Page 11

— Ares

I folded the letter slowly. My throat burned. My chest ached. This man knew exactly how to keep a piece of me without ever asking for it outright. That was the problem. That had always been the problem.

CHAPTER 5

Ares

“Generational Ego”

Ilanded in France drunk and irritated. Not sloppy drunk either. I had enough liquor in me to sharpen my tongue and make me care less about who didn’t want to hear what I had to say.

I walked into the estate alone. If I was going to challenge Marcel, I was doing it as a man and not as his grandson.

His nurse was adjusting his oxygen when I stepped into the room. Marcel looked smaller in that bed than I remembered, but his eyes were still sharp and calculating.

“What’s up, old man?” I asked dryly.

He smirked when he saw me. “Enfin. You finally came to see the man passing you an empire.” He gestured for the nurse to leave.

Once the door shut behind her, I stepped closer to his bed. “Yeah, you’re passing it down if I marry a fucking crackhead.”

His face changed immediately. “Excuse me?”

“I know who I’m marrying, and she’s a drug addict. Deranged. Living in an alley while y’all calling her an heiress.”

He frowned, but I wasn’t finished.

“You want peace with the Laveaus so bad you’d hand me a broken bride? You told me having multiple girlfriends made the family look weak, but marrying an addict makes sense?” I moved closer to his bed. “You don’t want to look like a racist old man who won’t pass the throne to his Black grandson, so you think marrying me off to a mess fixes your image?”

His eyes flashed. “Watch how you speak to me.”

“Watch how you move with my life.”

We stared at each other, neither one of us willing to back down. It was generational ego meeting generational ego, and being sick hadn’t made Marcel any less controlling.

“You think because I’m sick you can come in here yelling?” he asked, lowering his voice. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I exhaled and calmed myself down on purpose.

“The Laveaus. Their son is my right hand. His sister is the heiress, and she’s on drugs. Did you know?”

“No,” he said firmly. “And if she is tainted, the deal is off.”

I paced across the room before stopping. “No. We’re not calling it off.”

He studied me, probably trying to figure out how I went from coming in there pissed off about the marriage to agreeing to it.

“You came in here screaming about this woman, and now you intend to marry her?”

“You said you didn’t know. That means they lied to you, and if they had to hide their own daughter to get this deal done, that makes them weak. But I’ll play their game. I’ll marry her. Tell them I’m ready.”

“You surprise me.”

“I always do.”

I wasn’t backing out. If Azaria was broken, somebody had broken her, and that meant somebody owed.

“I’ll be speaking to them about their heiress personally,” Marcel assured me.