The shot rang out, the force of it spinning him half around as the bullet tore through the flesh of his shoulder. He caught himself against the edge of the table, blood already soaking through his jacket, dripping onto the pristine tablecloth. Pain bloomed through his veins but he barely registered it, the familiar sensation just one more data point in a lifetime of his father’s lessons.
“Is that the best you can do?” Greyson asked, his eyes dragging up to meet his father’s. “After everything else, you think a bullet scares me?”
“Predictable,” Maximus said, his voice coldly analytical. “Always so quick to defend the lesser sex, to defend lesser people. It’s why you’ll never be fit to lead.”
Greyson straightened, a laugh bubbling up from somewhere deep and broken inside him. It spilled out, harsh and genuine as he pressed his hand against the wound in his shoulder. “Is that what you think I care about? Fitness to lead? To be like you?”
He took a step forward in the silent room, then another, ignoring the gun still pointed at his chest.
“Go ahead,” he said, gesturing at the weapon. “Finish what you started. You’d be doing me a favor.”
Maximus’s eyes shifted behind his mask, a hint of uncertainty there as he reassessed his son. Maximus adjusted his aim, the barrel now pointing directly at Greyson’s heart. “You think I won’t?”
“I know you will,” Greyson replied, still advancing. “Eventually. It’s what you do—eliminate problems. Destroy anything that doesn’t conform to your vision. So do it. End the disappointment.”
Maximus’s finger tightened on the trigger, hesitating. For a moment, Greyson thought it might truly be the end. A strange calm washed over him at the prospect—not peace, exactly, but acceptance. Freedom, of a sort.
The same sensation he had felt when Shadera had pointed her gun at him. Except this time, it was laced with fear. Fear of leaving his family with this man, fear of leavingherwith this man.
Then, in the next breath, Maximus pivoted, squatting down to the floor next to Elara, the gun now aimed at her head. “Perhaps I’ll start with your mother instead. Since you seem to value others’ lives above your own.”
The threat hung in the air, clear and unmistakable. Greyson went still, the calm draining from him as suddenly as it had appeared, replaced by cold, familiar panic. Not for himself but for the collateral damage his father never hesitated to inflict.
“That’s better,” Maximus said, satisfaction evident in his voice. “You see, son? Some lessons do stick, after all.”
For a heartbeat, the tableau held—Maximus with his gun against Elara’s temple, Lira still on the floor, Shadera standing now, waiting for permission to attack. Greyson could feel blood running down his arm, warm and steady, pooling at his fingertips.
“We’re leaving,” he said, his voice suppressing fury.
He moved toward Lira, positioning himself between her and their father. Shadera appeared at his side, her body tense, ready for action. He could feel the coiled violence in her, the mercenary calculating odds, measuring distances.
“You will do as I—” Maximus began.
“No,” Greyson cut him off, the single syllable carrying the weight of years of silent defiance. “Not tonight.”
He helped Lira to her feet, steadying her when she swayed. Her mask had cracked along one side, a thin line running from eye to cheek like a tear frozen in place. He kept his body between her and Maximus as he guided her toward Shadera.
In this moment, he realized that he trusted her. Not with his life, but with his sister’s. He knew somehow that she’d seen the violence of men, and she would protect Lira just as he would.
“If you walk out that door,” Maximus said, his voice like ice, “there will be consequences.”
Greyson turned back to look at him, at the man who had shaped his life through fear and pain, who had molded him into a weapon.
“There always are,” he replied. “You will get your Vow. You will destroy my life and I can swallow that. But I will not hesitate to kill you if you ever lay a hand on Lira again.” He paused, knowing the threat would cost him. But instead of leaving it, instead of walking out the door with the damage that’d already been done, he smiled at his father.
“A Serel doesn’t hesitate, right, Dad?”
He turned then, ushering Shadera and Lira toward the exit, his hand at Lira’s back as Shadera supported her.
“This isn’t over, Greyson,” his father called after them. “It’s barely begun.”
Greyson didn’t look back, didn’t slow his pace as they left the dining room, the evidence of his father’s violence marked in blood on his shirtand bruises already forming on Lira’s throat. Behind them, he heard the sound of glass shattering against a wall, his father’s rage finding its target after they were beyond his reach.
He couldn’t save his mother, he knew that. Knew that she would never betray his father. That Maximus would have put a bullet in her head before she took a step out of that room. His soul cracked at the thought, at the knowledge that she would be the one to receive his fury with no way out.
The truth of Maximus’s final words settled in Greyson’s gut like lead.
‘This isn’t over.’
