Page 8 of The Tallest Tower (Underbelly Enchanted)

“So what the fuck are you gonna do?” I grab the bottle before Tim can use it to disinfect my wound, and unscrew the lid.

Because I can still hear Savvy’s anguish. The sound I’ll never truly forget.

Tipping it back, I chug until the bitter liquid bites at the bottom of my empty stomach, and pull away with a breathless gasp when the fumes sting my lungs. “You gonna pop him and take the throne? You think you have thecojonesto topple a don?”

“I’m gonna set the city on fire,” he snarls, “and walk away while Timothy burns.”

“Shut up.” Tim—the younger, better one—snatches the liquor from my hand and soaks a bandage with the liquid until it drips. “Both of you. Shut the fuck up.”

“I want to go home!” Savannah cries, her voice coming closer, as though someone may be carrying her through the front door. “Please, Mr. Malone! I want to?—”

“Eyes on me!” Tim grabs my jaw and wrenches my face around until I’m looking into his. “Suck it up,” he orders. “Lock it down.”

“You’d just let him do that to someone you love?” Tears burn my aching eyes, then sizzle on my skin as they fall. “You’d let this happen?”

He shakes his head and slaps the soggy bandage to my arm. “I won’t fall in love, stupid. It’s best you learn from this and bring no one into our world ever again. Micah!” He grabs the squalling baby, and hands it to the third Malone son. “For fuck’s sake, can you shut him up?”

“It’s best he doesn’t.” Archer takes the baby bottle and screws the lid on, squeezing the tip and shaking the whole thing to get water and powder mixing. “Better we listen to him than to her.”

With a groan, I drop my head and harden my heart.

Men talk. A girl cries. Timothy Malone, the man who fathered me, takes a teen to his bedroom and rapes her.

It’s that black and white.

That cold.

That fucking simple.

She was mine, and now she’s his.

And if the world wants to be especially cruel, he’ll impregnate her, and she’ll be the mother to my next brother.

“I’m gonna be sick.” I turn away from the counter and brush Tim’s hands away.

I don’t let him stitch me up, though I know he knows how. We’ve all done it for each other over the years. I don’t let him bandage me up. I don’t even wait for Archer to stuff the rubber teat of a bottle inside a brand-new baby’s mouth. Instead, I slide off the stool and land on aching feet, and while Savvy cries out in despair a floor above, or maybe two or three, I stumble through the kitchen and leave behind those I love.

My brothers, bred to be my competitors, my enemies, if Timothy had his way. But they’re my allies, really. In a war none of us signed up for.

I stride across shiny, Italian stone tiles, and lope across the threshold in the same moment Cato’s mouth is filled with rubber, and Savvy’s with… something else.

The new silence is eerie. Sickening. So I stumble outside and eye the Olympic-sized pool in the middle of our backyard.

I’m a coward. Not a man.

I’ve sacrificed an innocent girl, handing her life over in favor of my own.

I could take my gun up those stairs and make right what’s happening at this exact moment. But that’s not what I do. I’m not brave enough or strong enough to stand up to the army that is my father and his men. Instead, I walk straight off the edge of the patio, over the lip of the pool, and sink beneath the surface of the frigid water so the chlorine stings my eyes and my newfound silence is a relief from the alternative.

I’m no man.

I’m nothing.

I’m Timothy Malone’s second-born son; my very existence, a punishment. But by walking away and leaving Savannah upstairs with a man who takes what’s not readily given, I’ve set myself up for a lifetime of being cursed.

I’m no less a beast for allowing this to happen than he is for owning the hands that bruise her.

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