“I didn’t know my father growing up,” I said. “I assumed he was one of the many drug addicts or dealers my mother went through. A deadbeat. Then, around sixteen, he showed up. Wanted me in the family business. Wanted someone in the bloodline to inherit.”
A bitter-tasting laugh left my lips at the memory. My biological father, standing in the rotted wood doorframe of my childhood home, an ice-white sky behind him. His clothes nicer than anything I’d ever seen, the trailer park at his back.
Like the devil himself.
“Your dad,” she repeated, processing. “He’s your dad. So you’re royalty. A prince.”
My face twisted at that. “That’s Vander Archeron’s world, not mine.”
“Vander,” she repeated. “I’ve been calling him HSOG.” At my face, she clarified, “Hot and Scary Older Guy…” A sheepish look in her eyes subdued any jealousy about to flare. “But you said he wanted you to inherit?—”
“Not whatever fucked European province he came from. Hisrealkingdom, the Underworld.”
It was a moment before Gemma spoke again. I heard her shifting, pictured her folding and unfolding her arms, one long leg unwrapping and then wrapping over the other.
“That place you took me to?” she finally asked.
The Underworld, the real Underworld, was a hub for society’s worst. A place to do deals without scrutiny. Where truces were made and broken. Drugs and money laundering were child’s play. There, they got into organ and sex trafficking. Slavery. At the center of it, my father, raking in power and wealth.
I nodded.
Her brow furrowed. “Wouldn’t you want that? You already kind of do it.”
We used our power to play “Robin Hood,” as my father had put it. Though he’d tried, we never set foot into any kind of trafficking. We existed as the boogeymen in bad men’s eyes, so everyone in our community could be safe.
My father?
It was only ever about one thing: power. At any cost.
“I told him to fuck off, and he did—for a while. A year passed without seeing him, and I thought he’d fucked off back home.”
“But?” she asked.
I dragged a hand down the side of my face. “I told you I killed someone.”
The creak of the floorboards. Soft, bare feet padding across the hardwood. Then Gemma took a seat opposite me, on the bed. Eyes wide, waiting, without judgment.
“Sabrina’s father was abusive.” I stared into her deep blue eyes, focusing on the way they softened, and not the memory I was unearthing. “I took as many hits as I could…”
I touched the half-moon scar on my lip, a memento from the time my stepdad slammed a belt buckle into my face.
Her fingers came to my lip a moment later, feathering the edge of the scar. “That’s how you got this?”
I nodded. “It didn’t matter, he fuckingwantedher to bleed. If I left for more than a few hours, I’d come back to blood and bruises.” At the horror in her eyes, I quickly added, “Lock offered to take shifts to be in the house when I couldn’t, and Raze and Wraith eventually joined in as well…”
Memories of that day came back.
Wraith, Raze, and I had left to pick up dinner. We’d been gone less than an hour. When we got back…
He touched her.
My stepdad was beneath Lock as he hammered into him, punching an already-passed-out body. Lock’s entire body was clenched, knuckles white, eyes on fire. As if he wished he could bring him back to life, just to beat him again.
Behind them was Sabrina, her shirt torn.
He fucking touched her.
I dragged my hand down the back of my neck. “I got back one day and Lock was bloody, my stepdad at his feet.”
