Page 3 of The Tallest Tower (Underbelly Enchanted)

“But—”

“Have you bled yet, Savvy?” His eyes cut past me, to the girl who clings to my hand. “Gotten your period?”

“Uh… y-yes,” she stammers. “This year.”

He sneers and brings his attention back to me. “Get. Her. Out. If you care about her at all, you’ll keep her away.”

I jump when the woman at the end of the hall screams again. Guttural and painful, like they’re torturing her.

Which, I guess, they are.Seventeen years old and spitting a baby out of her underage cunt has gotta hurt.

“Go!” Tim pushes us toward the stairs. “And don’t bring her back.”

“Come on.” I reaffirm my grip around Savvy’s hand and start walking. Then that walk turns to a run.

Because he’s not wrong, and the girl currently having a baby is running out of time. Her screams turn to tears, and the wails of a newborn fill the space left behind.

“Let’s go into the trees.” I jog down the stairs two at a time and risk my neck and hers. But I hold her up when she stumbles, and sling her around when we reach the next landing.

“Is Tim gonna tell your dad?” Her voice crackles with nerves. “Felix? Is he gonna?—”

“No.” I swing from the second floor and start down the final set ofstairs, my heart sprinting and adrenaline swimming in my veins. “He won’t say shit.” I burst onto the ground floor and slam to the wall of the hallway, jumping with a squeak when I find Micah standing with his back to the wall opposite.

His shoulders are pressed to the plaster, his ankles crossed. He holds a bag of chips in one hand, while the other is dug deep into the packet as he selects his next bite.

He’s younger than me, barely, but he’s the quiet one. Introspective.

Unlike me, and unlike Archer, he has never,wouldnever, bring a woman into this house.

Probably makes him smarter than us.

“The baby here yet?” he asks.

“Yep.” I tug Savvy behind me again, though I know she doesn’t need to be protected from my brother. Our chests heave, our breath, racing in sync. “I heard the kid crying a second ago.”

Micah nods slowly. Thoughtfully. Then he looks to his watch as though to check the date and time. “That makes five. You think he’ll stop now?”

“I don’t fuckin know.” I push away from the wall and pull Savvy along the hall and toward the front door.

We just have to get outside. Into the sunlight. We have to find freedom, then this might become the day I actually listen to my brothers and stop bringing girls—thisgirl—around a home she’s not safe in.

“I’m going into the trees,” I call back for Micah’s ears only. “Stay out of Tim’s way. You know how he gets.”

“Does it ever get confusing?” Savvy runs alongside me, her breath racing as we shove through the front door of my family’s home and start instantly to the left.

Guards watch the grounds, their guns longer than my arms. Their eyes shoot our way, to ascertain whether we’re a threat. But when they confirm it’s just me, just a kid who might someday become their boss, they go back to work.

“Felix?” Savvy repeats, our feet thundering against the driveway as we run. “Does it get confusing calling your dad Tim, when your brother is also Tim?”

“No.” I duck around the side of the house and bring her around too,her back slamming to the solid exterior and her lungs emptying on impact.

For a single beat in time, her eyes glaze over. Like hitting the wall has knocked all her sense away. But when I step in, too fuckin grown for my sixteen years, and press my chest to hers, her vision clears and her eyes lock onto mine.

“Tim is my old man. He doesn’t often get the title of Dad or Father. The other Tim is my brother.”

“But they’re the same name.”

“They’re said differently,” I pant, catching up on the oxygen my run used up. Setting my hands on her hips, I lean a little closer, knowing her father and mine are both upstairs and far too busy to notice the things we do. “I say one with hatred. The other, with respect.”

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