Brutal Prince (Brutal Birthright)

“How do you like having your air cut off?” he says, glaring at me.

“I’m going to feed you every fucking strawberry in the state!” I shriek at him, still choking on pool water.

“Yeah, you try that. And next time I’ll tie a fucking piano to your legs before I throw you in the pool.”

He swims to the other side and climbs out before I’ve even made it to the edge.

I wait until he’s gone to pull myself out of the pool, sopping and shivering.

To think I was going to apologize to him.

Well, I learned my lesson.

Callum doesn’t know who he’s playing with. He thought I messed up his house before? Well, I live here now. I’ll see everything he does, hear everything. And I’ll use what I learn to destroy him.

12

Callum

I stomp inside the house, my entire body shaking with rage.

The nerve of that fucking girl, showing up here with her suitcase like she didn’t just try to kill me. Like I didn’t spend my wedding night in the hospital with a fucking tube shoved down my throat.

She humiliated me in front of everyone—first with that suit, and then by making me look weak, fragile, utterly pathetic.

That allergy is the most embarrassing thing about me. It makes me feel like some little kid with coke-bottle glasses and a snot nose. I hate that it’s so irrational. I hate that I can’t control it. I hate that I have such a ridiculous vulnerability.

I don’t know how she found out about it, but the fact that she sussed it out and used it against me makes me absolutely fucking furious.

So I pulled her under the water to give her a taste of her own medicine. See how she likes clawing and gasping for air, helpless against the necessity to breathe.

It made me feel better. For a minute.

But it also made me feel something else.

Her body, twisting and writhing against me.

It wasn’t supposed to be sexy. And yet, my heart is racing for more than one reason . . .

“Cal,” my father calls as I pass the kitchen doorway.

“What.”

I glance into the kitchen, seeing him seated at the counter, eating

one of the meals the chef keeps prepared in the fridge.

“Where’s Aida?” he says.

“Out by the pool,” I tell him, crossing my arms over my bare chest. I didn’t bother to grab a towel, so I’m dripping all over the tiles.

“You should take her out somewhere tonight. A nice dinner. Maybe a show.”

“To what purpose?”

“Because of your . . . accident . . . yesterday, you didn’t make use of the honeymoon suite.”

“I’m aware of that,” I tell him, trying to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.