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Her words mist the room in frigid air as my gaze meets my mother’s and then my father’s. He glares back at me, wrath pulsing through his veins, as if it’smewho has spent his life hurting him and not the opposite; as if it’s me who took the most precious things from him; as if it’s me making the most unreasonable demands, reducing him to a pawn in some twisted game of power and fortune.
“Loyal to a father who would have you marry a man you don’t love,” I respond to her features softening, her gaze melting as she steps towards me, her tight dress clinging to her lithe body.
“But I do love you! Do you think I don’t have other options?! I could have any fucking man I want around here.” Tyrion smirks as she says the words. I highly suspect he’s already been one of them. “I only want you, Grey. And we’d be good together. Much better than you and her. You don’t even fit.”
“You don’t even know her.”
“You looked fucking ridiculous together!” snaps my mother, exhaling the smoke from a cigarette in a trembling breath. “That hair. It’sso fucking awful! Who the fuck would ever take her seriously with hair like that?!”
“You mean if she bleached the ever-loving shit out of it, we’d take her seriously,” I sneer, “but because it’s pink, her value as a human vanishes? How enlightened.”
She shakes her head, rage rippling through her system. “You know full well that she’d look fuckingridiculousat any social gathering we held. The hair. That stupid hippy gemstone around her neck. Those hoops in her ears. You look awful together. It would be a fucking embarrassment to even introduce her to our friends! They’d think you’d lost your fucking mind. And what’s more, I don’t even recognize you anymore! One of the few things I admired about you was your ability to engage your brain over your emotions, Greyson.”
“To shut outallemotion, I think you mean,” I clarify. “That’s been convenient to you, hasn’t it?”
The growl of my father’s sounds like thunder pealing through the room as he takes a step towards me, and another, coming to stand in front of my brother and Gabriella. “You don’t speak to your fucking mother like that in front of me and get away with it…”
I’m ready when you are, Father…
His eyes sear into me in the low light, taking me back to a night when I saw those same flames of wrath smoldering in the darkness as they stalked me.
Take another step.
I've been waiting for it…
“You would humiliate your father by turning up with this girl on your arm, a girl who doesn’t even know how to respect her own fucking family, and not the respectable woman that has been carefully chosen for you? A woman who will be devoted to you.”
I take a moment to study his face, wondering if today’s the day, I finally get to split it open and feel his slick crimson blood on my fingers.
Between him and Tyrion, I wouldn’t get away unscathed, but then no physical injury can compare to the emotional pain I’ve endured at his hands.
“Indigo was perfectly respectful,” I say, knowing that any mild defense of her will be seen as disloyalty to him. “She dressed appropriately. Expressed gratitude. And interest. She could not have been more courteous or charming if she’d tried. What more exactly could she have done to please you?”
“Such a staunch defense of some whore youjust want to ‘get out of your system’.” The lie ricochets around the room before crumbling before us. “Apparently, some hippy you barely know is more important than your own fucking family. Is that the kind ofmanyou are, Greyson?”
My body turns rigid as he takes another step towards me. “I guess my loyalty is with those who make me feel loved and accepted, Father. I’m sorry if that concept repulses you.”
“You wouldn’t know love if it bit you in the face,” he snarls, his expression twisting in wrath at my accusation. “Nor would she, it seems… She thinks you’re some civilized man, doesn’t she? Is that the fantasy you’ve been feeding her? I know the truth, Greyson. Maybe I need to pay her a visit so that she understands it as well.”
A howl of rage erupts inside me. “Go near that girl—”
“And you’ll what?” he sneers, his hands curling into fists. “Amuse me…”
“I’ll do what I should have done to you years ago.”
I knew what he would do the second I dared say the words, expecting his fist to fly at my face at full force. I manage to block the blow and instead cock my own, landing it square on his nose which I feel crack beneath my knuckles before gushing with blood as he staggers backwards, caught by my brother as my mother screams at me, launching her hands at my face, hitting me over and over until I grab her by the throat and push her backwards.
“You bastard!” she screams as she’s held back by Gabriella. “You disrespectful bastard!! We should have given you away!” She turns to my father who is wiping the blood from under his nose. I watch in vicious pleasure as it trickles into his mouth, staining his grayish lips. “I told you! I told you we should have given him away!!”
Well, I guess we can now drop the pretense…Mother.
I square my body at my father as he recovers from the single blow, waiting for more, either from him or from Tyrion who is used to doing Landon’s bidding.
My father slides his large palm over his ruddy face, wiping the blood across his cheek, the sight utterly savage.
He waits for a moment, as if expecting some expression of contrition, but none come.
In fact, I don’t feel guilt. Not one bit. I only feel frustration that I didn’t manage to break every bone in his face. It still wouldn’t come close to the bones broken in my body.
