Page 55 of Savage Heart

I watch as he turns and slowly walks out of Helix’s office, leaving me standing there in disbelief. After all the fights between the two of us, he finally did what I always wanted him to do.

He gave in.

So why does it feel like I’ve been exiled again?

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Alaric

“Mark that down in the book of things I never thought I’d see.”

I give Helix a side eye glance as he walks past me and frowns. “I guess nowhere is safe from Maddox Rule.”

My uncle sits on the edge of his desk and folds his arms across his chest. “I’m sorry about your brother, Alaric. Whatever bad blood there was between you is water under the bridge now that he’s gone.”

I shrug, not really feeling anything at all about Sebastian’s death. “I kill people for a living. Death is a part of life. It is what it is.”

Helix levels a disapproving gaze on me. “Finished with the clichés? That’s your brother you’re talking about, and as you and I both know, if your father looks that torn up, your mother must be a mess. Her oldest son is dead, Alaric. Have some fucking compassion.”

“Since when are you all about family you don’t like? Maddox Rule sent you into exile here. It’s a nice place and all, but you had to leave your entire life behind when he and your other brothers decided you couldn’t live back in Connecticut anymore. I guess enough time has passed that you don’t hold a grudge anymore? Well, I don’t forget that easily.”

He rolls his eyes and walks around me to sit behind his desk. “I didn’t leave my entire life anywhere. Kerry was with me, and that’s all that mattered. I haven’t given a damn about your father or the rest of them up there for years. Then again, none of them died. Sebastian may not have been anyone you gave a damn about once you left that world, but you still care about your mother, don’t you?”

Now it’s my turn to be irritated. “You seem to be slow walking me toward something. How about you just spit it out so I can be fully pissed off this afternoon?”

“Fine. I’ve considered you like a son since the day you arrived here, so I’m going to talk to you like a father now. You need to go to the funeral. Whatever the problem is between you and your father isn’t going to disappear, and no one expects it to. Christ, I don’t even think he expects that. But you need to go for your mother.”

Confused by his interest in seeing me go to my brother’s funeral, a brother I never liked, I sit down in one of his office chairs and ask, “Is this part of that Willow Rule being the Rule everyone like the most? Because you’ve rarely mentioned her in all the years I’ve been here.”

Helix shrugs. “I don’t mention a lot of people I’m in contact with. In fact, I’d guess I don’t mention the vast majority of them. That doesn’t change the fact that missing your brother’s funeral hurts her and your siblings more than it hurts your father.”

“In contact with? What the hell does that mean?”

A smile spreads across his lips as he shakes his head. “You didn’t think when you came here that no one from back home was going to want to know you’re okay, did you? Maddox and I may not be close, but like most other people in the world, I’ve never been able to be truly cruel to Willow. She’s called every month like clockwork to find out how you are. Mothers are like that, Alaric.”

I stare across the desk at him, stunned at this news. All this time my mother’s been in touch with Helix to find out if I’m okay?

“Why didn’t she just call me?”

“I assume she didn’t want to intrude,” he casually answers. “I think your mother felt a fair amount of guilt about you having to leave home because of what happened. She’s had all her kids there with her but you, so naturally, she’d want to know you’re safe here.”

Leave it to my mother to call the villain of the family to check up on me. I bet she’d go to Satan himself if she wanted to know one of her kids was safe.

Blowing the air out of my lungs, I try to wrap my head around going back there. “I went to the estate a week ago and I swear it was like nothing had changed. I don’t know if I can go back now and be what I should be in the Rule family.”

Helix smiles. “Nothing changed then, but everything’s changed now. Nobody’s saying you need to set yourself up in one of the bedrooms and eat three square meals in the dining room for the rest of your days. You can go back and be there for your mother and your siblings, though.”

“What about Sienna? The cops are going to be looking for her wherever she goes. I won’t let them take her in for her brother’s murder.”

“Then I’ve got good news for you. From what Gideon told me earlier today, her family is claiming a rival crime family killed Matteo Rossetti. Nobody’s looking for her at all, it seems.”

That makes me laugh out loud. “A rival crime family? Who’s believing that? The guy got killed with a pair of goddamned scissors to the jugular. Who the hell thinks any professional is killing someone like that?”

My uncle’s grin widens. “See, that’s the key. I don’t think they’re telling anyone he was killed that way. It serves the family’s purpose to claim a rival family was behind his death, so I bet the cause of death is a shot to the head.”

I chuckle at the insanity of that. “So a cover up because they don’t want to admit someone got to him the way Sienna did. Whatever works.”

“Gideon also tells me from what he hears, none of her remaining brothers have any interest in having her back there with them. I think she’s going to be safe.”

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