Tia and Ray stared at me, mouths open.
I shrugged my shoulders and smiled. “Any time you’re ready, Princess Madero.”
The metal cisternwas eight feet tall and probably about five feet wide. It sat inside an old barn on a farm near Bellville, on a ranch owned by House Madero. Once used as a fermentation tank for wine, the reinforced stainless-steel tank was built to withstand quite a bit of pressure on its own, but Phillip must’ve really pissed Tia off, because she’d wrapped several metal fence posts around it.
I knocked on the tank. “Phillip?”
Something scrambled inside the tank, and a voice dulled by metal screamed, “Get me out!”
“Let’s chat first.”
“Are you fucking crazy? Get me out of here! My family--”
“Your family doesn’t scare me.”
“You—”
“If you would like, I can come back in half an hour after you’ve calmed down.”
He shut up.
I didn’t want him to see me. Getting high school guys to listen to you was a struggle in the best of times, and Tia was right. I was the kind of girl that Phillip would simp over, and I looked young enough that he’d probably try. If I let him out right away, Phillip—high-caliber alpha male that he was—would likely say or try something, and I wasn’t in the mood for his nonsense. I had to calibrate my strength to spar with Tia, and that fight didn’t let me go all out. It was fun, but I was still twitchy. I had pulled over to the side of the road on the way here and yeeted a very large rock to bleed some of it off. The itch was still there, though,and if Phillip irritated me in my current state, I would end up throwing him around like a ragdoll.
Hi, here is your precious offspring, still alive but slightly floppy. Don’t worry, broken bones heal in time.Yeah, no.
“Are you still there?” Phillip asked in a small voice.
I needed to sound older, like someone with authority and experience. I would have to channel Nevada for this.
“Much better,” I told him. “Let’s have a conversation.”
“Who are you?”
“Not important. Suppose I let you out. What’s the next step?”
“I’m going home!”
“And then?”
“And then my family is going to cut off House Madero’s balls.”
I brushed the dirt off a nearby bench and sat on it. “I liked your mom. She is very nice and she is very worried about you, so I’m going to give you a little reality check. Your family isn’t combat-ready.”
“My dad is a Prime!”
If only Beast had a magic thread for patience. “Your dad calibrates industrial cooling for Seaton paint factories. Your family hasn’t fought in a feud. Ever.”
“So?”
“House Madero is a combat House. Violence is basically their brand. When violence fails, they apply more violence. They are the people other Houses hire to fight their feuds for them.”
“They are fucking hicks. I’m not scared of them.”
Ugh. “And that right there tells me that you have no experience.”
“And you do?”
“I do. My sister once put Frank Madero in the hospital, so I know exactly what I’m talking about.”
