Page 5 of Prodigal

“You are trespassing,” Heath told him in a haughty tone, one reserved for men with more money than sense. Who thought they held power until rudely disabused of the notion. “You have no idea?—”

Gideon lifted his hand and with a flick of his wrist, he slit Heath’s throat. He didn’t bother moving out of the way of the arterial spray, so his suit got bloodied. Heath’s eyes went wide and he grabbed at his throat, making a gurgling sound as he collapsed onto his knees. Gideon nudged him onto his back with a kick to his shoulder.

Then he stood at the podium and gestured as he spoke into the mic. “Esteemed members of The Council, please take your seats.”

“Do you know what you’ve done?” Joseph Morrow. He used to golf with Gideon’s father. Ten-year-old Gideon remembered him being a nice man. Adult Gideon knew of his hunger for young flesh. He was way older now, inching closer to his grave every day.

“Who are you?” Prislaya Chopra. She’d taken her seat after Gideon had been exiled, but he knew her secrets. Knew of her sadistic streak and unquenchable blood lust. She didn’t flinch when the gun at her head dug into her scalp. “What do you hope to gain from this?”

“Clearly, you know who we are.” Ennis Canto. “You have to know you will not walk out of here alive.” He’d taken his place on The Council by proxy, the husband of Virginia Canto, who’d inherited from her father. She’d died giving birth to Ennis’s only daughter and heir.

“I know who you are, yes.” Flanked by Samir and Kaleb, with Marco and Will at his back, Gideon met the gaze of every one of those members. “But you also know me.” He smiled. “Or haveheard of me.” Hands in his pockets, he ignored the body at his feet and rocked back on his heels. “When I was thirteen, you came for my life and took my mother’s instead. You didn’t relent, though. You kept coming until my father faked my death and sent me away. His death brought me back, and I have to say…” He grinned at the confusion on their faces. “You don’t look happy to see me.”

“What are you saying?” Chinh Dang, the only other woman on The Council. “What is your name?”

“My name is Gideon Winters. I have come to claim what’s rightfully mine.”

A riot of voices rang out.

“Impossible!”

“He’s dead!”

One of them shot to his feet, mouth hanging open, only to be shoved back into his seat by the man holding the gun to his head.

“I don’t believe it for a second.”

“Imposter!”

Gideon chuckled. “I would think there’d be more of a welcome for the prodigal’s return.”

3

André stareddown at the phone in his hand. Resentment was a living thing inside him, eating him alive. Curling his fingers around the phone, he pressed his lips together and closed his eyes briefly to calm himself down.

The resentment hurt only him. The man who inspired that feeling—and all his negative feelings—would never witness it. He probably wouldn’t bat an eye even if he stood in front of André now…which would never happen.

Lashes lifting, he glared at the phone screen. It was that time of the month. Time when his bank alerted him that his account balance was another fifty thousand dollars richer. The money had started coming when he’d turned nineteen, two days after his mother died. A day after the first fifty thousand dollars showed up, he learned the identity of his father. Watching the man’s face on TV, reading about him on the internet, was the closest André would ever come to meeting his father. The man didn’t want him, and André had never felt that rejection, that abandonment, as acutely as the day his stupid,stupidass decided to travel to where he’d read his father lived.

He’d been in search of a connection, someone to make the pain of losing his mother a bit more bearable. He hadn’t even made it farther than the airport in D.C. before someone bumped into him, yanked him into a dark corner, and told him to leave and never come back. That his father wanted nothing to do with him.

“Go the fuck home, boy. He wants nothing to do with you.”

He rubbed his chest. Those words would forever be stamped across his forehead.

“Dré! Dré, are you listening to me?”

He jerked his head up at the shout and shoved his phone into his pocket as he spun around to smile at Juliette. “I’m listening.”

She squinted at him, those older-than-her-years eyes of hers calling bullshit. She rolled closer in her wheelchair. “Are you done? Ready to go home?”

Every evening he took his sister out to the basketball courts in the park near their home so she could hoop. She loved playing shoot-around with him, something they’d started when their mother passed on; she would’ve never allowed it. Jules had lost permanent use of her legs after a serious illness as a toddler, before she’d entered their lives via adoption. Their mother died when Jules was seven, and she’d preferred to keep her daughter locked up in the house, wrapped in cotton wool and bubble wrap for good measure. But Jules was about to be fifteen, and André loved watching her eyes light up with every basket she made. He loved the way she glowed when the neighborhood kids would drift over to them and play with her, talking trash and treating her like any other person.

Because she was.

He tucked a stray curl behind her ear—the one with the three piercings, another thing that had occurred fairly recently. “I’m good if you’re good.” He eyed her up and down, then pulled a bottle of water from the pack he always carried with him. “Youdo look a bit tired.” He handed her the water and retrieved a towel to wipe her forehead. She snatched the towel away with a dirty look, wiping her face and then handing it back along with the water.

“I’m hungry. Can we have pizza?”

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