It just made Damian’s smile grow wider.
Finally, Vox reached over and squeezed the back of my neck the way he sometimes did, knocking his forehead briefly against the side of my head.
It was his way of telling me goodbye and to come find him later. He shot one last glare at Damian before stalking out of the office and slamming the door behind him.
Ryker turned to face me, the amusement slipping off his face.
“Mr. Walker,” he dead-panned.
I rolled my eyes and sighed. “Yeah? What?”
“You have some explaining to do.”
I frowned. What was this about?
“What do you mean?”
Ryker’s expression darkened, and he stood up, placing both hands on his desk as he leaned forward. Suddenly, I felt like I was a little kid again, being reprimanded by him for missing a target during practice.
Despite how much I hated Ryker, there was a small part of me that always wanted to please him. He was the closest thing I had to a father figure, so when he looked at me the way he was now, it always made me feel like I was about an inch tall.
“On your knees, Mr. Walker,” he ordered, and I sighed, ignoring the way my heart rate sped up at his words.
There were no chairs in Ryker’s office, and it was pretty common for him to order me to get on my knees when he called me into a meeting. It was another power move… I knew it was, though it didn’t make it any easier for me to kneel for him.
I hesitated, and his expression darkened further. Reaching into a drawer, he pulled out a 5x7 print before wandering around his desk. He sat on the edge and snatched up one of the picture frames before handing it to me.
I grit my teeth as I took it from him.
“Open the back up. I need to update it, don’t you think?”
Rage was firing off in my chest, and I glanced down at the framed picture of Naomi. This picture had been taken two years ago, and she was smiling directly at me through the frame without a care in the world.
I looked up at him, the edges of my vision turning red with fury.
He wasn’t smiling.
“Open it up, Callum, and put the new picture in so I can be reminded every day of how pretty your sister’s become. How old is she now… nineteen?” he asked, looking down at the print he had taken from his desk drawer.
A potent mix of rage and terror ripped through me when I glanced at it and saw that it had been taken the other day when we had been at the park scouting Caleb.
She was in her cute little sundress with daisy clips in her hair.
Someone had been watching us.
A low growl built in my chest of its own accord and the red that edged my vision spread.
Damian’s eyes snapped to mine, his own face tight with fury.
“None of that, Callum. Change the photo, and get on your knees. Then we’re going to have a chat about killing my middlemen without clearance.” He reached out and picked up the other frame, which had Cass’s graduation portrait in it.
“Such beautiful girls,” he purred, rubbing his finger over Cass’s smiling face.
Forcing the all-consuming rage and fear down, I did as I was told.
Carefully, I opened the back of the frame and replaced Naomi’s picture with the more recent one before getting slowly to my knees.
Damian took Naomi’s picture from me and made a show about setting her and Cass’s frames back on his desk. This time, they were both facing me.
