Page 14

ADRIAN

N o matter how good it felt, I shouldn’t have snapped. Not over something we both knew was a lie.

My mother might have been dumb. Enough to actually believe Prescott when he told her he was ditching his wife to raise their bastard. And sure, she had her flaws, like leaving her child in the hands of her rapist, but she wasn’t what my half-brother made her out to be.

She wasn’t some whore. She was some kid .

A nineteen-year-old girl trying to do her job and not piss off the man in charge of her paycheck.

Even if that meant keeping her mouth shut after his leering turned to inappropriate touching.

That touching to full-on rape, that rape to an unexpected pregnancy that threatened to ruin the old man’s picture-perfect gene pool.

At least that’s what I’d been told by the wet nurse whose care I’d been entrusted to before the afterbirth was even fully wiped from my skin.

Couldn’t say Miss Louise liked having someone else’s brat attached to her tit 24/7.

But at least the woman never beat me. Though that could have been more out of self-preservation than anything else.

Daddy Dearest had no problem raising the rod— but god forbid someone else do it and ruin all his fun.

What became of my mother after that night was nothing more than rumors and fucked-up ghost stories whispered between staff when they didn’t think I was listening. Until I’d narrowed it down to two possibilities.

Enough cash was shoved down my mother’s throat to have her packing up her things and never looking back.

Or enough dirt was shoveled over her body to ensure no one would ever find her if they cared enough to try digging her up in whatever hole he’d paid his henchman to drop her into.

Neither option was all that comforting. Though there were some days when I preferred one over the other.

Today was one of them. Because, kid or not, if I found a way out of this place, I wasn’t certain I’d ever chance coming back either.

Sure, Prescott might have spared my life, but that didn’t mean he gave a shit about me.

Or about anyone other than the person he saw staring back at him in the mirror.

He didn’t have a soft spot. He had an ego.

A deep-seated affinity for himself, which kept him from killing me.

Because it would be like killing some part of him.

That wasn’t to say he didn’t beat me to a pulp whenever he felt the urge. Sheer stubbornness alone had kept me from aspirating on the contents of my stomach numerous times over the years.

I could only hope it did the same right now. Seeing as age seemed to only exacerbate the fucker’s thirst for blood. My bastard blood in particular.

The first strike of the leather riding crop was more jarring than anything else, the little spikes at the end breaking the skin and sending a chill down my spine.

Prescott had the device specially ordered for me shortly after my fifth birthday when he insisted that “if I was going to act like an animal, he would treat me like one.” Apparently, proper children didn’t speak unless they were spoken to, and I was plagued by a curiosity that had me asking far too many questions out of turn.

Other than the moisture I felt dripping down my back, I was numb to the second blow.

And the third. The fourth. The fifth. So detached I didn’t notice his arm had stopped moving until I heard the wheeze of his strangled breaths as he tried to suck in a lungful of air.

He was tiring himself out much quicker these days.

Then again, it had been years since my last lashing—because I’d mastered being unseen and it was harder to hit a target you couldn’t find—and it was clear the old fuck was out of practice.

It took several long minutes before he’d regulated himself enough to step forward, a slight tremor to his hand as I glanced over a shoulder and watched him reach for his cane.

A part of me had been hoping he kept going till cardiogenic shock left him sprawled out on the oriental rug he loved so much.

His eyes glued to the ceiling as I feigned chest compressions that never made it deeper than the half inch mark, his O2 count dropping as I sucked more air out of his lungs than I was putting in.

Okay, that was a lie. All of me had been hoping. But I liked to at least pretend to have some sort of empathy for the man whose favorite pastimes included preying on teenage girls and beating on children.

He gestured for his goons to drop my arms, and I rubbed at the stiff tendons in my wrists before grabbing my shirt off the chair and striding towards the door. Funny enough, Prescott wasn’t into pillow talk any more than I was.

I was two steps away from freedom when he called after me. “I want you in that operating room tomorrow. If there’s a single bone out of place when John’s done with him, I’ll give them the go ahead to use your face as a live donor.”

They could try. If they were stupid enough to transplant an allograft without first testing for an immunological reaction.

Just because we shared some DNA, it didn’t mean Tate’s body wouldn’t reject the implant.

But that wasn’t my problem. Not yet. I had a few years left before I was required to take the oath.

And even then, I wasn’t all that keen on keeping my word.

I dipped my chin in acknowledgement, chewing on the smart-ass remarks I had dancing around in my head as I slipped through the door and left a trail of blood from my father’s office to the comforting silence of my bedroom.

I could have killed them years ago. Slipped a little arsenic into their food and watched their heads hit the dinner table with a synchronized thud.

But the truth was, I didn’t want my father and half-brother dead.

I wanted them to witness what I was going to become under their noses and know there was nothing they could do to stop it.

I wanted them to suffer. And that took time and more cash than I had on hand right now.

It also took a shit-ton of fucking patience.