I blink, waiting for the punch line. Because there has to be one. But when he doesn’t crack a smile or hit me with a “just joshin’,” I let my own frown loose.
“Oh, you’re serious.” I huff out a breath and pour a healthy amount of disbelief into it. “This house? Safe? The place that has been my torture chamber until I moved out on my own? The same place now owned by the woman who beat the shit out of me too many times to count? Who I still wouldn’t eat a dinner with or her pathological son unless I had a taste tester?” I squint at him. “And my home is the only place of peace I have. I already have a state-of-the-art security system installed there, and no onecan pee in my direction without an alarm going off. Damn if I’m inviting strangers into my one and only safe space. Nope, I’m good. Besides, the only time I’msafein the Castle is when I’m in my lab, locked behind a steel door requiring a retinal and fingerprint scan to enter. And Istillmake sure I’m carrying. So please, tell me again how safe I am with my so-called family close. No, Sam.” I shake my head. “I’ll take my chances on my own among all the strangers and serial killers California seems to spawn like starlets and weed.”
Turning around, I pick up the glass and finish off the whiskey in two big gulps, not even flinching at the potency. Hissing a little at the tingle in my jaw and along my neck, I set the tumbler back down, debating whether I should make it a twofer.
“You would really not just watch your grandfather and father’s company—your legacy—fall, but be the cause of it?”
I stare at him for several seconds, then slowly smile, showing all thirty-two.
“And roast corn nuts over the open flames.”
We both know what he’s referring to. Even now, with just the two of us alone in this room, he won’t say the words aloud, but it’s the dirty, illicit truth behind House of Cross and the Cross empire.
Most people recognize HoC as the premiere house for exquisite shoes, high-fashion shoes. But the underworld knows it as a front for the biggest international drug empire in the world. Some of the shoes are carefully constructed shipping mules for Glass Slipper, a highly addictive designer drug created by yours truly. I may have a rage problem, but I’m also a genius. Like, card-carrying Mensa genius. After graduating from USC with a bachelor’s in biology and two master’s in biochemistry and chemical engineering at twenty, I immediately went to work at the lab in the basement of the Castle creating the drugs that would earn the company and my family billions a year. More than the Cross empire earned in my grandfather’s and father’s generations. Good ol’ Gramps might’ve initially gotten rich bytransporting twice-stepped-on product from an overseas plug, and that was fine for his time. It got HoC started, and he built a name and empire to be feared and respected. But it’s my mind, my creativity, my ideas and hard-ass work that fund this empire and the lifestyles of all the muthafuckas who despise every breath I take. And yet I’m still treated like shit scraped off the bottom of a sneaker.
Or maybe worse.
Invisible.
But I shouldn’t hope for its downfall? Yeah, he could miss me with that. Once upon a time, I dreamed of HoC being my legacy, my future. Now it’s just going to be my competition. Any figments of loyalty Marcus didn’t manage to kill within me died when that machine lowered him into the ground.
A mixture of sadness and recrimination creeps across his stern features, and I can already tell he’s on bullshit and I’m not going to appreciate what he’s about to say. Matter of fact, it’s probably going to make me flip my shit.
“Ember, I know you’ve been hurt, but this is beneath you. Your mother wouldn’t have wanted this for you. She wouldn’t have wanted you to become—”
“Don’t finish that fucking sentence,” I snarl, stalking closer to Sam and not stopping until mere inches separate us.
See, most people wisely fear my godfather, but not me. And not because he loves me and treats me like family. No, because while other people believe monsters are make-believe and just villains in stories to scare children to act right, I have firsthand experience that they’re real. I’ve lived with them. Felt their fetid, hot breath in my ear, on my damp skin. Been scarred by them.
As a result, I don’t fear shit.
“I love you, Sam, more than the man whose nut sack I came from and who barely raised me. But don’t do that. Don’t bring my mother into this. And you don’t get to tell me how I should react to people who have done me dirty since the moment they laid eyes on me. Longer, if we’re talking about Marcus. Sinceyou don’t have one scar, one nightmare, one…” I bite my lip to contain the scream building and swelling inside of me like an Oklahoma twister. “It’s the stink of privilege to think you can dictate that for me when you weren’t there to endure either the brunt or the pain. It’s fuck them and House of Cross forever. And if you can’t see that, it’s fuck you, too. Respectfully.”
His eyes narrow. “Watch your mouth, little girl.”
“I said, respectfully.”
A deafening silence thrumming with a menacing tension hovers over the room, vibrates between us. This isn’t the first time we’ve butted heads, but this is the first time it’s been this personal, this… antagonistic.
“If I’d known what was going on in this house—the extent of what Michelle inflicted on you and what Marcus allowed—I would’ve moved hell and earth to get you out of here. You know I would’ve.”
The pain and disgust aimed at himself that echo in his voice soften my heart, and I dip my chin.
“I do know. That’s why I didn’t tell you. He was your best friend. And as confusing as it sounds—shit, it doesn’t make sense to me—I didn’t want him to be without you. Michelle is a selfish, self-serving bitch, completely out for herself. She didn’t love him for real. And he didn’t let me get close to him. After losing Mom, all he had was you. So, no, I couldn’t tell you, but knowing you would’ve knocked all this shit over if I had was enough.”
His heavy breaths punctuate the room like deep gouges. He lowers his head, his chest lifting and falling. The internal struggle is all over him. Because of the man he is, I know he’s battling his own guilt, a sense of betrayal, and even maybe some disgust. This is my real father figure; he’s the reason I understand affection and relationship.
“I don’t blame you, Sam,” I murmur.
“Maybe you should.”
“Well, if you were going to make this about you, I would’ve kept this shit to myself.”
His head snaps up, and when I smile at him, his flattened mouth and narrowed eyes soften. With a soft snort, he shakes his head. And though the shame lingers in his gaze, so does resignation. And acceptance.
For now, the storm has passed. But this is Sam. He isn’t done with himself. Not by a long shot.
“You’ll have security with you wherever you go. That’s not up for discussion. I’m going to personally provide it so I can be sure they’re trustworthy and capable,” he says.