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“So very different from the sweet, sensitive boy I once knew,” Adam said to Seth. “There’s a terrible hardness in you now. Here you sit before your father and older brother—two men you have not seen in so long—yet you show no emotion.”
“You’re not exactly overflowing with emotion yourself,” Seth pointed out, a note of boredom in his voice.
The corners of Adam’s eyes tightened. “I still to this day do not understand how I could have fathered a traitor.”
Seth’s brow puckered. “Why? You fathered a fuckup like Abel.”
Cain almost barked a laugh.
Abel, however, sucked in a sharp breath. His eyes blazed at Seth but quickly shot to Cain. “You are something that should not even exist, yet you have convinced him that I am the fuckup?”
“Cain didn’t need to convince me of anything,” Seth told him. “You are no mystery, Abel. The fact is that you’re twisted deep inside. You come by it honestly.” Seth slid a meaningful look Adam’s way.
Adam’s back snapped straight. “If you have only come here to insult us, Seth, you should simply—”
“You worshipped me once,” Abel spat, leaning toward Seth.
Seth’s brow pinched even as an amused smile flirted with the edges of his mouth. “‘Worshipped’ isn’t the word I would use.”
“We were close,” Abel insisted. “You looked up to me. You loved me. Or have you forgotten all that? Has it been flushed from your memory?”
“No, I remember,” Seth calmly replied. “But I remember other things from my childhood, too. I remember the time you punched me so hard you fractured my cheekbone purely for suggesting we could ask Cain to play with us. I remember the time you spat on and slapped our sister because she refused to lie that he’d tried to rape her. I remember how you killed my dog when you found out that I often talked to Cain in secret. More, I remember you partook in a massacre and laughed as you killed innocent children—”
“None of his kind are innocent,” Abel snapped. “They needed to die. None should have been allowed to live. The world would be better off without them in it.”
“So you often say. But God didn’t agree that culling their numbers was some holy mission, did He? No. Your actions backfired. Such is the life of a fuckup.”
“Stop,” Adam barked. “This is not productive. We have a meeting to hold.”
“What happened to the Ancients having thirty days before you demand an answer from us?” asked Seth.
“That luxury vanished when you decided to keep your own mother, nephew, and niece captive.” Adam looked from Cain to Seth. “I am assuming that you are done playing games and are ready to cooperate.”
Cain pursed his lips. “I can’t imagine why you’d make any such assumption. I made my stance very clear.”
Adam let out a tired sigh. “You have taken this as far as you can. There is no more room for defiance unless you wish us to follow through on our threat.”
Seth’s mouth twitched into a smile. “Don’t you get it yet?” he asked Adam. “We don’t care if you shrink the prison. A cage is a cage—its size doesn’t matter. You could do any number of things to us, but we would survive and remain united purely to spite you.”
“In imprisoning us, you’ve done the worst to us that you could possibly do,” Cain added. “There’s nothing you could threaten us with that would bother us at this point.”
Abel’s jaw tightened. “It would bother you to lose your life.”
Cain let a taunting smile curve his lips. “But you’re not going to kill us,” he said, ensuring he sounded smug about it. “Not now. Not ever.”
“I am uncertain why you would believe such a thing,” said Adam. “We sent Lailah and Saul to Devil’s Cradle.”
“No, you didn’t,” Cain objected. “You vetoed her request to launch an attack on us. She acted without your knowledge or permission. Saul helpfully told us all about it. Yes, he’s in our custody now. He confessed a great many things while screaming in agony.”
Adam clamped his mouth shut, looking close to spewing a rant.
Abel sat very still, his hands fisted so tight that his knuckles were white.
Seth raised his hands. “Let’s be honest. You might not like that we’re refusing to hand over Eve, the twins, or Wynter Dellavale, but you’re not going to do anything about it. So drop the bluster and ease off with the pointless threats—they’re just boring at this point.”
Adam’s upper lip curled. “You insolent little shit.”
“Insolent, but not wrong,” said Seth, lifting his index finger.
