Page 86 of Breaking Ophelia
Basement parking. They throw me in the back of a matte black van. The doors close and the dark is almost total. It’s cold, the steel ribs of the chassis biting through thin cotton.
We drive.
They don’t talk. They don’t even look at me, unless you count the reflection in the rearview. I do. The driver is glassy-eyed, scar on his chin, the kind of man who likes pain but never shows it. The guy riding shotgun has a ring with a sapphire set in a lion’s mouth.
Fifteen minutes out, we leave the main road for a private drive. Trees line both sides, branches skeletal, arching over us like the ribs of a dead god. The tires crunch gravel, then stop.
The road to my house.
The cold hits me hardest as they pull me out. One on each elbow, feet skidding, ripping on the stones, they move me up marble steps and through a set of French doors the size of a cargo container. No sound inside but the drip of a faucet and the thud of my heels on stone. They don’t bother with ceremony or restraint, just haul me up another flight and throw me into the only room with a light on.
It’s his office.
I’ve been here before, but never like this. Never as prisoner, always as his son, which is its own kind of slavery.
Nothing has changed since I left to the Academy. It’s black walnut and leather, the air thick with expensive scotch and the death of a thousand cigars. The walls are lined with blades—some ancient, some modern, all gleaming, all positioned at eye-level like they’re watching you back. There are no books in this study. My father doesn’t need words, just weapons.
He’s behind the desk, posture perfect, hands steepled. The only light is a green-banked lamp throwing sickly arcs across the carpet. The rest is shadow.
He doesn’t look up at first, just taps a finger on the desk, slow and even, like a metronome for his own heartbeat.
The guards drop me in the visitor’s chair and step back, hands folded. They know their place. I look at him, but he lets the silence rot for a full minute before he moves.
“Son.”
His voice is quiet, but the fury behind them is sharp. Never above a murmur, never at a loss for authority.
“Dad.” My own voice sounds childish in this room, but I refuse to sit up straight for him.
He studies me, eyes trailing the bruises on my jaw, the bite mark at my shoulder from Ophelia. He notices everything. He always has.
“I see you’re not dressed. For shame, it’s almost 11. Perhaps giving you the position you have as my heir was a mistake. Judging by the report I received from Abelard, that certainly appears the case. You humiliated the Board.” He says it like a diagnosis, not a judgment. “You humiliated me.”
I don’t respond. He doesn’t want my words, he wants obedience, and I’m fresh out.
“You could have been anything,” he says. “We set you up for legacy. Tradition. Strength. And you choose to piss it all away for a girl.”
He says “girl” like it’s a slur, like it’s a parasite in the bloodline.
I roll my head back, fix my eyes on the chandelier above him.He can’t possibly forget that THEY chose her for me. What the fuck did they expect?“You want to skip to the part where you threaten me, or are we doing the long version?”
He ignores it. He always ignores me.
“There are rules, Caius. Rules that were written in blood, forged over centuries of sacrifice. Every time a Montgomery son fucks up, it takes two generations to repair the damage. You had the fast track, one that I had to kill my own father for. All you had todo was abide by the Law of the Night Hunt and all of this would have been yours.”
He stands, one hand braced on the desk. The lamp casts his face in half-shadow, half-blade. He’s handsome, but only in the way a knife is handsome. All geometry, all killing edge.
“You think the Vicious Kings respect you, after what you pulled? You think the Board will ever let you near a seat? You have no allies now. No future.”
He circles the desk, slow, every step measured. He’s not a big man, but he fills the room.
“You will go back,” he says, “and you will finish the ritual. You will give them what they want, and after the offspring is produced you will never see that girl again.”
I stand. The guards twitch, but don’t move.
“I’m not your puppet.”
He laughs. It’s a low, beautiful sound. “Of course you are. That’s what sons are for. Your brother thought the same, and that’s why he’s buried next to your mother in the wild fields.”
