“Naw, don’t waste his time chasing after me. I’m only at school. The same school you sent me to to get my posh boy education so I can play my part one day,” I said easily.
“That almost sounds like you intend to fill the role that’s been assigned to you,” Liam replied. “But I know you cut your ties to us as thoroughly as you could before you went back to that fancy school of yours. Lucky for you your tuition for the year was already paid up, wasn’t it? Or else you’d have had nowhere to go.”
“Yeah. You know I appreciate that… I just wanna be my own man, Grandpa,” I said, using the affectionate term to try and butter him up. But his heart was so black it made mine look rosy so I was doubtful it would help. “I wanna carve my own path. Prove myself and make my own choices.”
“And you want to abandon your family to do that? Are you sure Royaume D'élite didn’t break something in you? I’d hate to think of you as soft, boy.”
I blew out a breath laced with smoke and stubbed out my cigarette before jamming another between my lips and lighting that too. Because he was right. Royaume D'élite had been the final straw for me. I’d known my family was a bunch of cutthroats and criminals, but that place crossed lines I hadn’t even realised needed to be drawn. It was the ultimate abuse of money and power. People were bought and sold like chattel. Men fought to the death for the vague promise of a better life that was never coming. Girls younger than some of my classmates were auctioned off to men older than my grandpa and more depraved than all of my uncles combined for nothing more than the chance of being selected for the higher tier, and the oblivion of the drugs they were given to make them forget what had been done to them. Assuming they survived the night at all.
And the things they’d made me do as part of my initiation…I shuddered in disgust at myself as I refused to even think about it. I’d been in firm denial about it ever since but if I was being honest with myself, I knew those memories were haunting me. I’d been forced to find out just how fucked up I was and I’d been more than a little horrified to realise just how fucking low I would fall in the name of survival.
“Soft?” I scoffed, making sure none of the horror and disgust I felt made it into my tone. “I’m not soft. I’m all for death and glory with a worthy opponent. That place was just a scam. No one in there had an ounce of grit to them. They were posturing assholes who bought their power. Most of them used fucking proxies to make it through the initiation. How does that prove they’ve got anything to them? How does that show their strength, power and superiority like they spout? If I’m going to be claiming that my balls are the biggest in the room then I’ll prove my power for myself, earn it honestly, on my own.”
Though I wished I hadn’t been forced to prove it in that fucking place. To do the things it had taken to win…
“I’m glad to hear it, lad, you’re an O’Brien through and through, each of us earned our own spot there, but the world is the way it is. You must have learned that in your fancy school. More men have inherited their money than earned it these days and we can’t be so picky about our friends as to alienate them for some unsavoury tendencies. Besides, who cares about a few whores and addicts being carved up for fun? You passed the initiation already. You don’t wanna take part in the games on offer when you go back there, then don’t. Any man tries to call you a pussy for it, you fuck him up good and I’ll get a cleaner in for you to dispose of the pieces. But it’s time for you to stop sulking and come back to the fold.”
“I don’t want anything to do with Royaume D'élite,” I grunted. Or any of you, I added in my head. “There’s having no mercy and there’s having no morals. I don’t want to be a man without either.”
“We all have dreams of the kinds of men we want to be, but there are very few of us who have the privilege of getting to make that choice for ourselves in this world. My patience is wearing thin, Kyan. Your birth came with a purpose and you will fulfil it. Unfortunately for you, your ma couldn’t stomach your father lingering between her thighs often enough to make a backup so you’re the one and only.”
“If I’m that important then let me come back on my own terms,” I growled, plucking the cigarette from between my lips and stubbing it out aggressively.
“Don’t go mistaking importance with power,” Liam murmured in a low tone which had the hairs standing up along the back of my neck. “We need you alive. But your pretty little girlfriend is a different matter. And so are those fancy friends of yours. The Governor’s son might be hard to cover up, but no one gives a shit about the teacher. And even the footballer’s boy could disappear without too many questions being asked. Those celebrity type kids are always getting mixed up in drugs. One bad batch is all it would take.”
I didn’t bother to point out that Blake’s dad wasn’t a footballer and that he actually owned the fucking team. He was probably getting it wrong just to piss me off.
“You’re threatening my family, old man,” I snarled, my mind
