Page 16 of Choices

It’s making more sense why Cutter was pissed now. Slipping my hands into my pockets, I tap my shoe on the floor and avert my gaze. Knuckles rap on the door, and Callan’s voice calls out. “It’s me.”

Great. Now they can both tell me what a fool I’ve been.

“Come in,” Dad calls out, rounding his desk once more and retaking his seat. The door swings open, and my brother, the younger version of my dad, strides in, the room shrinking at the sheer size of him.

“I came by earlier, but you were busy…” Sensing someone else in the room, he flits his gaze over his shoulder, cutting me with a scathing glare. “What the hell do you have to say for yourself?”

Holding my hand up to stop his rant, I roll my eyes. “Dad’s already given me the lecture. And Cutter, for that matter. If you have an issue with me, don’t send your minions to do the work for you,” I spit out, fed up with everyone taking turns in making me feel like a dick.

“I don’t have the time to come tell you when you fuck up because I always have to find a way to correct your mistakes.”

“Oh, fuck off. When’s the last time I fucked up?”

“Enough,” Dad barks, launching the ball from his desk at the wall. It bounces off with a thwap and hits Callan in the back. The bastard doesn’t even flinch. I would have fallen to the floor like it was a bullet shot from a magnum. “You two still bicker like you’re teenagers.”

“Technically, I am.”

“Enough,” he warns me with a glare. “You messed up bringing a kid back to the club but looks like there’s no harm done. Get rid of him and all is right in the world.”

“You haven’t told him who the fuck he is, have you?” Callan fumes, that annoying muscle in his jaw flexing. Tattling douchebag.

Dad straightens in his chair, steepling his fingers on the desk.

“Nicolas Carnell,” Callan informs him. “Michael Senior’s youngest son.”

Dad shoots to his feet, sending his chair skittering out behind him. My stomach knots. My heart punches wildly against my ribs.

“Kitty, go to your room,” Callan demands.

“Fuck you.”

“Kitty,” Dad barks, not in anger but urgency. Then I notice they’re both looking through me to the screens behind me.

Callan moves so fast I flinch back and raise my hands. He’s never laid a finger on me before, but it’s reflex. He grabs the tops of my arms and holds me in place, still looking over me to the monitors. Turning my head, he ushers me toward the door before I can see what the hell has them spooked. Opening it, he shoves me out and follows. “Go straight to your room. Don’t stop or detour.”

“Or pass go and collect two hundred dollars,” I scoff. “What the hell is going on?”

“Now, Kitty,” Dad orders, joining us in the hallway. “Cops are at the gate. Don’t come out until me or your brother come for you.” I don’t hear the alarm that usually goes off when cops are at the gate, but the strain on his face is enough for me to nod and take off. Something’s happening, and if it’s making Dad and Callan worried, it’s bad. Really bad.

CHAPTER 7

ACCIDENTS HAPPEN

CUTTER

I scour the hallways and every room I pass, searching for the little prick, trying to sniff him out and coming up empty. I’d walked in on too many brothers buck-ass naked for my liking. Diamond is in the kitchen cooking what smells like fried chicken when I stumble in.

With her full face of dated makeup—poufy hair and an apron over her party dress—she looked like something straight out of the fifties if those housewives dressed like an eighties hooker. I grab a piece of the chicken from a wire rack and bite into it, immediately regretting it as the hot grease burns my mouth.

“That’ll teach you for not waiting.” Her bright pink lips crease at the edges, turning up in a snide smirk.

“Have you seen the kid who came back with Kitty?” I ask around a mouthful of white meat.

“Weird choice of company for our Kit, that one,” she muses, rolling a drumstick in flour and dropping it in a pan of bubbling oil, the sizzling like firecrackers going off. “I did see him headdown toward the game room with Claire. About time someone got use out of that equipment.” One dark, drawn-on brow raises.

“Pres’s girl?”

“Yep.”

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