7. Callum
CALLUM
T he smell of cigar smoke clings to everything in here. The gaudy golden window drapes, the black silk tablecloth, and I’d be willing to bet even the damn duck on the plate I haven’t touched.
Elias sits stiff on my right, shoulders squared like he’s ready for a fight before the first punch is even thrown.
His food is also untouched, making us stick out like sore thumbs compared to the guys with grease dribbling down their chins from the fatty meat.
At the head of the table to Elias’s side, Uncle eats slowly, cutting pieces off meticulously with his knife, and acting like every bite proves he owns the world.
Dante is the only one under my uncle’s control who seems disinterested in the food, yet for some reason looks to be forcing himself to take small bites.
My cousin doesn’t look like the boy I grew up with, the one who used to sneak out with me to throw rocks at the security cameras and laugh like we’d won a war.
He used to be the first to offer a warm smile and never cared for the ridiculous wardrobe our uncle ensured our closets were filled with the moment we graduated high school.
His messy black waves that seemed permanently tousled are nowhere to be found, instead his hair is slicked back now, with the only sign of his curls being at the base of his neck.
A thin gold chain lays against his chest, exposed with a single button undone on his black dress shirt.
A matching watch and permanent scowl on his lightly stubbled face completes the mob-like look we’d always fought against.
There’s no trace of the boy I considered a brother, once upon a time. A small puff of air shoots from my nose as my head shakes softly. How did we end up like this?
When Elias drew away from everyone after we moved in with our uncle, Dante stepped in to ensure I felt welcomed and treated me like his own little brother.
Now he leans back in his chair in that perfectly tailored outfit, swirling his wine like he was born to play protégé.
He hasn’t spoken yet, choosing not to fill the silence with nonsense the way the other men at the table do–the ones laughing too loud at all of Uncle’s little quips, like seals clapping for scraps of attention.
Something flipped in Dante overnight years ago. One day he was my partner in crime, the next he was nodding at every word that came out of Uncle’s mouth. I watch the way his lips pinch slightly and his throat bobs harshly, like he’s forcing the bite of asparagus down.
I’ve never asked what happened, and I’m not sure I want to hear the answer.
I keep my smirk in place throughout the whole dinner, needing it to hide the truth of my feelings, even though my jaw’s tight from holding it for so long now.
Elias hides behind a look of indifference. I hide behind charm. Either way, Uncle gets what he wants–us at his table, under his roof, and playing the game we told him we want no part in.
Uncle sets his fork down with a deliberate clink, the scrape of silver against the plate cutting through the noise. He doesn’t raise his voice to cut through the boisterous laughter as he says, “That’ll be all.”
Yet somehow everyone hears him as if he’d shouted it, completely cued in on listening for his words at all times.
Chairs screech back at once, the kind of sharp sound that makes my teeth grind.
Every man at the table moves in sync, napkins folded and placed on the table and faces blank as they offer a nod of respect.
They know better than to linger, and in that, we’re the same.
Elias pushes back his own chair back and I start to follow, ready to get the hell out of this den of cigar smoke and polished silverware.
“Not you.”
Uncle’s voice cuts through the shuffle of feet, low but absolute. His pale eyes flick to me, then Elias, then Dante at his right. “Sit back down. This is a family discussion.”
The room empties fast, the double doors sealing with a heavy thud. The silence after it is worse than all the noise of dinner was.
Elias lowers himself back into the chair and I notice his jaw grinding, likely on the cusp of not being able to hold back his retorts. I drop into mine and let out a heavy sigh, pretending I don’t care for whatever is about to come from Uncle’s mouth, though my pulse has picked up in anticipation.
Nothing good ever comes from family dinners. Not since Dante’s mom and ours passed, taking all traces of warmth that a family should have with them to their caskets in our family plot.
Uncle leans back, hands folded over his stomach, and his gaze crawls over us one by one, like we’re still boys waiting for discipline.
The silence stretches, heavy, until I can’t take it anymore. If I let him dissect and look down upon me for a second longer, I’m going to say ‘fuck it’ to our inheritance he’s blocking and take my chances on the street.
“So,” I drawl, twirling the stem of my wine glass between my fingers, “is this what you expect of us during our grand year of servitude? Sitting through dinners where the highlight is watching every man at this table line up to lick your ass if you tell them to?”
Elias exhales through his nose, sharp, but he doesn’t stop me. His silence is as good as agreement.
Uncle’s gaze cuts to me, flat and cold. “Careful, boy.”
I’m tired of the bullshit with him. The dancing around what he really wants from us. All I want is to know what the next year of hell looks like working for him, so I can accept it and get a move on.
“Why?” I grin, teeth on full display. “Because I’m not playing the good little soldier who claps on cue? If this is what you call training us for the big leagues, I’m sorely disappointed.”
