t like what happens when I finally decide you’re fucking useless.”
My head snapped back as he shoved away from me, the sides of his suit jacket flaring at his sides when he spun to storm from the room.
By the time, I pushed away from the chair and stepped out the door to return to the pool room, I caught sight of him walking with the twins and their father, Ezra’s jaw a hard line as they were being led from the house.
Our fathers’ days were numbered. They just didn’t know it.
All nine of us were biding our time, waiting until all the factors were in place for us to retire the generation above us so we could take over.
Until then, we did as we were told, marching to their orders without always knowing why we were given those orders in the first place.
My hands were clenching into fists at my sides as I turned into the pool room to lock eyes with Gabriel.
Like me, his expression was weary. Stepping up to him, I took the beer he handed me and slammed half the bottle before asking, “Did they happen to mention where they were going this time?”
“Fuck no,” he grunted, pot smoke rolling over his lips. “Did you have a nice chat?”
My jaw ticked. “Yeah, I’m so filled with the warm and fuzzies right now, I might have to sleep with a teddy bear tonight just so I don’t lose that lovin’ feeling.”
More smoke poured from his nostrils, his eyes narrowing on the shot Jase was lining up on the pool table. The balls clacked together before Gabriel answered, “Heart to hearts with the old man are always inspiring. Is he still pissed about Luca?”
Relaxing back against the wall, I closed my eyes, the vision of a problematic female coming into my thoughts.
She was a problem I wanted to crush and a body I wanted to explore. I both hated her and wanted her, which only pissed me off because, of all the available pussy roaming around the campus, I was being forced to target the one chick who didn’t jump at the chance of climbing in my bed.
Luca’s stubborn attitude was annoying as hell, which only made me want to destroy her, just so I could appease my fuckface of a father and get back to my usual life.
“Yeah,” I finally answered. “We need to cage her in tonight.”
Laughing Gabriel stubbed out what was left of his joint in a crystal ashtray.
“What do you need me to do?”
My gaze focused on Jase, a plan piecing together in my thoughts that I would need every available resource to pull off.
Thankfully, I had a team of deceptive soldiers to choose from, every single one of them only giving a fuck about themselves and what they could get out of helping me.
Luca had no clue what was coming to her. Not that she deserved it. Not that I gave a damn what it would do to her.
The fact was, her existence was a thorn in my side and until I could wrap her up in a pretty red bow and hand deliver her to my father, she was a problem and nothing else.
It didn’t matter that I loved to watch that small muscle jump above her eye when she was mad. Didn’t matter that it did something to me to see the way her cheeks pinked up whenever our mouths hovered inches apart. It couldn’t matter that I’d felt a spark the night I’d tested the waters and kissed her by the bonfire.
Catching her off guard had been the only reason she’d melted into me that night. I didn’t give her time to remember I was the biggest asshole on the planet. Not even a second to recall the way I’d yelled at her the night we first met.
I wasn’t stupid enough to think she’d melt so easily this time, not unless I found a way to catch her unbalanced and off guard all over again.
/> Sipping from my beer, I set the bottle on a side table and rolled the back of my head over the wall to lock eyes with Gabriel.
“Find her and make sure she comes to the party tonight. I’ll take care of everything else.”
Luca
I was on my way to the library for the fifth night in a row. After being assigned the tort project, and then finding out my senior partner wanted nothing to do with it unless I promised him a favor in return, I spent two nights throwing a pity party for one in my dorm room, alternating like ocean waves back and forth between rage at how Tanner had treated me and fear that I would fail my class because there was no way in hell I’d be able to complete the assignment without him.
For one tiny second, I’d actually considered crawling back to him and making the deal he obviously wanted just so I could save my GPA and not throw away years of hard work, but that moment of weakness had been lost as soon as Everly had come back following a night out with Jase.
She had tears in her eyes and her hair was a mess, the scent of alcohol wafting from her breath when she admitted she’d caught Jase with another girl in his bed for the third time.
Comforting her had only made me hate the Inferno boys again. So, on the third day, I’d emerged from my dorm room with a plan in place to avoid every single one of them like that were the Black Plague while pulling up my big girl panties to take the project on myself.
In a way, it was a good thing. My anger focused me and the enormity of the project kept me busy enough that hiding in the library felt more like a necessity than being a coward.
Over the course of the past five days, I never took the same route, I showed up either early or late to class (which was a complete affront to my manners regarding punctuality) and I’d managed to avoid Gabriel finding me as a result.
It felt good to sidestep the Inferno, my head held high and my shoulders rolled back as I made it my mission in life to be the one student they couldn’t steamroll.
It felt like the universe was finally on my side for once, like nothing could touch me as I walked quickly beneath the boughs of the campus trees. But then my phone rang, my good luck, and good feelings, coming to an end almost immediately.
“Hey dad,” I answered after recognizing his number flashing across my screen.
It wasn’t unusual for my father to call me around this time of day. Both my parents were good about staying in touch, always checking on me to make sure there wasn’t something I needed.
His voice when he first spoke was ice coating my spine. Something was off, and it slowed my steps as I approached the library, my body bathed in the deep shadow of the tall building.
“Hey, baby girl. Are you busy? We need to talk.”
We need to talk never bodes well for the beginning of a conversation. Something negative always follows. I steeled my spine for what he had to say, but it wasn’t enough.
As my father talked, my body gave out beneath me.
Thankfully, a bench was nearby that could break my fall before I melted into a puddle of pain and terror on the dirt at my feet.
He kept talking, but all I heard were a few words that drove the point home that the universe didn’t love me as much as I believed.
Your mom...
Cancer...
Recurrence...
Testing...
