Miscreants: Next Generation (Badlands 8)

I can’t lie, I was envious. Not of the way he proudly represented his faction, but of this house. Just like I knew a large part of him going this route was for my Aunt Calista, Lilith deserved something just as nice.

“We can head to the drawing room.”

Fucking drawing room.

The sound of light footsteps had me glancing to the left. Where did he come from? A small kid stood near the bottom of the large staircase. If it weren’t for the black hair and uncannily familiar blue eyes, I wouldn’t have known whose kid I was looking at.

Even without those traits and the fact that he still had chubby cheeks, this kid had my uncle’s whole fucking face.

“That’s my Nero,” Uncle Romero introduced casually.

“You had another kid?”

“Age hasn’t made me any less of a man. I still fuck my wife every morning and sometimes twice at night.”

His wife was my aunt, so I wasn’t going to dignify his oversharing with a response. I was still stuck on him having another son not a soul seemed to know about. There wasn’t a single fucking whisper or hint that this kid existed.

“You two go ahead and talk. I’m going to take him to his mom.”

He broke away from me and my father, leaving us at the doors of his drawing room. My dad pulled them apart, revealing an area that had my uncle’s aesthetic anywhere you looked.

“Are you okay with him waiting outside?”

I glanced back at Jin and nodded.

“That’s fine.”

I stepped around him and went to sit on a deep red baroque sofa. The doors clicked shut and then my father joined me on the loveseat opposite a coffee table. He rested his elbows on his denim clad knees and looked at me thoughtfully.

“Your mom wants to see you. Your sister’s coming too. I thought it’d be best if we spoke first.”

“I agree,” I replied.

“Do you hate me?”

This wasn’t a question I was expecting. I had no reason to lie or bullshit, though.

“I’ve never hated you or mom. I hated the way you looked at me.”

“I—”

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” I cut him off.

“It does matter,” he responded tersely. “I’ve waited a long time for this moment. I have a long list of things I want to say and twice as many to ask, but now that you’re right in front of me all I can think to say is that I’m sorry, and that I couldn’t be prouder of the man you’ve become.”

I leaned back, for once in my life at a loss for words. His emotion caught me off guard—mine made me uncomfortable. I didn’t feel this type of shit. I could hear the sincerity in his every word. It almost made me want to apologize too, but I didn’t know how to do that.

My father wasn’t a bad man. In our beautifully cruel world, he was a damn good one. Mom was great too. If they were pieces of shit, I’m sure I would have turned out somewhat fucked up.

I’d never be ashamed of where I came from or who raised me. The problem? I wasn’t happy, so I chased my own happiness. I wanted an empire of my own, so I built one.

There were deep-rooted issues I had with him, no doubt, but I couldn’t consciously blame me feeling like shit on him.

“I’m not good at emotional chit-chat. But I can’t put what I did on you or Mom. It was something I needed for myself.”

“And I can’t accept that right now. I know we can’t make this right in one day, maybe not in five years, but no matter what decision you make with your uncle…” He trailed off with a sigh and ran a hand through his hair. “Savage blood—my blood—runs through your veins. You will always be my son, and this will always be your home.”

I held his gaze for a minute, swallowing around a foreign object in my throat.

I didn’t think I gave fuck about the relationship we had, but maybe that was more me being a stubborn asshole.

What the fuck did I say back to him?

Romero himself saved me from having to come up with a reply right then and there.

The drawing room doors opened, and he stepped in, a thick fucking packet in his hands.

“You two can hug it out later. I think it’s time we get the proposition out of the way. What do you think?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

He was happy I was alive.

That was the first real thing he said to me. It both broke my heart and angered me. He was one of those who thought Samael was cruel and merciless. He was. Not to me, though. Not in the way he would be thinking.

I ignored the countless number of stares I was receiving and walked alongside him.

We were approaching a decent sized bungalow when he suddenly stopped and turned towards me. With no warning whatsoever, he hugged me.