“You shouldn’t test the alpha unless you want a fight,” he countered, righting himself calmly even though a muscle ticked like a bomb counting down to detonation in his cheek.
It was reckless of me to stand against him. I hadn’t done it so obviously in years and the giddiness of it rushed through me, making me light-headed. I wanted to laugh, at him and myself, for being so animalistic, so fucking uncivilized when the Morellis had tried for years to convince people they were the crème de la fucking crème of society.
I knew what we were and so did Bryant. It was about time I started to take back what always should have been mine.
My life.
“Hurt me again and I’ll leave the family myself,” I told him, the words heavy things clunking to the floor, land mines I was setting up between us. “You don’t need to threaten me anymore. I’ve been doing your bidding since I was twelve years old.”
“You’ve been doing it because it’s all you have to offer this family,” he reminded me. “You have none of the Morelli intelligence or beauty, you’re barely worth the name on your birth certificate. You should be glad I gave you purpose.”
“If I do this, if I disgrace the Constantines and seize control of CEI, I won’t be your henchman anymore, Bryant. I want my own assurances of that,” I demanded, flipping the knife into the air and catching it by the handle without looking to see how it spun.
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.