Page 78 of The Tallest Tower (Underbelly Enchanted)

“It’s been hours,” I argue. Though I swear, I have no energy to put into my protest. “You’re being mean.”

“It’s gonna be hours more.” He changes the pressure of his massage and keeps me captive under his seductive touch. “And I’m not being mean, I’m running a fuckin business. I don’t appreciate men owing me money and avoiding their obligations.” His eyes burn hot, his temper alight, but his lips twitch to diffuse the direction our conversation could go. “But you don’t like talking business. When are you leaving?”

He’s like a puppy, bouncing from one topic to the next.

“What?”

“Tomorrow,” he clarifies. “You won’t stay, Christabelle. We both know you won’t. And now you know about the unlocked doors, so…” hemoves his tongue along my calf muscle and hums. “After breakfast?”

“Do youwantme to leave after breakfast?”

“No.”

“Before breakfast, then?”

“Nuh-uh.” Another kiss. “I want you to stay forever. But you’re free now.” He peeks across and looks into my eyes from beneath long, thick lashes. “Lunchtime?”

“Maybe lunchtime.” Why does my heart ache when I consider freedom now, when so recently, it was the only thing I wanted? “Can I have my laptop and phone back?”

He sniggers, like his thieving ways are cute. “They’re in my closet. First drawer on the left. Also not locked.”

Releasing my foot and pushing our still-heaped plates aside, he crawls along my body, his bare chest gliding over my skin and his eyes boring into mine. “If you can have your stuff back and I don’t interfere with your contact with the outside world,” he rests part of his weight on me; not all of it, not even close, but enough so I know he’s got me trapped, “will you stay longer?” He drops a kiss to the center of my lips. “That way, you can still work and socialize, and I won’t have to watch you leave.”

“Have you considered therapy to discuss your fear of abandonment?”

He pushes up, his brows pinching tight in interest. “What?”

“Well,” my curling lips tease. “It doesn’t take a psych degree to recognize you could benefit from talking to someone.” I look to his chest. To the million tiny scars that cover his skin—not only there, but all over his back, too. His shoulders. His stomach. “Who hurt you?”

He follows my gaze, and inhales when I run the tips of my fingers along the imperfections. “Who did this to you, Felix?”

He rests his weight on one arm, freeing his left hand to take mine and steer the tips of my fingers to his lips. “Anyone who was bigger than me, Darling. Anyone who had permission from my father.”

“Like your brothers?” I feel his pain in my heart. His helplessness. His desire for someone to love him the way they should. But his mother was taken from him, and his father was the cruelest of men. “Did your brothers hurt you?”

“No.” He opens his mouth and suckles on the ends of my fingers. “We protected each other. No matter what. No matter what Tim had us do, or what he said, or what he wanted, we never turned on each other.”

“You really love them, don’t you?” I try, so desperately hard, to rewrite what I know about these men. The dirty cop who may not be totally dirty, and the unwilling heir, Timothy the Third. I try to reimagine the Malone brothers, not as the monsters I thought I knew them to be, but as five siblings forced to fight, or die. “You were always a team?”

He nods, his eyes sad. But then he shakes his head and drops to the side so the mattress bounces,. He sweeps me up and doesn’t stop moving until my ear rests on his chest and my leg splays across his thighs, then he settles, placing his hand on my hip and his chin on my head. “We were a team until Cato was born. That was the start of the end for us.”

“Cato?” My pulse jumps. “Why was that the end?”

“Because his mother was so young,” he sighs. “The girl’s death, so needless. She was the first one we saw die, since we were all too young to realize what was happening to our own mothers. Then the baby was tossed to us to raise, while Tim just… kept on keeping on.” He draws a pattern into my hip, almost absentmindedly. “He raped my girlfriend that day. And it wasn’t long after that he took Arch’s girlfriend and did the same to her.”

“Doctor Mayet?” I push up to search his eyes. “Tim hurt Doctor Mayet?”

He scoffs. “Fuck no. Arch is married to Minka now, but he was seeing a different girl back then. Jill. He was always the most defiant of us all—or maybe the bravest,” he considers out loud. “He was still able to love. So even after everything that happened with Cato’s mother and with Savannah, Arch loved that girl… until Tim took her and ended it.”

My eyes burn with grief for a child I never knew. For thefivechildren I’ve worked tirelessly to bury for months. Years, even. “He killed Jill?”

Felix drags his bottom lip between his teeth and nods. “He ordered it. We could have nothing. We could love no one. Or Tim would destroy them. Which is why…” He looks down at his scarred chest and firms his jaw. “We loved each other. The five of us. We shielded each other, even when he punished us for it.”

“But you protected them the most, didn’t you?” Tears form in my eyes and sit in my lashes. “You protected everyone, and he hurt you for it.”

He merely nods. Short. Silent. Final. “After Tim hurt Cato’s mom, shit began fracturing. That’s when we truly knew the world we were in. We knew what would happen if—when—we disobeyed. But Archer still loved Jill. He thought he could save her.”

“And when he couldn’t,” I whisper, his pain slicing my heart open, “you shielded him.”

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