Brutal Prince (Brutal Birthright)

I can’t believe this. After they spat in our face in our very own house, he wants to call them up and negotiate. It’s insane. It’s cowardly.

My father can see the mutiny in my eyes.

“Give me your phone,” he says. He waits, hand outstretched, until I give it to him. It was in my pocket when I jumped in the lake, so it’s useless anyway.

“I’m going to contact Enzo Gallo,” he repeats. “You will stay here until I send for you. You won’t speak to anyone. You won’t call anyone. You won’t step foot outside this house. Do you understand me?”

“You’re grounding me?” I scoff. “I’m a grown man, father. Don’t be ridiculous.”

He takes off his glasses so his pale blue eyes can bore all the way into my soul.

“You are my eldest child and my only son, Callum,” he says. “But I promise you, if you disobey me, I will cut you out, root and branch. I have no use for you if you can’t be trusted. I will strike you down like Icarus if your ambition outstrips your orders. Do you understand?”

Every cell of my body wants to tell him to take his fucking money, and his connections, and his so-called genius and shove it right up his ass.

But this man is my father. My family is everything to me—without them, I’d be a ship without rudder or sail. I’m nothing if I’m not a Griffin.

So I have to nod my head, submitting to his orders.

Inside I’m still boiling, the heat and pressure building.

I don’t know when or how. But if something doesn’t change between us soon, I’m going to explode.

5

Aida

My brothers are down in the basement, suiting up. Or at least, Dante and Nero are. Sebastian is still at the hospital with my father. His knee is fucked, that much is certain. Ribs are broken, too. I can’t bear the look of misery on his face. His season is ruined. Possibly the rest of his career. God, he might not even walk right after this.

And it’s all my fault.

The guilt is like a shroud, wrapping around and around and around my head. Each glance at Sebastian, each memory of my idiocy, is like another layer wrapping around my face. Soon it will smother me.

I wanted to stay with Sebastian, but Papa snapped at me to go home.

There I found Dante and Nero strapping on bulletproof vests and ammo belts, arming themselves with half the guns in the house.

“Where are you going?” I ask them nervously.

“We’re going to kill Callum Griffin, obviously,” Nero says. “Maybe the rest of his family, too. I haven’t decided yet.”

“You can’t hurt Nessa,” I say quickly. “She didn’t do anything wrong.”

Neither did Riona, but I don’t have the same sense of charity toward her.

“Maybe I’ll just break her knee, then,” Nero says carelessly.

“We’re not doing anything to Nessa,” Dante growls. “This is between us and Callum.”

By the time they’re ready to leave, they look like a cross between Rambo and Arnold Schwarzenegger in Predator.

“Let me come with you,” I beg.

“No fucking way,” Nero says.

“Come on!” I shout. “I’m part of this family, too. I’m the one that helped Sebastian get away, remember?”