Chapter 19 #3
“That’s not true,” Lira said, her voice cutting through the tension. “Greyson has earned everything he has. He’s respected for his own merits, not just because of your name.”
Greyson could hear his heart pounding, could feel the blood rising.
She shouldn’t have said that.
Maximus’s head snapped toward her, and the atmosphere in the room shifted instantly, temperature dropping as if someone had opened a door to winter. “Did I ask for your opinion?”
Elara’s hand moved toward Lira’s across the table, a subtle protective gesture. “Maximus, perhaps we should—”
“Be silent,” Maximus cut her off, not even looking at his wife. His attention remained fixed on Lira. “You forget yourself. You forget who allowed you to have a voice at all.”
“I haven’t forgotten anything,” Lira replied, and Greyson heard the slight tremor in her voice, the fear she was fighting to control. “I wish I could, Father, truly. But there is not a single day that I do not remember the things you’ve done to me or this family.”
Greyson’s eyes flashed toward her. The accusation in her voice, the pain.
There was something deeper, something haunting in the way she said it, as if she was intimately aware of how cruel Maximus could be.
Greyson’s stomach twisted at the thought of his father’s hands on her.
He thought he’d kept her safe, had kept her out of the path of his father’s wrath.
The room went so quiet Greyson could hear the subtle tick of the antique clock on the mantelpiece, counting down the seconds to massacre. Shadera had gone still beside him, watching his family unravel before her.
“How dare you,” Maximus said, his voice barely above a whisper. “How dare you speak to me with such contempt in my house.”
One moment he was standing at the head of the table, the next he was at Lira’s side, his hand closing around her throat as he dragged her from her chair.
“Maximus!” Elara cried, reaching for her daughter.
Maximus’s hand shot out, his fist connecting with her skull as she rushed for Lira. A sharp wail left her lips as she stumbled to the ground and scurried away from him, clutching the side of her face.
“Stay in your place,” Maximus hissed down at her before turning his eyes back to Lira.
Greyson sprang to his feet, rage propelling him forward. He seethed, fists clenched, ready to strike, but Lira’s eyes—wide and desperate—found his over their father’s shoulder, silently begging him to stop. He stilled, his chest rising and falling frantically as Shadera slowly rose beside him.
Maximus forced Lira to her knees beside the table, his grip on her throat tightening.
“You think because I’ve given you responsibilities, because I’ve allowed you some small authority, that you have the right to speak at my table?
” His voice was almost gentle. “You are a woman with freedoms I let you keep because I’ve not yet required you to take your Vow.
But you are still a woman. I can take those freedoms away at any second, I can sell you off to the highest bidder where you will become another subservient woman whose only purpose is to breed heirs, to take orders. ”
“I have no freedom,” Lira spat up at him, the words strangled.
The sound of Maximus’s palm connecting with Lira’s face echoed through the dining room. Her head snapped to the side, the impact hard enough that Greyson heard the distinct crack of her mask against his father’s ring.
Something in Greyson broke. Some final tether of restraint, some last vestige of fear or respect or whatever the fuck had kept him in check all these years. He launched himself around the table, blind with rage, deaf to his mother’s sharp scream as she pleaded with him to stop.
“Greyson, don’t!” Shadera yelled as she tried to catch his arm.
But it was too late. It was already in motion.
He was halfway to his father when Maximus released Lira, letting her crumple to the floor as he drew the gun from inside his jacket. The movement was smooth, practiced—the action of a man who had anticipated this moment, who’d been waiting for it.
“One more step,” Maximus said calmly, “and I’ll add another scar to your collection.”
Greyson didn’t stop.
The shot rang out, the force of it spinning him half around as the bullet tore through the flesh of his shoulder.
He caught himself against the edge of the table, blood already soaking through his jacket, dripping onto the pristine tablecloth.
Pain bloomed through his veins but he barely registered it, the familiar sensation just one more data point in a lifetime of his father’s lessons.
“Is that the best you can do?” Greyson asked, his eyes dragging up to meet his father’s. “After everything else, you think a bullet scares me?”
“Predictable,” Maximus said, his voice coldly analytical. “Always so quick to defend the lesser sex, to defend lesser people. It’s why you’ll never be fit to lead.”
