Chapter 28
TWENTY-EIGHT
KANE
My skin hums with revulsion as Beverly drifts her long witch nails across my chest, teasing the buttons on my shirt while her husband discusses a current court case. Jessica was here a moment ago, talking with Mom, but now she’s gone.
I step away from Beverly’s disgusting touch and stretch my neck to look for Jessica. Where did she go? She has to be around here somewhere.
My skin prickles with the unmistakable feeling that something is wrong. We shouldn’t have come here. It was foolish to bring her.
Then again, my father wasn’t supposed to be home yet.
The plan was to pack some food, a blanket, firewood, and sleeping bags.
I was going to drive us out to the lake and spend the night star-gazing.
Hell, I wanted to do something special for her.
Life has beaten her down at every turn lately, and I just wanted one night, just us, to forget about the world.
Either way, it was stupid of me to think it would be that easy; nothing ever is, and now my dad’s here, plus Beverly won’t stop touching me. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she wants Jessica to find out the truth… that she’s trying to sabotage us. Wouldn’t surprise me. She’s a cold bitch.
In search of Jessica, I leave the dining room. She can’t have gone far. Cash is walking my way, visibly upset and tugging at his hair. He spots me at the staircase and swallows hard.
“Have you seen Jessica?” I rub the back of my head and lean over the banister to look upstairs. No, she’s not there. Unless, of course, she needed a moment alone and went to my room. That’s possible.
“I’m sorry, man.”
Something in my gut turns cold. I look at Cash and straighten up. There’s a miserable apology in his eyes, mixed with raw regret and defeat. He looks wrecked.
Which can only mean one thing.
“No.” I shake my head, as if that’ll change what I already know.
Jessica is gone.
She found out.
“Kane,” Cash says when I start pacing and pulling on my hair hard enough to make my scalp sting. This isn’t happening. No, she’s around. She’s here somewhere, and any moment now, she’ll show up. I haven’t fucking lost her.
“Kane—”
I whirl on Cash. “You told her? Why the hell would you do that?”
It’s unfair to take my anger out on him, but I’m spiraling, about to lose my mind, and he’s the only one here, and I’m not strong enough for this. I can’t lose her again. I just…can’t.
I fist his shirt, hauling him toward me. “You fucking told her?”
“I didn’t have to, man. She already knew.”
Something inside me breaks.
If I had to compare it to something, it would be glass spiderwebbing from a single point of impact until it all shatters.
“And you let her go?”
Cash bows his head, though he doesn’t say anything.
And since I’m already breaking open from the inside, I drop my head back, urging the fucking tears to stay at bay. Then I ask, “Where is she, Cash? Where’s Jessica?”
Still nothing. My brother remains silent, looking more miserable by the second. Which pisses me the fuck off, because he isn’t the one who lost someone. He isn’t the one hurting.
I am.
And it fucking hurts.
In a moment of desperation, I shove him, and even though I know it’s not fair and that none of this is his fault, I yell, “Where the fuck is she?”
Cash looks like a kicked puppy, and I push him again, this time even harder, even though I feel like shit about it, but I can’t help it. I need it to stop hurting.
“She left, Kane. I’m sorry.”
“No,” I choke out, ramming my hands into his chest.
He falls back, not even trying to defend himself. “I’m sorry, okay? I’m so fucking sorry—”
“Stop saying that! She isn’t gone.”
This time, when I shove him, all my strength is gone. The fight leaves me with a heavy, broken sob… or at least I think it’s a sob. I don’t know what’s happening to me anymore. A rush of breath escapes, and it hurts, as if I’m breathing through a straw.
Sitting down on the bottom step, I hang my head between my knees. If I could tear my fucking hair out, I would. I pull, but it barely touches the ache that’s swelling by the second. Right behind my ribcage. Right where it fucking hurts.
“Maybe she wasn’t made for this world. Have you ever thought of that?” The truth behind his words hit me like a slap to the face.
No, I don’t want to believe that, even if I know he’s right. But what does it matter now anyway? She already knows about Beverly, and she’ll never want to talk to me again. There’s nothing I can do to change her mind this time. I know it.
