Page 7 of The Tallest Tower (Underbelly Enchanted)

One that’ll never have a marker to honor the dead.

A plot with four others for company.

Five women have birthed five Malone sons. But not one of them lived to tell the tale.

“Take her to my office,” Tim points to another soldier, though we all know‘her’means Savannah. Then he looks me in the fucking eyes, despite Archer’s guard, and smirks. “You will never tell me no, boy.”

“You shot him!” Archer vibrates with a rage deeper, darker, than my own. “You shot your own son!”

“I’ll do whatever the fuck I want with my sons.” He stalks closer, stopping only two feet from us. “I will whore them out,” he sneers. “Sell them, if the price is right. And then I will slit their fucking throats while they sleep.”

He swings out fast and slaps Archer with an open palm, the clap echoing all the way into the trees. Then grabbing him by the throat and lifting him until he stands on the tips of his toes, Tim smiles when Archer’s breathing turns gurgled and broken.

“I will do whatever I want. Whenever I want. With whomever I want.” He squeezes, the knuckles of his hand turning white, while Archer’s face turns a dangerous puce red. “I’ll fuckyourgirl too.” He flashes a wicked smile and makes a show of looking around at our gathering, past his soldiers and through the yard that’s large enough we neverneedto leave our own property. “Where is that sweet girl, anyway?”

“Fuck,” Archer bites out with no oxygen, his larynx no doubt bruised, “you.”

Tim releases him with a shove, pushing him back until he slams to my chest, then he grabs Savvy’s wrist and turns his back on us, like he’s not afraid of a Malone rebellion.

Which, I guess, he has no reason to be. The way he treats his sons is not new, and to date, none of us have stood up to him in any real, significant way.

“Let’s get inside.” Micah steers me to the right, his touch a painful reminder of the bullet that passed through my arm only a moment ago.

He wants to bring us to safety. Away from the smoking guns and into the house before Tim shoots off another round. But my eyes are stuck on Savvy. On the tears she cries in silence, and to her hand trapped in Tim’s beefy grip, fighting for the freedom she’ll never again have.

Her father is dead, and her body is ready to accept a man’s.

Even if she doesn’t want it.

“I said let’s go!” Micah yanks me around and drags me toward the front steps of our massive multi-story home.

The baby whines like he knows we’re leaving his mother dead and dumped outside, already fighting against the injustices he’ll forever have to endure.

This is his lot in life, now that he’s a Malone heir.

“Felix!” Savvy screams for me, crying out from the other side of the house, like she thinks I can save her. “Felix?—”

“Keep walking.” Micah pushes me up the stairs. Away from the girl my heart beats for, and into the house that has no heart at all. “You go out there, you die.”

“He’s going to hurt her.” My eyes water and swell. They sting to the same beat as the ache in my heart. “He’ll kill her.”

“She’s already dead,” Archer rasps out, coming up the stairs behind us. “It’s too late.”

“Felix!” Savvy cries out again, her despair as tangible as the tiles I step on. “Please, no. Please, Mr. Malone, I don’t?—”

“Stop listening.” Tim hands Archer the baby the way a man would pass a football, then drags me through the house and into the kitchen.

Slamming my ass to a stool on one side of the counter, he strides to the opposite side and fills a glass with water from the tap.

“The bullet passed straight through,” he bites out, setting the drink by my elbow and bending to get a first aid kit from the cupboard beneath the thick quartz countertop. “It hit the fucking house,” he adds, like he could hear my silent ‘how do you know?’

“It’s time to fuck off out of here.” Archer stalks to the pantry and takes out baby bottles and formula. The supplies Timothy acquired,knowing he’d murder the baby’s mother the moment Cato left the womb.“I can’t live like this.”

He sets Cato on the counter, eliciting a screech from the child laid flat on a freezing surface. But he ignores the baby and places the opening of the bottle beneath a stream of hot water before adding powder to it.

Micah steps around him and snags a bottle of vodka from the pantry and sets it down beside Tim’s elbow.

“I can’t be in this world anymore,” Archer mutters.

---