Page 13 of Justyce
“With your dad.”
Acheron snaps me out of my thoughts with those three words and I feel the tension shift within the room.
“What?”
“You heard me,” Acheron states. “We don’t make the rules… yet.”
Closing my eyes, I attempt to assuage the raging bull inside of me. But there is no placating those emotions. They have bled through every cell in my body, those feelings that have long festered and lay dormant, yet ready to attack.
Running my hand through my blonde tassels and heaving a sigh, I turn to my brothers and feel my lips kick up at the sides. “Key word, brothers,yet.”
With that I turn on my heel, push the mask back over my face and head out the office. The music thuds as I step down the staircase and make my way back into the club.
Opening the door, the humid air envelopes me and all I can smell is fucking alcohol and sex in the air. God damn it. My eyes flicker to the BDSM stage and I release a heavy sigh. It’s going to be one long fucking night.
I barely register when I pull up to the wrought iron gate of my parents’ ostentation mansion and swipe my security card through the system.
Drumming my fingers across the steering wheel, I listen as the gate whines open to welcome me into the dragon’s den.
The cobblestone driveway winds around massive forest land until finally the mansion comes into view. My dad wasn’t stupid when he had this place built, it’s like fort Knox and security is tighter than a nun’s cunt. I pity the fools who unsuccessfully attempted to raid my father’s domain, and the future ones who will no doubt try. Let’s just say they didn’t leave here in one piece.
Shaking the meandering thoughts from my mind, I pull around the monstrosity of a fountain in the center of the drive and switch off the ignition. My head hits the back of the leather seat and I reach my hands up to my temples and begin to rub. I can already feel the headache transpiring within and I haven’t even stepped foot into my father’s domain.
I sit in the car for god knows how long, wrestling with myself to get my lame ass inside to deal with my father but my legs won’t move.
A loud squeal steals me from my ruminations. I roll my eyes when I see my mother trotting down the many stairs that lead to the front door.
Her white lacy nightgown billows around her and I can already tell she’s drunk. Hell, when isn’t she?
I step out of the car before she reaches the bottom and hold up my hand. “Mom, wait, I’m coming.”
My mother, Katerina Travino, stands on the second from the bottom row waiting for me, and that’s when I realize a glass is in her hand. I get it, married to my father for thirty odd years would send any sane person to drink, but it still drives a knife through my heart when I see her once vibrant face sallow and sunken. She’s still flawlessly beautiful, just damaged. She reminds me of a beautiful glass swan that’s been broken too many times and put back together. She’s whole but the cracks still show.
Forcing a smile on my face, I walk up the dark grey cobblestone stairs until I reach her. “Hey ma, how are you?”
Mom lifts her free hand and brushes it down my stubble face. Her soft graphite eyes so much like my own stare back at me with so many things to say, yet she doesn’t.
“Hey baby, better now that you’re here. Come on in. Jelena has made that dish you love.”
I smirk. “Which dish, ma? You know I love every Croatian dish she makes.”
She laughs and her eyes twinkle in the moonlight but the melancholy hangs heavy in the air. Mom has always tried to shelter me from my dad’s nefarious ways, yet I fear I am exactly the same. After all, I’m cut from the same cloth.
I reach for her hand and squeeze before releasing it. “Let’s get you inside. It’s freezing and you’re barely wearing anything.”
“You’re lucky I even have anything on. You know I hate clothes, Justyce.”
I shake my head and make my way to the front door. The ancient lamp posts stand on either side of the stairway lighting the way to the entrance of the monstrosity that is my parents’ house. I don’t call this place a home because it’s anything but.
I’m well aware of my parents’ indiscretions, more so my father than my mother, but that’s beside the point. This house has always been a means to an end, with my father cracking a fat smile, knowing that people cower from him when they see how powerful he is, even if he sits behind his big old oak desk and pulls each marionette string so he doesn’t need to get his hands dirty. My father, Draconis, is a fucking full fledge narcissist.
My feet reach the top of the stairs and I hear my mother’s heels clicking behind me. Why the fuck she wears heels with a nighty I’ll never know.
The foreboding and over the top looming red door comes into view and I sneer at it. Red is my color, regardless of what my father wants to believe.
My mother darts in front of me and pushes the door open and spins back to me with a smile in place. “Your father is in his cave.” She rolls her eyes. “Go see him and then come and find me before you leave and we can eat a little and talk.”
I know the last thing I’m going to want to do after I’ve spoken to Draconis is talk but I’ll indulge my mother.