I’ve lost her for good.
“Maybe it’s for the best,” Cash murmurs. “At least she’s safe.”
I shake my head and chuckle, the sound hollow and bitter. If he believes that, he can fuck right off.
I lean back on my elbows. “So what now? I just move on? Let our father set me up with some leggy socialite?”
Yeah, I sound like an ass, but I’m done caring, done being a fucking puppet.
Cash rubs the side of his jaw, watching me with cautious apprehension, as if he expects me to go off the rails at any moment. Who can blame him? I’m chuckling quietly on the stairs now—a broken, guttural sound… hollow and despairing. Maybe I’ve finally lost it. It’s about fucking time.
“There you are, boys.” The smug tone in my father’s voice snaps me out of it.
I swear, that man has fucked me up for the last time. Just because I’m his son doesn’t mean I owe him loyalty or that I won’t be the first in line to watch his empire fall. Because I will.
Thanks to Maverick, I now have leverage against him, but it’s come too late.
Something in me turns white-hot, and I bolt up from the stairs so fast, he doesn’t see it coming when my knuckles crack against his face. The force makes him stumble back a step, and he raises his hand to defend himself, but I’m done with him, with this goddamn life.
I slap his hand away, pleased to see a flicker of fear, and then smash my fist into his face.
All of this is his fault. Every bit of it.
He sold us out to the Society when we were barely even teenagers.
He turned us into obedient killing machines before we were old enough to vote or buy alcohol. He broke us.
I fist his shirt and throw him back against the wall. I’m going to hurt him the same way he hurts everyone around him. It’s his turn to bleed.
Before I can cock my arm back and throw another punch, Cash hauls me away. At first, I’m confused, wondering why the hell he’d stop me. But then I become aware of my father’s security, guns aimed right at us, cocked and ready. I shrug free of Cash.
At least I find some satisfaction in watching the blood pour from my father’s nose. Five more minutes, and I could have caused a lot more damage.
My father raises his hand to his men, quietly signaling them to hold their fire, his eyes gleaming with unabashed excitement. I swear, my father is the epitome of craziness.
A maniacal madman.
“Make sure the senator and his wife stay in the dining room.” His eyes never leave mine as he speaks to his men.
Then he pinches his nose to stop the bleeding, impatiently gesturing for his enforcers to go back to prevent our guests from witnessing our little family dispute.
Wouldn’t want to tarnish the Ravencourt name.
“You got a good hook.” His nasally voice has lost some of the humor, but it’s still there beneath the surface. “Must be all that roughing it you’ve been doing.”
“Shut up.”
He laughs, wincing. “Where is your little whore anyway?”
I surge forward, murderous rage boiling in my blood, determined to end him and finally paint the walls with his dying breath, but Cash grabs my arm before I can kill the old man. This time, I fight him, but he’s not out of control like me. He’s not a loose cannon.
“This is what he wants,” he whispers harshly near my ear. “Don’t you see? He wants to break you.”
I don’t care. He already broke me. Now, it’s my turn to break him, and I won’t stop until he can’t speak another bad word about the girl I love with that filthy mouth of his.
“Let me go,” I snap, shoving Cash away.
My father straightens up, a look of malicious delight twisting his mouth when I flex my bleeding knuckles, the skin cracked and tender.
He thinks I’m about to lose my temper, and I might if it were any other day. But I know his little secret, and I doubt he wants the public to find out. I don’t think it would harm the Ravencourt name in the long run, but it would definitely damage his little side piece.
That’s why my father sneaks around like a horny teenager.
Usually, I wouldn’t think much of it because my father has had his fair share of public affairs, but this time, he was careful to keep it hidden.
So careful, it raised questions. And after Maverick uncovered the first breadcrumb, more showed up until we had a clear trail leading us straight here.
“You’ve been a naughty boy.” I pull my phone from my pocket and send him the footage I have. It’s one of many copies uploaded somewhere he can’t access, all set to land in the inboxes of every major news outlet in the country if he steps out of line again.
