Page 50 of House Rules
She looks scared.
I don’t get it. By now she ought to be more comfortable around us. She should understand our game and be sassing us every chance she gets.
Although ideally, if I had my way, she should be on her knees by now, begging for my cock so I can win this little game and finally fuck her the way I have been dreaming about since the one and only time I’ve been between her legs.
Unbidden, the memory of bruised skin and transparent excuses pops up and makes me frown. Maybe it’s not us Phoenix is scared of. I follow her gaze, trying to find whatever it is she’s looking for, but I just see the same eclectic clientele as always—a mix of locals and tourists, old and young, the high-rollers and the desperate.
Nothing stands out as a likely reason for her fear.
“Come on.” I grab her hand and lead her away. We’re going back up to the suite.
When we get there, Storm, Atticus, and Maverick are sitting on the couch, looking as though they’ve been in deep discussion. More than likely they’ve been plotting how the fuck one of them is going to take my prize from me.
The only answer to that is from my cold, dead fucking hands. I love my brothers, but I swear to all that’s holy—and unholy—that I am winning this game. I’ll happily share her later, but not until after I claim what is mine.
“What are we doing tonight?” Maverick asks.
“The same thing we do every night, pinky,” Atticus says, and Storm cracks a smile, which is as close to laughter as he’s gotten recently.
“I was actually thinking we should take out the boat,” I say.
“Man, no,” Maverick whines, laying back on the couch. “I don’t want to bring any more of the hookers or strippers or whatever on the boat, because when I’m done with them, they’re stuck there. I mean, I could throw them overboard, but that seems extreme, even for us.”
Atticus laughs at Maverick’s not-a-joke, but I ignore it.
“No hookers. Just the five of us. I need a night away from the bullshit, away from people and?—”
“Your daddy issues?” Maverick finishes for me.
I answered with a single finger. He fucking smirks in response, like he sees through my shit.
He does see through my shit. We all do; that’s part of the reason we’re so tight. Nothing comes between us, least of all our parents.
I’m sure it’s very difficult to build an empire like Titan-Wynn, but we didn’t exactly hit the jackpot with our parents.
Atticus’s mother is a manipulative narcissist, while his father is her controlling, gaslighting counterpart. He uses us to hide from his parents’ bullshit, but it’s never a permanent reprieve. With their primary estate here in Savannah, they’re always just a bit too close for comfort.
Storm’s relationship with his parents is equally fraught. His mother is casually vicious—her ceaseless picking and judgment rendering him a disappointment over and over.
We try to keep Storm with us as much as possible, not giving his mother an opportunity to get him alone.
His dad may have simply been more preoccupied with the business of Titan-Wynn than raising his son, but his mother took a fiendish pleasure in berating him, breaking him down, and even abusing him. I often wonder if she takes the anger she has for Storm’s father out on the son who looks so much like him.
And then there’s my dad. The head of Titan-Wynn, he’s a shrewd, calculating asshole who has always expected me to be just like him. He’s short on praise and big on correction, and we’ve been at loggerheads since I hit puberty.
“Really man,” Maverick says with a bright smile, “ I think you need to see a therapist about those daddy issues.”
“I’ll get over my daddy issues when you get over your mommy issues,” I toss back, my tone purposefully light but pointed.
Maverick’s mother is his only sore spot. He believes completely that she left because he wasn’t good enough. It’s not the normal guilt most kids frombroken families deal with, but something deeper and more difficult to break free of. His mother actually told him she was leaving because he couldn’t be good, the psychotic, money-grubbing cunt.
The levity drains from Maverick’s face, and his jaw tightens as he stares daggers at me.
If anyone else had said something like that to him, they’d have been laid out on the floor. I get away with it only because he’s my brother, the same way he’s one of the few who can get away with saying shit to me.
“So,” Atticus says, breaking the tension. “The boat?”
“Yeah, sunset is at six p.m. tonight. Let’s head out about five-thirty?” I say.
