Page 1 of Cruel When He Smiles

Prologue

Liam Aged 17

It’sjustpasttwoin the morning. The parlor’s long closed, but money gets you a lot of things, and silence is one of them.

“You good?” his voice cuts through the silence.

I look up at him, my throat tight. “Define ‘good.’”

He snorts but doesn’t push. He never does unless he wants to punish. Instead, he pushes off the wall and walks toward me, crouching down so we’re eye level. The chain around his neck swings forward and catches the light.

“We don’t have to do this tonight,” he says, although the look in his eyes tells me he knows we will.

“It has to be tonight.”

He nods once. “Then I’ll go first.”

The artist gestures for him to sit, and he drops into the chair with the ease of someone who’s used to being marked. His father may be a senator, but behind closed doors, he’s something else entirely. He raised his son to wear masks—politician’s son, golden boy, perfect heir.

Underneath the curated exterior, there’s blood in his mouth and broken glass in his smile. They think he’s polished; they don’t know he taught me how to use a blade with precision.

He nods toward the artist to get started, pulling his damp hair up in one hand, and exposing the skin behind his ear.

The main estate is filled with bodies in black, most of them drunk or pretending not to be. They’d watched the caskets lower earlier today like it meant something. I watched and felt nothing. Not guilt and definitely not grief.

The ink still stings. Not unbearable—just there. A low, lingering burn that curls up my spine and settles between my shoulder blades. XIII, etched into skin that’s been marked by worse, but this one isn’t a bruise. It’s not a scar I earned from a belt or a backhand, or the edge of a broken whiskey glass.

This one, I chose. We both did.

The age we were when I told him the truth.

The age I stopped calling him cousin and started calling him brother.

The age he put a knife in my hand and said,If you ever want to kill him, I’ll help you bury the body.

We’re in the poolhouse now. My brother is lying on one of the long leather couches facing the massive windows. His phone’s beside him, face down, lighter flipping in his hand.

My shirt’s discarded on the arm of a chair, my back to the mirror over the bar. I haven’t seen the tattoo yet, but I felt every line, every pass of the needle that kissed my skin, and I refused to flinch. I’ve been hurt by professionals before. My mother broke my mind using scalpels made of words. While my father broke my body using his fists the same way he used his gavel: sentencing me to pain in the name of discipline.

What’s a few more seconds of sting when the pain finally means something?

He doesn’t look at me when he speaks. “You feel anything yet?”

I drag a towel across my neck, the sweat cold now against my skin. “No.”

He nods as if he had expected that. Then, finally, he turns his head, eyes dragging over me with the same look he’s always had—assessing, calculating, not unkind but never soft. He’s the only one who gets to see me like this. The only one I let in.

“They said she was a good woman.” He flicks the lighter once, the flame catching. “That she loved you. That he tried his best.”

I snort before I can stop myself. The sound is hollow and dry.

He smirks. “I know.”

My fingers twitch where they rest on the back of the chair. “They were all lying.”

“They were all protecting the family name,” he corrects. “There’s a difference.”

“Same fucking outcome.”