Page 119 of Twisting Beauty

I stood rooted to the spot. Running always meant the punishment hurt more when he caught me.

The back of my neck prickled when he disappeared from view behind my back.

“I heard she spent the whole night in your room while I was away. How is your sweet little sister?”

The silence pulsed. My mouth went dry. Of course Mervyn had reported to him.

“Did you hold her while she slept?” There was a long poisonous pause. “Or did she open her legs for you like a whore?”

Crack.

A flare of pain tore through me as his cane landed across my back.

“How dare you disobey me.” Spit flew out of his mouth, an unhinged look in his eye. “You humiliated me in front of my investors. In front of clients.”

Fuck, I don’t think I’d ever seen him this angry.

But I stayed silent, swallowing my cries of pain, holding my tongue, like always. That was the rule: stay silent.

But this time, the silence didn’t protect me. It strangled me.

“What are they going to think about me,” he spat, “if I can’t keep my own fucking son in check?”

Another blow. Lower. Across my ribs. The impact knocked the breath out of me, a hot burst of pain blooming across my side, sharp and nauseating. I grunted, doubling slightly, white spots pricking the edges of my vision.

“Is she making you soft?” His voice dropped, low and venomous. “You let the worthless little cunt turn you against your own blood?”

My spine locked and heat surged up my neck. I could take the beatings, the insults, the fucking cane. But not that. Not her.

Something snapped in me and I saw red.

I grabbed his cane mid-strike and twisted it out of his hand before tossing it aside. It clattered uselessly against a shelf of books.

It was like I was outside my body, watching someone else. Like this wasn’t me sizing up my own father like a raging bull ready to stampede, my breath shallow and ragged.

Alistair growled and lunged at me. “Why you little⁠—”

I punched him. I didn’t feel it. Just heard the sound of bone on bone like a tree cracking in a storm. Felt the wetness of my knuckles splitting.

Then he was stumbling back against his desk, blood already beading on his lip.

Silence swallowed the room, thick and suspended, broken only by the rush of blood pounding in my ears. Shock pinned my limbs in place, numb and trembling.

I couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak. I just waited. Waited for death. For the snap of a hidden weapon. For the pain. For the bullet in my head.

Alistair pulled a silk handkerchief from his breast pocket, monogrammed, of course, and dabbed the blood on his lip like it was lipstick.

Then he laughed. Not a bark. A purr.

“Finally,” he said, his voice quiet. Almost proud. “You’re becoming a man.”

Then he waved the handkerchief at me, dismissing me.

I should’ve felt relieved. Should’ve felt righteous. But all I felt was the sticky blood cooling on my knuckles and his approval seeping into me like rot.

I hadn’t won.

I was becoming exactly what he’d made me.