Across the table, Dante’s mask slips for the briefest second. A flicker of concern in his dark eyes, or warning perhaps, sparks as they land on me. He schools it away fast, jaw hardening, and his shoulders pull back into that perfect mirror of his father.
But I saw it. I saw him . The cousin who used to sneak out with me, laugh too loud, get caught and still grin about it. The one who vanished overnight and came back a shadow wearing Uncle’s leash.
I glance out of my peripheral at Elias, catching the subtle tick of his jaw, the way he leans forward just slightly, as if trying to block Uncle’s view of me.
Uncle, of course, just smiles that sharp, thin smile that never touches his eyes.
The light from the sconces catches on the silver strands slicked through his dark hair.
His fingers drum once against the edge of the table, slow and deliberate, before he threads them together like he’s about to deliver a sermon.
“You sit here, sneering at me,” he says, voice calm in that dangerous way that makes my stomach knot.
“But tell me, what would your mother think, seeing her boys squander their strength? You should burn for revenge. You should want blood for the life she lost to the vampires. Every filthy magical leech walking this world that thinks themselves better than us, for that matter.”
Elias’s foot begins to bounce softly against the floor as his jaw flexes so hard I can almost hear his molars grind
“Yet here you sit, mocking me and mocking her memory.”
My own grip on the glass stem tightens as I force a deep breath to fill my chest.
“She wouldn’t want this,” I bite out as my eyes narrow on uncle, each word clipped. “She wouldn’t want us surrounded by the very thing that killed her, risking our lives.”
My hand falls to the sides of my chair, tightening until my knuckles ache.
The glimpse of her blood running down the white walls of our home as I peeked out of my bedroom door, woken up by the sound of breaking glass, rolls through my mind.
My breath hitches at the memory I’ve tried my best to bury.
Elias’s scream as he ran past my door, bounding down the stairs like his small hands could somehow save our mother.
My fingers find my jeans and press down into my thighs as I struggle to ground myself in the present. I’d been too scared to do anything, and it continues to haunt me to this day.
Would it have made a difference?
“You keep trying to drag us back into that misery and anger, like you’re determined to make us live inside that night over and over.”
The words leave me sharp and fast, and Uncle’s gaze sharpens, pale blue locking on me like a knife pressed to my throat. “That’s exactly what I want. That is how the best hunters are forged.”
Elias doesn’t speak still, but I can feel the anger rolling off him, the way he shifts his weight in the chair like it takes everything he has not to leap across the table.
I know we don’t have long until he does exactly that.
Dante flicks his eyes toward me again, the faintest twitch of a warning to the knitting of his brow before he drops his features back into that perfect blank mask.
My fingers flatten against my thighs as I stare back at him. Maybe he’s willing to just sit here and be treated like a dog, but we’re not.
Uncle’s hand drifts almost lazily across the table to the steak knife he used at dinner, drawing my focus back to him. He rolls the handle between his fingers like a man deciding whether to toy with it or drive it straight into flesh, and my pulse jumps.
He’s never laid a hand on us, but the tales of the torture he’s performed on humans and magical species alike isn’t kept a secret.
He leans forward with the knife between his hands now, elbows braced on the table, and his eyes gleam in the light.
“Soft,” he sneers, the word dripping with disdain as he glances between Elias and me. “That’s what you are now. Soft little boys, too fragile to carry the weight of what was done to your mother. She’d be rolling in her grave if she saw what you’ve become.”
The glint of the blade catches the light as it spins between his fingers, casual and cruel. My throat goes dry. He isn’t threatening us outright, but every line of his body screams that he doesn’t need to.
Across the table, Dante’s jaw ticks once as his eyes fall to the knife. His throat bobs and the fear I see radiating in his steeled frame and the vein in his forehead make me wonder if I should have asked more questions when things changed with him.
I told myself I didn’t want to know, but that choice to stay ignorant prevented me from being there for him if something bad happened. The tension vibrating from him tells me that he knows this game–that he knows exactly what it means when his father toys with blades.
The thought makes my empty stomach churn. Could he have hurt his own son?
For the first time tonight, I can’t help but wonder if we’re in over our heads, pushing back when we should have been keeping quiet.
Elias lifts his elbows to brace on the table, his eyes locked on our uncle with a cold, unwavering stare. My hand reaches under the table wanting to try to signal that he needs to remain quiet, but his mouth opens before I can stop him.
“If you think we should be so wrapped up in what killed our mother,” Elias says, his voice calm but edged like broken glass, “do you also think we should devote all of our time and energy into curing the cancer that killed our father? Or are you just concerned with using the dead parent that you were related to that advances your agenda?”
The words crack across the table like a whip to our uncle. For a heartbeat, silence swells so thick I can hear the blood rushing in my ears.
Fuck .