Chapter 20 #4
Finally, I decided it was time to speak. “Is that why the Brotherhood never assigned her to be Archie’s Chosen?”
That gets his attention.
He hides it poorly. Just a flicker, but I see it.
He didn’t expect that question.
“She’s a bastard kid, what do you care?”
And there it is. I can see the moment he thinks he has me figured out. But he can’t even see I walked him to his own admission. I wanted him right here. I needed him to verify what I had anticipated all along. What I was nearly certain of but needed to hear from a Huntington-Russell.
Martine’s mother got pregnant with her, against her will, at Seraphim.
Douglass leans back, feigning casual. “Should have been killed if you ask me, but I think my brother was waiting to use her for something.” I don’t believe him one bit.
I just stare.
“That can’t be why you’re here. The Brotherhood sent you here for the girl?”
I smirk. “You know they never give us the whole story,” I brush him off, stepping closer until I’m towering over him, “And I’m here on a personal visit.”
He gulps at the menacing expression that’s started to cross my face.
“Bullshit.”
“You see, you’re standing in my wife’s home right now.”
“Your what?!” He shouts, wobbling up out of his chair and letting his glass fall to the ground. The only sound to be heard is his heavy breathing and the glass shattering on the marble floor.
I reach forward for the collar of his shirt and yank him the rest of the way up.
I step closer. My voice drops. “Now let’s be clear about this,” I say as I give him a slight shake, “You’ll leave this property immediately alive, or I’ll end your life inside of it.” I snarl.
A man like Douglass wouldn’t hesitate to kill Martine; it’s, in fact, his ultimate goal. The estate falling to the forgotten daughter is a crime against Douglass in the highest regard. I knew he had been looking for her, but my contacts let me know he hadn’t gotten far.
What I did find out was the direction to get her with whatever force necessary. Bring her body to him, dead or alive, for him to “clean up” their little family blunder.
“I don’t answer to you, Herron.”
“You will if you value your life.”
He tries to push me off of him. “You have no idea what you’ve done. You’ve already compromised your position, sleeping with her–”
“Finish that sentence, and I’ll break your jaw.”
His jaw tightens, but instead of doing what’s smart, he keeps talking.
Douglass breathes hard through his nose. “You think you’ve won something? You haven’t. They will find out what you’ve done, and when they do–”
Before he can finish, I fail to hold my rage back any longer. I snap.
My fist connects with his face. Bone cracks under my knuckles, and blood coats my fist. His head whips sideways, stumbling back into the bar cart with a grunt, knocking over the whiskey decanter as blood spills from his mouth down the front of his shirt.
He cries out, clutching his jaw with both hands, gasping through it.
“You want my niece's estate, is that it?” He grunts, blood pooling from his mouth, “It’s mine! God, you’re an idiot, just like my nephews. Good riddance to them.” He spits blood out onto the ground, showing me the first bit of the menacing asshole I knew he was capable of being.
I go to lean forward to hit him again–
That’s when I hear it.
The cock of a gun behind me, and I think for the first time how Archie's flakiness has finally caught up with me. The guards, both of them, are now in the doorway, weapons drawn. One has his stance locked, the other’s hand is shaking.
I don’t even flinch, but I know with certainty I am more than outnumbered.
I expected this to be my one clean shot to take Douglass out, but it seems tonight all I have left are threats.
Douglass wheezes, trying to speak, but it comes out broken. “God dammit, my jaw, ”
I step toward the nearest guard without looking away from Douglass. “Lower it.”
“Don’t move,” the man barks, voice cracking just slightly.
I stop, hands still loose at my sides. “You know who I am?”
Silence.
“You would be wise to put your fucking guns away. I’m too important to the Brotherhood for any of you to survive this.
Archibald Franklin has directives upon my disappearance to kill you.
He’ll enjoy it. It will be so sloppily done with his bare hands that your family won’t even get a closed casket.
There’ll barely be anything left of you. ”
Their eyes flicker to each other, knowing the power I also hold. Unsure of what to do. They’re desperate to be recruited by the Brotherhood. Fucking with me would ruin that for them, and they know it.
I turn back to Douglass, who's slumped against the wall, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth onto his collar.
I force myself to calm down. The urge to draw my knife and drive it into his chest claws at me, but I shove it aside, trading impulse for the long game. Success matters more.
“You talk too much,” I say. “And you’re going to regret it.”
He tries to speak again, jaw wobbling. I don't give him the chance. I need to drill my final point home. I need him to know that his life is in my hands.
She doesn’t need the Estate. I have more money than God, and there won’t be a day she doesn’t have the world handed to her on a silver tray, because I’ll make sure of it.
That’s not the point. It’s the principle.
A man threatening what’s mine won’t continue to see the light of day.
My mouthy little brat doesn’t get to be threatened by anyone but me.
The moment I decided to take her, I knew her uncle would be a problem.
That kind of entitlement, old money arrogance, clinging to power like it’s a birthright, makes men reckless.
They think they’re owed loyalty, owed control, owed obedience, just because their name is carved into some family crest. But what they forget is this: it takes work to keep power.
Dirty work. Work I’ve never been afraid to do with my own hands.
When the twins came to me with the idea of killing their father, they didn’t realize how perfect their timing was.
I’d always intended to take her, and somewhere along the way, they’d started to sense it.
My obsession. My claim. Martine is mine.
After two years of orchestrating every move, every inch of proximity, I finally got her.
But watching her be stripped down, broken by circumstance, not by me? That was the gift I didn’t expect to receive.
Ford and I have always gotten along. Dex and I shared a mutual respect. We’ve bled together, earned our trust the hard way through the Brotherhood. So when they saw my obsession with her, they didn’t try to stop it. They saw the advantage—the inevitability. Smart men.
“You’re going to leave the property,” I say, calm now, composed again.
“You're going to keep Martine’s name out of your mouth. You’re going to stay the fuck out of her life.
Because if I hear a whisper, if I so much as feel your shadow anywhere near her, I'll make sure no Brotherhood protection can save you.”
One of the guards speaks up now, voice unsure. “Sir, should we call–”
I turn to him with a look that halts the sentence in its tracks.
“I’m leaving now,” I say, “and I expect you to be gone by morning.”
They don’t move. Not at first. But I watch the resolve drain out of both of them.
I walk out, calm, hands still clean. This went exactly the way I wanted. I needed to know how far Douglass had gotten in his hunt for Martine. Clearly not far.
If his end goal is killing her, which I’ll never allow him to accomplish, this means I have one last thing to do.
Take his life.
Because I’m not bluffing.
I’ll gut this whole estate before I let a man like Douglass come within a mile of her again.
And now I know.
She was never assigned a Chosen because she isn’t a Huntington-Russell.
This is why she wasn’t forced to be with Archibald.
And whatever happened with her mother, whatever Douglass started to say before I shattered his jaw, that’s the piece I’ve been missing.
The fracture. The rot. The reason she was always an outsider in that house.
I storm out, barely hearing the guards shouting after me. I don’t stop. I get in the car, grip the wheel hard enough that my knuckles go white.
I need to get back to her. My body’s screaming for it, every nerve lit, every muscle wound tight. But I’ve got too much rage in me to walk into that house the way I am now. If I see her like this, I’ll terrify her. And not in the way I want to. Not the way I control.
So I drive fast and recklessly out past the gates, past the estate, into the dark, where I can speed down the roads and bleed the fury out of me. I need to come down before I get home to her. I need to be able to touch her without shaking. Speak to her without snarling.
Her last name doesn’t matter. Never did. She was always meant to be a Herron. My wife. My possession. My problem.
And I’ll kill every man alive who tries to take her from me.