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She stepped out, and I heard the blood pound in my ears, the nausea surfacing.
“I told my old friend I would take everything from him. I left his family intact, but I’m sure it was never right after you were gone.”
I ached, rocking in my chair.
“And he was a friend, you know.” Callum frowned. “Your grandfather and I had an upstanding relationship. We ruled this city together with some of our closest in the community.”
I barked a laugh, a raspy, thick laugh. He made himself sound as if royalty, a king.
Callum leveled me with a look. “You served a purpose, Sloane, and I’m sorry you had to pay for your grandfather’s lies. Your grandfather had a debt to pay, and it’s unfortunate you were needed to settle the score.”
“Why bring me back at all?” I ground out, the gut-churning pain physically causing tremors to hit my body, my hands. I held them. “Why bother with all that? You obviously got what you wanted.”
And none of it required bringing me back here. Especially if he wanted revenge.
A smile touched his eyes again. “You are smart, and that’s why you’re here instead of six feet under yourself.”
I jolted, quivering, and Callum put his cigar down.
“Though, heaven help you, that had nothing to do with your late caregivers.” His expression tugged at clever, coy. “You could be right where they are now due to their stupidity, but gratefully for you, you had a willingness to survive that by far exceeds them and their foolishness.” He got up, gooseflesh hitting my arms. Lucas returned Callum’s cane, and the older man used it to navigate to the fireplace. He stoked the flame. “Marilyn tried to take you back here once. Playing the hero.”
“What?”
Our gazes clashed, his cold, chilled. “She was a very stupid woman who couldn’t count her blessings. She and Godfrey tried for years to have children and racked up the medical debt to prove it. It proved fruitless, and all the medical debt did was make them vulnerable. Godfrey was a good man, though. Loyal, and a fine employee on the payroll. I had my people pay off his debts while I was in prison, with only one caveat.”
I studied him, and he stood tall.
“To return the favor one day if I needed.” He smiled, again as if to a memory. “He took the money. They all take the money, and eventually, they did have a child on their own. Your brother Bru. I had you delivered to them around that time. You needed a place to stay until you were eighteen and I could take everything your grandfather owed me.”
“You said she took me back here?” I asked, and he nodded.
“Tried to, foolish woman,” he spat, and I sneered. He shook his head. “She found out your mother Brielle worked as a headmaster at the school and tried to take you there one day. Of course, all that did was get her killed and you hurt. From what I heard, something in the building made you scared. You ran from her and hit your head. Fell and got a pretty ugly scar on your wrist.”
I played with it, the scar.
“Have you been here before? In Maywood Heights?”
Ares’s question that day by the graffiti wall haunted me. He and Brielle had both asked me if I’d been here, but I didn’t remember.
Callum said I’d hit my head, had gotten… scared. I’d had dreams recently of a monster, something trying to eat me, and if Marilyn had tried to take me back to the headmaster’s office, something definitely stood out about that location.
The king busk.
The gorilla head was scary there.
Had she really gotten me that close? What had to have been only feet away from my mother? My real mother.
“Got her killed?” I blinked down tears, so much making sense now. I must have lost my bracelet that day, the necklace I wore now.
Callum frowned. “I don’t take kindly to deceit, which is what Marilyn did when she decided to go back on the debt Godfrey owed. She became a liability after that.” He stoked the flame again, sighing. “And poor Godfrey spiraled after. His grief made him foolish. He ended up taking you and Bruno and disappearing for years after that. I don’t know if he was trying to be a hero too or what. Must have been, but my people did ultimately catch up with him.”
I glanced down, tears coating my braced hands. He’d tried to help me? They both had?
And died for it.
“I told him he had only one way to make it right, and he did decide to do the right thing when it was all said and done.” Using his cane, Callum stood before the flames, the shadows on his face dark and demonic but only due to his lack of expression. He didn’t care about anything he was telling me. At least, his face didn’t. It was like he was a complete sociopath.
And maybe he was.
