Dangerous Temptation (Dark Dream Duet #1)(46)

He glowered at me, and whether or not he was my birth father, it was the same scowl I could catch in the glimmer of my reflection in the windowpane behind him. I knew I was playing with fire, that he was the kind of man who quite literally killed people for insubordination, but it was my one chance to get out from under his thumb without having to kill him myself.

I’d been waiting to do this for years, this Mexican standoff with a man who should have loved me, but didn’t. I’d just lacked juicy enough bait to goad him into it.

And now I had Bianca.

I could see he wanted it.

Even beneath his furrowed brow, his eyes were wide with sincere yearning. He had been almost obsessed with Caroline and the Constantines for decades. He was also the sort of man who relished wielding power over everyone else and it clearly frustrated him that he hadn’t been able to do so resolutely over our rivals.

So I wasn’t surprised when he said, “Fine, you have my word.”

But I did laugh.

“Your word means nothing to me,” I reminded him. “I’ve been at your side for long enough to know that the word of a Morelli means less than his greed. Get papers drawn up. I want out of your businesses and you out of mine.”

“Out of my will, then,” he threatened.

“You and I both know I won’t need your money if I make this happen,” I said, almost happily, because fuck, it felt good to look this man in the eye and know I had him by the metaphorical balls.

“Fine,” he allowed.

I nodded, turning my back on a man I knew to be mad because I was high on my power trip. Only when my hand was on the door did he break the moment to say, “Oh, Tiernan, you would do well to remember what every single tally mark on your back means and who you did those in service of—me. If you turn on me, boy, I’ll turn on you and hand over evidence to the police.”

“You’d never put one of your own behind bars.” Still, I looked back at him to gauge the level of his warning.

“It’s a good thing you aren’t a true Morelli, then, isn’t it?” he said, smiling pleasantly in a way that was utterly sinister.

“Did you ever stop to think that reminding me of that constantly since I was a boy might lead me to be less loyal to a family who doesn’t seem to want me?” I asked, genuinely curious, but veiling my sincerity in lethal warning. “Did you ever stop to think you trained a man to be your monster, but you never let him in from the cold? Did you ever wonder what he might find out there unsupervised?”

Before he could answer, I threw the knife, turning on my heel before I could see where it would land.

I knew without looking it embedded itself in the framed photo of the Morelli family on the corner of Bryant’s desk.





Chapter Eight





Tiernan

Sarah Morelli didn’t have to beckon me the way my father did. I never visited the Morelli Mansion without stopping by her suite of rooms in the east wing. While I hadn’t called ahead, one of the servants had obviously clued her in to my presence, because when I opened the door to her rooms, she was dressed in a floor-length silk nightgown trimmed in fur and a matching dressing gown with her arms held open for me to step into.

I was a thirty-year-old man, but I did as she silently bade and stepped into her heavily perfumed embrace. Beneath the artificial flower notes, she smelled of expensive vodka and the bitter aftermath of pills she kept too long on her tongue before swallowing them down. She cupped the back of my head and swept her other hand between my shoulders, over the thirteen tally marks Bryant had forced me to get from the time I was seventeen to mark me as his weapon the way military men notched their guns with each kill.

She liked to brush her hand over them through my clothes as if she could erase the permanent ink there.

“My sweet monster,” she crooned to me before pulling away, keeping me close with both hands on my forearms so she could study me. “You look tired.”

“You look beautiful,” I countered, shaking off her hands so I could move farther into the feminine room.

Her little dog, Sheba, yapped at me from her silk cushion, but I ignored her as I took a seat on the white couch, unbuttoning my jacket.

“I can’t stay long,” I mentioned immediately. “I’m working on something.”

“Oh?” Sarah asked, moving to the bar cart to pour herself a drink even though it was only ten-thirty in the morning. “I thought that ugly bitch died?”

“She did. Her children didn’t.”

“Ah, well, that’s interesting.” She walked around the couch opposite me, but didn’t stop until she was beside me, sitting with our thighs pressed together. It was close, too close maybe for a normal mother/son bond. But Sarah wandered her rooms in this house like a caged bird, infrequently visited by her children other than myself and flatly ignored by Bryant unless he had some use of her. She craved affection, attention, and I was her single source for it.

I put up with it even though I disliked being touched especially when it was only to satiate her needs and not my own. I’d been a momma’s boy since the day she shoved that McTiernan ring on my broken finger just like I’d been my father’s weapon since the day he cut me open with his belt.

When I was fourteen, Lucian paid attention to me for the first time in seven months.