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My jaw hardens as I look my brother in the face. It seems Topher’s visit to Argentina wasn’t as innocent as he made it seem. Currently, he’s oblivious to the storm brewing beneath my calm.
I retrieve a file from my table and open it, handing him some pictures. He arches an eyebrow in question but eventually starts looking through them. When he looks back at me, his eyes are wide, his face a little paler than when he walked in here. Carlo’s standing to the side, his own face carefully blank. He’s leaving me to handle our little brother.
“Christian,” Topher starts but that’s as far as I let him go.“You fucked a connected married woman.”
His hands fist. “It was an accident. I was fucking drunk. I didn’t know who she was or that she was even married until the next morning.”
Topher shrinks back when I get to my feet, rounding the table and standing in front of him.
“A married woman? Dad would have been pissed, Topher!”
“I said I didn’t know!” he retorts.
“Shut the fuck up! I know you’re immature but I didn’t think you were stupid as well. And of all the married women to fuck, you had to pick one whose husband has ties to Desantos. Your stupid fucking mistake could lead to a war. Do you understand that?”
“Can’t I just apologize?” he asks.
I don’t even think about it; I rear my hand back and deliver a punch to his jaw. He stumbles backward before righting himself, rubbing the area that’s definitely going to swell in a few hours.
A vein throbs in my temple when he continues to look unperturbed.
“Don’t you have something to say?”
His gaze meets mine, hard and unflinching. It’s moments like this that he looks like a true D’Angelo.
“I’m sure you’ll handle it, Chris. Just like you handle all the other shit that goes wrong in our lives.”
I’m about to hit him again but a slight shake of Carlo’s head stops me. A terrible calm descends over me as I stare at him.
“You’re cut off. As of today, you have no access to funds from the family.”
Topher’s mouth drops open. Now that he’s looking at the consequences of his actions, he definitely doesn’t like them.
“How the hell am I supposed to survive?”
“Get a job.” I shrug.
“I’m not fucking working for you!” he snaps.
An explosive rage rolls through me. “I never fucking asked you to. You would be useless to me anyway!”
Topher likes to walk around acting like he’s better than me or Carlo just because he doesn’t have blood on his hands, and while it’s fucking unfair, I’ve tried not to give a fuck. I was placed here to be responsible for him, not to corrupt him. If he’s not interested, I won’t force him.
He falls silent, his expression mutinous as he looks at me.
“You’re going to put that nice engineering degree you got a few years ago to good use and get a job. I’m sure Carlo will help you out. Now, get out.”
After a long silence passes, he presses his mouth into a thin line and turns to leave. But before that, he turns to look at me.
“You like to act like you’re judge, jury, and executioner, but one day, that’s going to bite you in the ass, Chris. I can’t say I won’t enjoy watching that.”
Deadly rage pulses through me. Carlo steps forward then, leveling Topher with a hard look.
“Apologize. You don’t speak to the Don that way.”
My younger brother chuckles. “This is the reason he’s like that. He’s grown a fucking God complex because you keep eating out of his ass.”
Carlo’s brown eyes narrow, and quicker than I can blink, he tries throwing a punch of his own at Topher’s face but he dodged it.
