Page 146 of Lock Up the Darkness

Fuck.

“You’re lucky I can’t mess up your face!” Sam was roaring as he stood over his son, Killian on his knees, shirtless, blood dripping down his chest and his arms, the injuries there matching the chain wrapped around Sam’s fist.

“Lucky?” Killian rasped, spitting a mouthful of blood on the floor. “Nothing about this is lucky.”

Sam fisted his hand in Killian’s hair and yanked hard, then dragged him right up against him. “You ungrateful shit!”

“Go on,” Killian choked. “Do it. Kill me. End it all. Fucking finally, freedom’s here.”

Jesus Christ.

“Sam,” I boomed, the vehemence of it and the commanding tone sucking all the irate energy out of the room in an instant, and making the abusive fucker still in shock.

He grunted, then stepped back from Killian with obvious reluctance, and turned around.

He looked me up and down standing there leaning against the doorway, my arms folded across my chest, the all-black ensemble casting me in a great deal of ominous shadow.

“Drop the chain.”

“What?”

“You’ve spilled enough blood today.”

He looked down at it, the thing slick with Killian’s blood, and some flesh.

With a growl, he unwrapped it, then tossed it across the room.

“Happy now?”

“Not even close,” I ground out.

“This is between me and my boy, Monroe.”

“Wrong.”

“Excuse me?” he barked, stepping forward.

It didn’t so much as faze me and he noticed, pulling up short, obviously remembering from times past that his aggression would have no effect on me.

“You are on my territory.”

“You little—”

I pushed off the door and persisted in a rumbling tone full of malice, “All the while we’re on Hexwood ground, Killian is mine. My charge. My responsibility. My concern. By the laws of the Infidels that trumps even your mistakenly perceived right as his father to exert influence and power over him. You shouldn’t even be here now. You didn’t ask permission, you didn’t receive an invitation.”

“That little groupie with the pink hair called me squealing about Killian stepping out of line, refusing to date her, and instead busying himself with your whore.”

My eye twitched ever so slightly. I see.

Fortunately, Sam was too ramped up to notice the reaction the reference to a certain groupie of Killian’s had wrought, and he merely went on, “Liza Adams is the daughter of high-profile fashion mogul—”

“I am well aware of who she is.”

“Then why aren’t you handling this issue on your territory?”

“The girl was deemed unsuitable due to her conduct. Conduct that could cast Killian in a bad light should he become publicly associated and linked with her.”

“Bad conduct? What are you talking about? I vetted her. Carson vetted her.”

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