Chapter 27 Silas
SILAS
Itry to breathe as I drive to the apartment O lived in while she was in college, the apartment the Foxes own.
The phone is in the seat beside me and when I get to the building, I double park at the entrance and stalk rather than walk inside because I’m not any calmer now than I was just half an hour ago.
I push the button to call the elevator and wait, seeing red all the while.
I know she was with him before me. It’s never been a fucking secret. But fuck. Seeing those photos of them together, knowing he is sending them to her fully aware that she’s my wife, it makes me want to fucking kill him.
The elevator dings and a couple step out, laughing, at least until they see me. I must look a sight because they both get very serious very fast and hurry around me, giving me a wide berth. I get on the elevator and push the button for her floor. I send a text.
Me: On my way. I let the son of a bitch think it’s Ophelia.
Ethan: I didn’t think you’d come. Door’s open. Let yourself in.
Mother fucker.
I get off the elevator to find the door is ajar. I push it all the way open.
“Phee,” Ethan calls out casually from the bedroom.
I slam the door shut behind me as he walks into the living room. He stops dead when he sees me.
“Not Phee,” I finally say, stalking toward him, hating his fucking face as I take him by the collar and slam him against the wall.
“What the fuck, Silas!”
“She’s my wife. What part of that is not fucking computing? In what fucking universe would it be okay for you to send texts and suggestive photos to another man’s wife?” I ask, my voice rising by the end.
“Suggestive? News flash, idiot, they happened!”
“In what fucking universe?” I tap the side of his head with two fingers and just like that, it’s like we’re back in the house in Sinistral. Me and Ethan going after each other. Me and Ethan hating each other.
“She’s your wife because you fucking forced her to marry you!
” he says, slapping my hand away and shoving me backward.
There’s one difference from when we were younger.
Ethan and I are physically more evenly matched now—although I can and will still kick his ass because I have years of fury fueling me when all he has is his posh, spoiled brat upbringing.
Although, that’s not really true, is it? Yes, Mira spoiled him, but Sly? I saw first-hand what Sly did to him when he was a kid. Sly Fox ruled with an iron fist. You stepped out of line, and he wasn’t above getting physical. He punished his acknowledged son same as he did me, his bastard boy.
But that’s in the past. Ethan has had ample opportunity to choose to do better, to be better. He never does.
I take the phone out of my pocket and show him the photos. “This? This stops. Now. You will no longer have contact with my wife,” I say and throw the phone across the room into the opposite wall. It crashes on impact and clatters to the floor.
“I’ll wait for her to tell me that herself,” Ethan says with a grin.
He doesn’t look even remotely like a man whose father was murdered just a day ago, a man who needs his ex, who happens to be my wife, to come to him because he’s in so much fucking pain. Give me a fucking break.
“Unless you’ve got her locked up somewhere, that is,” he adds, cocky as ever.
“That’s not how I operate,” I say, although, technically, he’s not too far off. “That’s your MO.”
He snorts, studies me with narrowed eyes and for all my rage, Ethan is calm. For my unleashed fury, Ethan is calculating his next move.
“Tell me something, Silas. Did you want her all along? Or is it for the money?”
“Money? Fuck any money. Again, that’s not me. That’s you, you prick.”
“Because it sure is convenient considering the timing. Is there a prenup?”
“What my wife and I have between us is none of your fucking business, is it?”
He grins. “Or hell, maybe it’s just that you like fucking my sloppy seconds. Because I have had her every which way. She has swallowed my come more times than you can count. I’ve bent her over every piece of furniture you see around you and fucked every tight little hole—”
An animalistic roar leaves my chest. He’s a fucking liar.
I know that. He’s a liar. But fuck! His smug, satisfied grin grows at my reaction, and I can’t see straight.
I can’t fucking see straight. I stalk toward him, draw my arm back and swing.
He ducks in time, laughs outright a hideous, manic laugh.
“Ooh fuck! You didn’t think…” he starts, knowing he has me. Knowing he more than touched a nerve. “Oh, bro, don’t tell me you thought we didn’t fuck?”
“I am not your fucking bro.” I swing again, this time catching his jaw. He stumbles backward.
“Well, technically…”
“I am not your fucking bro!”
“Fine. Fine. Have it your way. You want to fight? You want me to kick your ass like Dad did? Maybe break your nose straight?”
“The only way you’d break anything is if someone held me down for you to do it, fucking pussy. It’s the coward’s way. It was Sly’s way. No doubt it’s yours.”
“Yeah, things have changed,” he spits blood from his cut lip but ignores it and stalks toward me. He swings, but I block him. He swings again. I block again.
I look at his hand as he makes another fist, gearing up to hit me again. This time, my gaze is caught on something, and he catches me on my cheekbone. My head snaps back as the sharp edge of his ring cuts skin.
The ring.
It’s the thing that distracted me. The sharp-eared, red-eyed ring of a fox’s head.
His fist slams into my jaw and I stumble backward, momentarily dazed. Ethan laughs and when he tries to punch me again, this time in the gut, I catch his fist.
“Where did you get that?”
“What?”
“The ring.”
He grins. “Part of my inheritance. Jealous much?”
I twist his arm behind his back, only giving him a hard shove away when I hear him cry out because I will break his arm if I don’t stop.
He stumbles a few steps and I follow him, spin him to face me and thrust him against the wall. I shove my forearm into his throat and hold him there, looking into his eyes.
I grew up with Ethan Fox. From the minute he was born, I was there. I’ve seen him laugh and howl and rail and sob. I’ve watched him break slowly, over time. And those eyes, they’re flat, without a hint of any light. Dead. Sullivan Fox made sure of that a long time ago.
He brings his hand to his face, touching his thumb to the cut on his lip. I see that ring again, and I remember something, a scene I witnessed more than a decade ago. Before Ophelia ever even walked into our lives. One that, at least for a time, had made me feel sorry for a much younger Ethan Fox.
But Ethan mutters some curse, spitting blood and saliva into my face.
I step back, then wipe the spit from my cheek.
Drawn into the present, I’m reminded that that boy no longer exists.
The man before me now is a carbon copy of his father—maybe not on the outside, but definitely on the inside, and it doesn’t matter what made him that way.
The fact that he is that is what matters.
“You listen to me, Ethan,” I say, hearing how level my voice sounds, how different than when I walked in here. “You fucking listen to me now, because I’m only going to say this once. Ophelia is my wife. And you will stay the fuck away from her or so help me, I will put you in an early grave.”
“Like you did Dad?” he has the balls to ask.
“Stay away from her.”