“Well, I am. I’m a sensitive man. And this is such big news. The biggest.” His smile appears wolfish, his gray eyes flashing with cruelty as he throws the photo away and threads his fingers. “My new secretary, Linda — you’ve met her — she found it on the floor by your desk and well, she let it slip in one of her, let’s say, weak moments.”
Even though he’s not touching Halo anymore and that brings a bit of relief, I still fist my hands.
I still dig my nails into my flesh.
That he found out. That my plan, my promise, failed.
“You mean, when you were fucking her,” I say.
He shrugs, sitting in his throne-like chair. “I was trying to be tactful.”
“Don’t start on my account.”
He smiles again, watching me. “You’re going to be a father, huh? That’s a big job. Being a father.”
“Yeah, you’d know a lot about it, wouldn’t you?”
“Come on.” He laughs, making my skin crawl. “Don’t be that way, son. I should be the one who’s mad. You hid it from me. You hid that I’m going to be a grandpa. And you did a good job of it, I must say. I never had a clue. Not one single clue. I feel foolish, to be frank.”
“You should. You’re not exactly bright.”
Anger flashes through his eyes but he chooses to let my dig go.
He has something bigger up his sleeve, I know. I can feel it.
He wants revenge.
He wants to put me in my place for hiding things from him, for playing him. Like he did two years ago when he had Fae arrested just because he wanted to get to me.
To punish me for years of taunting him with soccer.
He settles back in his chair then. “I can’t help but think why. Why would you hide something so big from your own father? You don’t think I mean your future child any harm, do you?”
“You —”
“You don’t think I meanherharm,” he says, tilting his head to the side to look at the photo again, reading off it, “Calliope Thorne.”
“Don’t,” I snap with clenched teeth, “say her name.”
He laughs again. “She must be one special girl, thisCalliope.” I clench my jaw again when he says it. “Well, she’s already proven herself to be so useful. A fucking goldmine, I have to say, and I haven’t even met her yet. She —”
“Stop talking about her,” I snap again, and this time, I move.
I stride over to his desk with violence running in my veins, and when I reach it, I put my hands on the wood, bend over and growl, “What the fuck do you want?”
His wolfish smile grows.
He knows he’s got me.
He knows I’m going to do whatever the fuck he wants me to do.
“Nothing really. Just wanted to see it with my own eyes.”
“See what?”
He chuckles. “If you’re still whipped. What is it about her though, I wonder? Is it because she’s a dancer?”
“What?”
