“As do the devil's family,” Frederick said, gesturing toward Alex who remained still as stone, glaring unblinkingly.
Silently, he prayed his act would be enough to persuade Lord Wells to give them something, anything to appease the devil, just enough to see them off his back for one more week.
“I… I understand that, Lord Black, but I… I have nothing left to give.”
Frederick glanced around the room, his eyes lingering on several paintings, some golden candlesticks, all manner of finery.
“I see quite a lot left to give, Lord Wells, do you not my lord devil?” Frederick growled, looking to Alex who nodded his head dangerously slowly, never taking his gaze from Lord Wells.
The man was petrified now. That much was clear. And it pained Alex immensely. But this was the price he paid for his own part in such horrendous acts. This was the price he paid to care for his family. This was the price he paid not to disgrace his dukedom.
“Please, My Lord,” Lord Wells said, inching forward in his seat. “You cannot expect me to pawn my belongings, surely. I have a reputation to uphold. And my wife, my children, my servants. What would they think?”
“They are of no concern of ours,” Frederick boomed. “They were yours to think about before you gambled your fortune at our tables.”
With a click of his fingers, Frederick sent Tiny looming over the lord.
Alex tensed as Tiny lifted the man right out of his seat by the back of his collar and dragged him around the table to cower at the devil's feet.
It was in moments like these that Alex felt withdrawn from it all, like an outsider looking in, a man trapped in another's body, wishing to scream but unable to do so.
He clutched tight to the arms of his seat, praying likely as hard as Lord Wells was for this to be over sooner rather than later.
His mantra rang silently in his head,for my sister, for Sean, for my employees, and now for Emmaline…
It was all he had to get him through this.
“Must we really go through all of this every time we visit?” Frederick demanded, leaning forward in his seat so that Lord Wells was forced to look upon them both as Tiny gripped the man's hair by the roots and pulled his head back.
There was contempt and boredom in his uncle's tone and it sickened Alex even more than he cared to admit.
This was his uncle, his father's brother, and their business. This was their livelihood. This was their fortune. Without it, he would be a penniless duke, and no use to anybody.
He looked down at Lord Wells and forced himself to remember him just three nights earlier when he had been gambling and whoring and laughing away in the devil's lair. The man had not a care in the world for his family then.
He and Frederick would not do this to any Godly, family-oriented man for a man such as that would never gamble away his entire fortune just for fun. He would think of his family, not of himself. This man was a worm, a selfish and loathsome creature who deserved to be stomped under his boot. And yet, when Frederick gestured for Tiny to truly begin the stomping, Alex's stomach turned so violently that he struggled to remain in character.
The way his uncle laughed, how Tiny failed to show any emotion at all as he laid into the poor lord, made Alex wish to close his eyes and cover his ears as he might have done when he was a small child, forced to stand and watch in his father's office as he played the devil.
But this was his kingdom now and it was he who was the devil. And the lord's pain was his own to feel.
“Enough!” Alex boomed when he could finally take no more and Lord Wells was bleeding so badly, he thought Tiny might have actually done some lasting damage.
Frederick looked most disappointed, as if he would have happily watched Tiny beat the man to death for the fun of it. Less and less, Alex could see the uncle he had once known, the uncle who had brought him lemon sherbets behind his father's back and taken him shooting in the country while his father was too busy with the club.
How he longed for simpler days. But they were behind him. And if saving a man's life was all he could do now, he would do it. “He cannot very well pay us what he owes if he is dead!”
Frederick scowled at that. “He has a son.”
“I… I have two!” Lord Wells said, struggling to his knees once more. “Two sons, My Lord, two strong, young and healthy sons.”
Alex's insides twisted all over again. This speech sounded remarkably like the one spoken by Sean’s father in the moments before he sold him to the devil. Alex would not have that kind of indenture upon his name once more.
Before the man could suggest such a thing, he rose to his feet and snarled, “I grow bored of this. You have one week, Lord Wells, to come up with half of what you owe or next time, Lord Black's man will finish what he has started today, and it shall not only be your sons who pay but your daughters and your wife too.”
It pained him to say such things, but he had learned long ago that even the men with little conscience seemed to find one when it came to the females in their lives.
“Oh, thank you, thank you, My Lord,” Lord Wells said, bowing at Alex's feet even as he turned to leave. “You won't regret this.”