Greyson straightened, a laugh bubbling up from somewhere deep and broken inside him. It spilled out, harsh and genuine as he pressed his hand against the wound in his shoulder. “Is that what you think I care about? Fitness to lead? To be like you?”
He took a step forward in the silent room, then another, ignoring the gun still pointed at his chest.
“Go ahead,” he said, gesturing at the weapon. “Finish what you started. You’d be doing me a favor.”
Maximus’s eyes shifted behind his mask, a hint of uncertainty there as he reassessed his son. Maximus adjusted his aim, the barrel now pointing directly at Greyson’s heart. “You think I won’t?”
“I know you will,” Greyson replied, still advancing. “Eventually. It’s what you do—eliminate problems. Destroy anything that doesn’t conform to your vision. So do it. End the disappointment.”
Maximus’s finger tightened on the trigger, hesitating. For a moment, Greyson thought it might truly be the end. A strange calm washed over him at the prospect—not peace, exactly, but acceptance. Freedom, of a sort.
The same sensation he had felt when Shadera had pointed her gun at him. Except this time, it was laced with fear. Fear of leaving his family with this man, fear of leaving her with this man.
Then, in the next breath, Maximus pivoted, squatting down to the floor next to Elara, the gun now aimed at her head. “Perhaps I’ll start with your mother instead. Since you seem to value others’ lives above your own.”
The threat hung in the air, clear and unmistakable. Greyson went still, the calm draining from him as suddenly as it had appeared, replaced by cold, familiar panic. Not for himself but for the collateral damage his father never hesitated to inflict.
“That’s better,” Maximus said, satisfaction evident in his voice. “You see, son? Some lessons do stick, after all.”
For a heartbeat, the tableau held—Maximus with his gun against Elara’s temple, Lira still on the floor, Shadera standing now, waiting for permission to attack. Greyson could feel blood running down his arm, warm and steady, pooling at his fingertips.
“We’re leaving,” he said, his voice suppressing fury.
He moved toward Lira, positioning himself between her and their father. Shadera appeared at his side, her body tense, ready for action. He could feel the coiled violence in her, the mercenary calculating odds, measuring distances.
“You will do as I—” Maximus began.
“No,” Greyson cut him off, the single syllable carrying the weight of years of silent defiance. “Not tonight.”
He helped Lira to her feet, steadying her when she swayed. Her mask had cracked along one side, a thin line running from eye to cheek like a tear frozen in place. He kept his body between her and Maximus as he guided her toward Shadera.
In this moment, he realized that he trusted her. Not with his life, but with his sister’s. He knew somehow that she’d seen the violence of men, and she would protect Lira just as he would.
“If you walk out that door,” Maximus said, his voice like ice, “there will be consequences.”
Greyson turned back to look at him, at the man who had shaped his life through fear and pain, who had molded him into a weapon.
“There always are,” he replied. “You will get your Vow. You will destroy my life and I can swallow that. But I will not hesitate to kill you if you ever lay a hand on Lira again.” He paused, knowing the threat would cost him.
But instead of leaving it, instead of walking out the door with the damage that’d already been done, he smiled at his father.
“A Serel doesn’t hesitate, right, Dad?”
He turned then, ushering Shadera and Lira toward the exit, his hand at Lira’s back as Shadera supported her.
“This isn’t over, Greyson,” his father called after them. “It’s barely begun.”
Greyson didn’t look back, didn’t slow his pace as they left the dining room, the evidence of his father’s violence marked in blood on his shirt and bruises already forming on Lira’s throat.
Behind them, he heard the sound of glass shattering against a wall, his father’s rage finding its target after they were beyond his reach.
He couldn’t save his mother, he knew that. Knew that she would never betray his father. That Maximus would have put a bullet in her head before she took a step out of that room. His soul cracked at the thought, at the knowledge that she would be the one to receive his fury with no way out.
The truth of Maximus’s final words settled in Greyson’s gut like lead.
‘This isn’t over.’
Whatever game his father was playing, whatever trap he was setting—this dinner had been just one move on a board much larger than Greyson could see.
They were all in danger.
He jabbed the button for his floor with more force than necessary, leaving a smear of crimson on the polished metal. The elevator doors slid closed, sealing them in silence broken only by Lira’s short, panicked breaths that Greyson recognized all too well—the aftermath of their father’s attention.
“Li.” He kept his voice steady, gentle in a way he reserved only for her. “Focus on my voice.”