Nothing else that he said mattered. Not his assurances that we didn’t yet need to worry. Not the conviction of his reminder that my mother was a fighter and that she was strong. Not the awful dad jokes he told me after dropping a bomb that floored me before I’d ever seen it coming.
For two years we’d believed my mother had defeated a disease that took so many lives. But I guessed that’s what happens when you let your guard down and believe it’s safe to breathe easily again.
All the demons in your life come sneaking back.
Much like my mother’s cancer, Gabriel reappeared an hour later while I sat frozen at a library table staring at a bunch of words in a book that made little sense.
Somehow, his presence, or the fact that for whatever reason, the Inferno boys still had me in their sights, was nothing more dire than a tiny ripple in the ocean compared to the news my father had given me.
“You,” he said, bumping my shoulder with his hip before grabbing a seat, spinning it around and sitting backwards in it to face me, “have been a difficult girl to find this past week. Where have you been hiding?”
My response was on auto-pilot.
“If I told you that it wouldn’t make for a good hiding spot later on.”
I wanted him to go away so I could grieve in private. My eyes had to have been bloodshot, the rims stained red.
Still, I hadn’t let one tear fall. That didn’t mean they weren’t constantly threatening to come surging back every time I allowed myself to think about that phone call.
Gabriel leaned forward, the woodsy scent of his cologne wafting beneath my nose as he tipped the chair forward and spoke quietly.
“What I’d like to know is why you’re hiding. I’ve missed trading barbs back and forth while walking you to class. You make me chuckle, Luca Bailey, and that’s saying something.”
Aggravation crept up my spine. It wasn’t Gabriel’s fault that Tanner was a treacherous ass and Jase was an unapologetic man-whore. But still, he was guilty by association. Birds of a feather and all that.
I wanted to lay into him for the sins of his friends, but I couldn’t stomach allowing any emotion to sneak through for fear the tears I’d been fighting for the past hour would finally break free.
“Tonight’s a bad night, Gabriel. Just leave me alone, okay?”
Damn it.
My voice wavered over what I said, one traitorous tear that stung my eyes breaking free to leak down my cheek. Gabriel focused on it immediately.
“Please tell me that tear doesn’t belong to anything my dickhead of friend has done. I thought you were made of a stronger fiber than that.”
He reached out to catch it with his finger and fling it away.
He was right. Tanner didn’t deserve it. Thankfully, it wasn’t a result of anything he had done.
I don’t know why I admitted the truth. Maybe because Gabriel was an outlier. He had nothing to do with my family, and most likely wouldn’t care much about anything going on with me.
He was simply a box where I could deposit this particular fear with the hope he’d diminish it somehow by not giving a damn how disastrous it was.
“I just found out my mom’s cancer has come back.”
Blurting the truth helped relieve some of the weight. Admitting it aloud somehow helped ease the knot choking me.
Gabriel stared at me, his hair a mess of soft brown around his head, his green eyes sparkling as usual, his easygoing expression unchanging as he paused before responding to me.
It was a relief in a way that he didn’t look at me with sympathy. I wasn’t sure why, exactly, but I appreciated that instead of frowning or immediately burying me in half-hearted condolences, he grinned instead before rolling his neck over his shoulders.
“You know what I think?” he asked, making the enormity of my problem seem like nothing more than a minor annoyance.
“What?”
“I think rather than sitting here staring at books all night and feeling sorry for yourself, you should give up studying for a few hours and find something fun to do. And, you’re just lucky enough that I happen to have the means to provide you with that fun.”
The question didn’t need to be asked for me to know there was another party at the Inferno house tonight.
It was a Friday, after all, and as usual, word of it had spread across campus like wildfire.
“No thanks,” I answered without bothering to let him extend the invitation.
“I have no reason to go there. I’m supposed to meet up with Clayton and Everly later, and the last person Everly wants to see is Jase.”
His brows lifted, a smirk tugging at the corner of his lips.
He paused, his grin widening to see I was clueless when it came to the constant back and forth between those two.
“It seems they’ve made up. And as for Clayton...”
Holding up a finger as if to ask me to give him a second, Gabriel pulled his phone from his pocket, dialed a number and hit the screen to put the call on speaker. Clayton’s voice rolled over the line a second later.
“Gabriel. What’s up, man?”
Rolling my eyes, I glanced down at my books, the legal jargon glaring back at me as if daring me to process and understand it while my head was such a mess.
Gabriel ignored my feigned inattention. He knew damn well that I was listening despite my attempt to pretend I wasn’t.
“I wanted to know if you’re coming out to the house tonight.”
Clayton’s answer surprised me.
“I’m supposed to hook up with Luca later, but I was going to convince her to tag along. I’ll give her a call when I’m done with these papers -“
“No need,” Gabriel interrupted, his eyes like lasers burning holes in the side of my face.
“I have Luca here with me. You’re on speaker, by the way. So, why don’t I strip her away from the library tonight and you can just meet us there?”
My teeth gnashed together, annoyance trickling down my spine.
Clayton took a second to answer, the sound of shuffling paper and a stapler slamming down before he said, “Sounds good.”
Hanging up, Gabriel’s eyes danced in my direction.
“All solved. It looks like your bestie and your man will be at our house. Now you have no reason not to come along.”
Clayton wasn’t exactly my man. We were dating, yes, but hadn’t discussed exclusivity. I wasn’t sure I wanted anything more with him than what we already had. He didn’t call to me in any way, didn’t make my heart hammer in my chest like another particular asshole did.
Speaking of which...
“Actually,” I answered, anger glaring back to life to replace the pain of my mother’s condition, “I have a lot of work to get done.”
