Page 18 of Midnight Revelations

“I have no interest in a sex slave,” my brother Aaron snapped.

So, I was the only one not offered one of Malcolm’sassets… “It was nice to be invited to the party,” I commented in a lazy tone. “Now I assume that you want me to get rid of the evidence?” I raised an eyebrow in question. Dad stared at me as if his will alone could force me to submit to what he wanted. “Ash…”

“What, Dad?” Jordan taught us to be assholes long ago. “You shit all over your front lawn and then when someone steps in it you can’t stand the smell. This is your mess, not mine.”

His fist slammed into the desk and I refused to react. “This is not about you, this is about our family name!”

“Should you not have thought of that before you started to buy yourself slaves to abuse?” He had always been a demon in human flesh, but this just proved the depths of depravity he had sunk to. He’d taken Michael there with him, and was dragging Oliver along for the ride.

Dad’s face was bright red with bad temper. “I didn’t bring you all here for you to judge me.”

“No, Dad. You brought us here so we could clean up your mess.” My voice was ice cold, my emotions colder than a Siberian winter. “We’re already fucking dealing with the Malcolm fallout, and now this? I’m fucking sick of paying off your mistresses and hiding the children you’ve sired. Sort your own shit out and keep your dick in your pants.”

Aaron stared at me as if he was waiting for Dad to launch himself over his desk and bite me. I was long past caring, considering he had dared to mention Lucrezia in this forsaken place.

Michael laughed. “Are you going to let him talk to you like that, Dad?”

“You sit your ass down,” I grated out. “Does your new girlfriend know you’re indulging in sex slaves?”

It was a low blow, but that fake girlfriend was a police officer and would drag his ass to jail if there was ever any sniff of this type of activity, no matter what deal he had brokered.

“At least I have a girlfriend.” As comebacks went, it was lame for Michael. He was just an angry, twisted little shit with a noose slowly tightening around his neck.

“I guess no one ever gave you the talk, so it falls to me as your older brother,” I said slowly, raising my eyes to meet his. “If you pay them or they pay you, it’s not a relationship. It’s prostitution.”

He tried to attack me, his movements crude and lazy. My hand grasped his throat and every muscle tensed as I pushed forward to pin him to the wall. “You fucking try that again and I will bury you where no one will ever find your rotting corpse. You’ve been pampered your entire life, whereas I have trained every fucking day to become a man that nightmares are made of.” My hand tightened and he struggled against me, his feet kicking my shins.

All my morals evaporated and I became the monster behind the mask of civility. My knee came up and crashed into his balls, my hand held his throat while I punched him repeatedly in the face.

“Enough!” our father roared.

I punched him one last time as an act of rebellion before turning to face the man who sired me. “Men like you make me sick. Those women had families and homes. They had a place they belonged until you decided that it would be fun to break them and rape them.” He opened his mouth to defend himself and I swiped my hand through the air to stop him. “Just because they don’t say no doesn’t mean that they consent.”

Hatred burned in his eyes. We both knew I was right.

“When the news broke about Malcolm, you sat there and lamented what he’d become.” I shook my head. “I can’t fucking believe this.”

“We need your help,” Oliver said in a low tone. “I’m due to be married in a few months and this can’t get out.”

I should have known he would have followed Dad into darkness, considering he had selected an heiress from the list Dad had compiled.

“Why? Do you think Cynthia wouldn’t approve of you having a woman living in the basement that you whipped and fucked when she wasn’t looking?” Fury bubbled through my veins.

“We don’t all get to live the moral high life,” Oliver replied.

“You could have said no,” Aaron said. “I did.”

I lifted a sheet of Dad’s writing paper embossed with our family emblem, writing on it with the pen from my inside pocket, before pushing it across the desk to Dad. “Sign it.”

He glanced at it. “You must be fucking joking.”

I only wish I was, but this was war and I had someone I needed to protect. In this elaborate game, I needed as many debts to call in as possible. “Do I look like I’m joking? You want this sorted, then you do what I say until this is over.”

His back was against the wall, it was the only reason I had been summoned here. Otherwise, Michael would have been left to sort it and make an even bigger mess. Dad glared at his youngest son lying on the floor, trying to stem the blood running from his nose with a tissue. He finally looked at me.

“My father taught me to be the man I am today. His only advice to me was to create a son in our image. I always thought that was Michael, but now I’m not so sure.”

I gave him the terrifying smile that I mastered alongside Xavier and Jordan long ago. “I’m not created in your image, Dad. I aimed higher because power is everything in our world. With a snap of my fingers I can destroy men like you and Malcolm. You taught me how to hate, but I learned how to hone that hate and become an entirely different creature.” I paused and nodded to the page in front of him. “Sign it and I’ll fix your mess, but then I own you.”

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