The look on his face when his phone pings and he opens the file is priceless.
I wish I could’ve recorded this moment—not him and the senator fucking like rabbits in the courtroom, but his reaction to seeing the footage.
Watching my father’s perpetually smug expression morph from amusement to shock, then horror, and finally fury feels fucking amazing.
I could replay it for the rest of my life.
“How did you—”
“Get hold of the footage? You’re not the only one with resources, father.”
Oh, how it feels good to put emphasis on father.
“I didn’t take you for such a squealer,” I comment casually.
Cash looks so shocked, I wonder if I should pick his chin up from the floor. With everything that’s happened, the kidnapping and now this, I haven’t had a chance to tell him yet.
Casually, I step closer to our dad. “I wonder what the senator would have to say about it. Fucking in the courtroom is a serious offense. He’d lose his job. Not only that, but his reputation too.”
I tsk.
“Somehow, I doubt Beverly would take the news of her husband’s dalliance too well.
I doubt she cares about the particulars, but reputation is everything to a shallow bitch like her.
I can picture it now, photographs of the senator and you plastered on the front page of every newspaper in the country.
She’d be a laughing stock. He’d be shamed.
And you… Well, you’re a snake. You’ll survive because you always do, but your little lover boy won’t want anything to do with you anymore.
He’ll throw you aside like yesterday’s trash for ruining his prestigious career. ”
My father is positively shaking now, red in the face like he wants to wrap his hands around my throat and suffocate the life out of me. I’d like to see him try.
With my hands behind my back, I try not to grin like a maniac, although it’s hard because the man, who has spent his life making mine a misery, looks like he’s about to piss his pants. I bet no one has ever fed him his own medicine.
“There’s plenty more of where that came from.
” I tip my chin at the phone in this hand.
“That’s how I know this is about more than sex, Father.
The evidence goes back years. We’re talking video surveillance, receipts, and bank statements…
even before the senator married Beverly and decided to pawn her off to us.
” I stop in front of him. “This is the part I’m most curious about, and maybe you can help me out.
Was it a distraction? A way to keep her occupied? ”
My smile slips loose. “Is he even into women?” I’m only fucking with him.
Truthfully, I have no issues with the senator’s sexuality, whatever it may be.
If anything, it now makes sense why he was more than happy to sit back and watch his wife get railed by other men while he smoked his cigar in a dark corner with my father.
Who knows what their hands were doing, out of sight under the table, but I can certainly hazard a guess.
I pretend to pout. “Are you in love, father?”
“I’m going to kill you,” he seethes, “with my bare fucking hands.”
I laugh under my breath. “You might want to watch your blood pressure, old man. You look like you’re about to pop an artery.”
All jokes aside, it’s time to get down to business. Put this dog out of his misery once and for all.
I continue. “Here’s how it’s going to go.
You’ll never, and I mean never, force us to do anything again.
You’ll treat Mom like a queen and never touch her again, understood?
If I see you so much as breathe at her wrong, the senator ends up in jail.
” I scratch my temple, pretending to think.
“I wonder what the other founding fathers would say about it? Maybe they’d kick you off the board? Consider your bad press a liability?”
He sneers. “You little shit.”
“That may be so.” I slap my hand on his shoulder.
“As long as you stay out of our way and treat Mom with respect, we’ll let you continue running your little empire and your secret affair.
Everyone wins.” I tighten my grip on his shoulder until he winces.
“But if you step out of line, your secret comes out. If anything happens to either of us, all the files and information are programmed to be released. You got that, old man? Don’t play games with us. ”
My father tightens his jaw, sucks on his teeth. “You’re playing a dangerous game, son.”
“No, I’m playing you at your game, Father.” I clap him on the cheek. “There’s a good boy.”
With that, I grab my phone from his trembling hands and wink as I head down the hall with Cash close behind.
My father has spent years teaching me that war is won by the strongest hand, but he never learned the truth. In the game Go, a pincer steals your escape before it steals the game. My father learned that too late.