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I breathe a sigh of relief when she leaves, knowing that she’ll bring oblivion back with her.
Movement in the corner of the room catches my eyes and guilt floods me, because going back into a drug-induced coma means checking out on Calli again.
“You want me to wake her?” Daemon offers.
I shake my head. “No, let her rest. I’m assuming she hasn’t had a lot in the last…” I trail off. “What time is it? Hell, what day is it?”
“It’s almost eight a.m. Saturday morning.”
“Right,” I reply, as if discovering the day and time helps in any way.
Silence falls between us and I rest back with my eyes closed once more. I have nothing I want or need to say.
Right now, I’m so numb that I don’t even have a burning desire to discover why I’m here. I’m sure that whatever it is, is all my own stupid fault.
I’ve been on a one-way road to self-destruction for a while now. I guess ending up here at some point was inevitable.
The door opening drags me from my black thoughts, but I don’t open my eyes, I just allow Janice to do her job. And as the coolness of the drugs works its way up my arm from the cannula in the back of my hand, I pray that I can return to dreams of better times when I was able to lose myself in my siren’s pussy instead of drugs and alcohol to drown out the pain.
Thankfully, the darkness comes for me quickly, and I drift off.
But this time, it’s not my siren that greets me, but my dad, and that is all kinds of painful.
“What the fuck?” I bark as bright light illuminates my bedroom, making my eyes water even behind my eyelids.
“Get your arse up, soldier,” Dad demands, throwing a pile of clothes at me before looming over me with his hands on his hips and a dangerous-as-fuck expression on his face.
“Fuck,” I hiss, throwing my covers back and trying to force my body to wake up as quickly as it needs to.
One glance at my alarm clock tells me that it’s barely four a.m.
Just like every morning this month.
I knew it was coming. For years, he’s warned me that things would step up when I turned twelve.
I have no idea who made twelve the magic age where male members of the family start embarking on their lives as men, as Cirillo soldiers. But I’m right in the thick of it now, and I’ve gotta say, it’s harder than I was expecting.
Dad stands there looking pissed off as fuck as I drag my dark clothes on.
“Not fast enough, boy,” he growls when I fail to pull my trainers on with my first attempt and end up bouncing around the room on one foot. “When duty calls, you have to be ready.”
I bite my tongue to stop myself from telling him that I’m fucking exhausted and all I want to do is curl up in bed once more.
It’s still dark as fuck outside. The last thing I want to do right now is run around the garden, go nighttime target shooting or bounce around a ring as he trains me to fight like a man.
But then I think of him, of my grandfather, and all the men who came before them.
I think of me in a few years.
A man. A soldier. A capo.
The underboss.
Hell yeah.
One day, everything my father has now will be mine.
I’ll hold the power right alongside Theo. Screw ruling Knight’s Ridge College. Side by side, we’ll rule this entire side of the city. And we’re going to be fucking good at it, too.
