Page 234 of Powerhouse: Boxed Set
“What will you do now? Disown me? Fire me?” I snort. “Kill me?”
He smiled back, coldly, and for once inside I felt something. I felt a shiver of fear. “It’s not yourself you need to worry about. It’s that pretty little Elaine Constantine. If you go near the Constantines again, I’ll make sure she pays for your disloyalty.”
“You won’t touch her. Understand? Fuck you. And fuck Trenton Alto.”
“I can have you fired. Don’t ever doubt it. The board may play with you the way a cat plays with a mouse, but I’m the tomcat who fucks the cat every night.”
“Really, Dad?”
“You get the idea.”
“You were the one showing off a picture of Violent Delights in the goddamn boardroom.”
My father pulled his knife from across the table and offered it to me. “Swear it, then. Swear that you care more about the Morelli family than pussy. Swear to God and the Virgin Mother above.”
The Morelli oath meant less to me than ever. It was a means to an end.It was a lie.
I ran the blade down my palm, slicing deep and true. The blood dripped, running a vein of a river as I squeezed my fingers closed tight. I would do it to protect Elaine. My father was unpredictable. And violent. Would he hurt her? Would he hurt her in order to block the board from voting me in? Or would he simply hurt her because of spite, because he hated the Constantines? Because he wanted to hurt things that I cared about? “I swear to God above, on the Morelli name, I care more about Morelli Holdings than pussy.”
My father nodded at that and took the knife away. He cast a glance at my oath cut and tossed the knife on the table. “You cut too deeply with that,” he said, but I shrugged as I wrapped a napkin around the wound.
“I always cut too deeply. Greater blood makes a stronger promise.”
He stood up from his chair and went back to his side of the table. “You need to be more careful who you demonstrate that to,” he said. “If people for a second thought you were the man you are…”
I’d heard this before, so many times that I shrugged again. “I don’t make oaths very often. Not anymore. Nobody is going to see me for what I am. Not from one tiny slice on my palm.”
I was right on that. Nobody had ever seen my body for the beast it was, not even my mother. The secret was bound deep between me and the man who raised me to be his heir.
“Our empire was built on oaths,” he told me. “And so was the strength of our lives. Never forget that, and never stop investing in our family’s promises to the Lord.”
I looked at the painting of Jesus above his head at the rear of the dining hall, and I wondered just what it must be like to live in families built without the constant pursuit of godliness, tainted in a world based on lies and corruption.
Our past lineage was evil, and our present hierarchy never faltered from the same, so again, I didn’t understand why my father was so desperate to avoid conflict.
“I’ll be back at Morelli Holdings tomorrow,” I assured him and got to my feet.
I didn’t hang around to see my mother appear back in the room, just made my exit with the napkin still wrapped tight around my bleeding hand. I wished my palm was spitting in pain, just to keep my oath in my mind, but my promise was already lost to me as I left the mansion.
It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered, and I knew it. I knew it right there and then.
There was only one thing on my mind.
Elaine Constantine.
Her tracker was useless to me now.
I had only one thing left to use. Her calendar.
I called it up on my phone before I’d even left the grounds.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Elaine
Idon’t knowhow I made it through the night, shaking and crying, knowing my heart was lost to the monster.
I don’t know how the fuck I got ready for family time on Sunday. I don’t know how I managed to style my hair with trembling fingers and get myself prepared for the facade.
