Page 60 of Ruthless Reign

Hardin moved, dragging his mother behind him, sensing what was about to happen.

“Tryin’ to talk to the senator,” Da tsked, wagging his finger back and forth as if scolding a child.

“Talkin’ to the pigs.”

The Sons in attendance oinked like a pack of starving hogs, laughing haughtily.

“And talkin’ to your old pals,” Da finished. “Tryin’ to get ’em to stand against me.”

Damien lost a year’s worth of sun on his skin in an instant. “I don’t?—”

“Don’t deny it,” Da snapped, pacing the sand like a fucking panther toying with his kill. “You’re better than that.”

The glint of mad fury was clear in his eyes as he tapped the side of his gun against his temple.

“I warned you what would happen, Damien.”

He stopped pacing, shoulders rising and falling with anticipatory breaths as he breathed in the scent of fear on the breeze. A sour sweetness. A poison he’d become all but immune to himself. It was why he’d never been beaten. Without fear, there was nothing he wasn’t willing to do. To sacrifice.

Damien opened his mouth to say something else, but my da waved his gun hand toward me, speaking before he could. “Have you met my son, Aodhán?”

No.

It wasn’t either possibility I thought it could be when Da ordered me to attend the meet and blow my cover. I didn’t see this. How had I not seen this coming?

Of course.

My cover ceased to be important to my father the moment he started to question my loyalty. He’d been overly suspicious since Gilligan’s Finch went up in a blaze of white hot glory, taking its inhabitants with it.

An accident, the news outlets said.

An accident, I’d echoed. One that happened before we could collect their dues.

Had he gone and dug up Patrick and Brian’s vacant graves?

Did he already know?

Or did he only guess?

Hardin’s black eyes snapped to me, something like recognition flaring in their depths. He may not have recognized me, but somehow…somehow he recognized my name.

My da continued to hold his arm out to me and I approached at the wordless request. He clapped me on the back, and I went rigid at the sting of the wounds in my back, biting my tongue to keep from making a sound or betraying any proof of pain. Just like he taught me.

“Clearly Damien here needs to bleed a little more before he’ll fully understand the situation,” Da said in a conspiratorial whisper loud enough for all to hear.

“Son,” Da said and each word that followed were sharp prods toward the end of the tightrope I balanced on. “Take one of this Saint’s sons as punishment.”

And then I knew. It didn’t matter what my da thought he knew or didn’t know because right now? Right now he was going to make me prove my allegiance. Here and now. With the Saints and his closest men bearing witness. And if I failed…

If I failed he would do to me what he would do to any one of his soldiers who betrayed him. He would prove his ruthlessness by snuffing out the threat to his reign. Even if that threat came from his own blood.

“No!” Damien’s wife screamed, trying and failing to shove through her hulk of a son. Kaleb joined his brother, but where Hardin stood stoically holding his mother back, Kaleb whispered words of reassurance to her that I couldn’t hear. But whatever he said had the intended effect, and she settled for slinging curses at my father, cursing the ground beneath his feet instead of trying to attack.

Damien’s calculating gaze slid from my father to me, and I knew he wouldn’t allow this to happen quietly. There was an edge to him. And I had no doubts he meant to go straight for the throat.

“I’m not heartless,” Da continued as Damien’s men whispered and shifted, trying to put themselves between Hardin and Kaleb and us. “I’ll take the younger of the two. Leave you with your first born.”

Damien lunged.

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