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Again, I have a strong inkling he’s lying again, but she eats it up all the same. She’s a few inches taller than me, her dark hair looking freshly dyed, and when we make eye contact I see where Alexander truly got that cold stare from. Her smile is as fake as her tits, but she takes both of my hands into hers and begins looking me over for flaws.

How is it that a murderer had warmer eyes than this woman?

Maybe she’s not as harmless as she looks. “I’ve heard almost nothing about you,” I say honestly. “But I’m really looking forward to getting to know you.”

“All the time in the world for that. Let’s sit. Ephram will be in shortly.”

She waves a hand at our chairs and takes hers first next to the head of the table, and Alexander sits across from where Ephraim will be. That leaves two empty seats to his left and one to his right next to Verna.

Respect has me choosing the seat to Alex’s left. When no one argues, I assume I made the right call even though we seem to be... lopsided.

The Provost enters at 6:00pm on the dot. His signature tailored suit is black tonight, his shoulders tense as he scans the room. “Where is your brother?”

Alex frowns. “I didn’t realize he was invited.”

“Of course he is,” he mutters through his teeth, snapping his fingers at Madeline who slips from the room without a word. “Miss Harbough, you’re not one of those vegetarians, are you?”

The expression he gives me says he’s teasing, but I have a feeling there’s only one right response to the question. I’d give it if I could think about anything but the fact that he just saidbrother. I didn’t even know there was one Creed heir, and here I am finding out there are two.

What else don’t I know?

“I— no, I’m not,” I say simply. “I never saw the moral difference between eating plants and animals if everything is alive and growing at one point. No one bats an eye when animals eat other animals, and what are humans, really, if not animals?”

He seems pleased with my response, but his smile falters when the door opens again and Madeleine walks in alone. She nods at him once before he turns his attention back to me and Alexander, but from the corner of my eye, I see Verna take a long sip of her champagne.

The tension only builds as staff flutters around us to fill our drinks, and Alex catches me by surprise when he tries to make conversation again. “Do you see your father often, Sullivan?”

Right, the whole reason I’m so important to them. My father. “We typically still spend holidays together and I visit when I can, but he’s been busy since the promotion. We talk almost every day though.”

“Family is very important,” Ephraim says. “We’ll have him over for dinner once you’re nice and settled.”

The main doors open once again, revealing the man who managed to disappear into thin air last night. Only this time, his wavy hair is ruffled like he just woke up and his jeans stand out against the rest of our formalwear. “Sorry I’m late, Father. I didn’t want to come.”

Father.

The word makes me jerk.

He’s not just any bastard, he’s Ephraim’s bastard.

My future brother-in-law.

The air in my lungs gets trapped, refusing to leave, too paralyzed to let anything new in. It all makes sense now, why he felt like he could get away with making me blow him, killing Jacob against orders. Why he just left me here last night.

I thought I had one up on him because he was some low-level errand boy who reached above his station. I was wrong.

He’s the one who has the upper hand, and for the first time in years, I don’t have a damn clue what to do about it.