Page 17 of Not Her Day to Die

And then I am drowning.

8

September 21st

Darius sits on the couch in the bedroom he was thrown into. His face is buried in his hands, his elbows dig painfully into his knees. It’s been weeks since he was sprung from one cell and placed into another.

“Axel and Grayson are not going to come for you,” Maxwell sneers from the chair across from him. “I can’t believe you’re related to me. When father told me”–Maxwell bares his teeth–“I didn’t believe him. But then he explained how your whore mother had led him astray.”

Darius whips his head up, his eyes narrowing at Maxwell. The man’s nose is raw, his pupils blown, his skin is a sickly pale.

Addiction.

Darius recognizes it. His mother walked in and out of his life with it for as long as he could remember. “Dipping into the drugs a bit too much? It’s no wonder he came searching for a replacement son.”

Maxwell shoots to his feet, he points a beefy finger at Darius. “You killed my brother! And then he brought you here. Forced me to take you ‘under my wing’ but you’re the enemy. The reason we had to scale back the business in the first place. You, your brothers, Augustus, and thatgirl.”

Darius’s jaw clenches but he doesn’t react otherwise. Even still, Maxwell clocks it.

His eyes darken, a sinister smile stamping itself across his skin. “Rayden wouldn’t let me have my fun with her. But now that he’s gone? I’m going to play with that bitch, toss her around, and when she’s used up? I’m goingto cut her open and throw her in a shallow grave. I wonder what her cunt feels like? I heard your brother had his fill, but you all have been close to her now too. Have you used her up? Will she be too stretched for me to–”

Darius jumps and swings before he processes what the repercussions will be. His fist lands with a satisfying crunch, effectively breaking Maxwell’s nose.

Before Maxwell can retaliate, the bedroom door slams open.

“You son of a–”

“Sit down!” Sterling commands.

Darius drops to the couch. He knows better than to argue with the man before him.

Sterling. His father. A Thorne.

The man fills up the room with his evil, it is suffocating, thick. A choking haze that causes Darius’s throat to dry.

This is the man that plagued his nightmares.

Tall and slim, dressed neatly. Black hair, cropped short and primly styled. Horn-rimmed glasses sitting on a straight nose. A sharp jaw. His age is only evident by the etches of wrinkles furthering his frown lines and defining his eyes.

Darius hates him. Hates how he looks. Hates that the longer he stares the more similarities he sees.

He had spent as many years as he could pretending this wasn’t his father. That it was some faceless man that left his mother in the dead of night.

But now the truth is literally staring him down.

“Sit,” Sterling commands again. He glowers at Darius but speaks to Maxwell.

Maxwell is a blubbering mess of righteousness and anger. “He broke my mother fuck–”

“Language.” Sterling snaps his fingers and a butler appears.

The butler attends to Maxwell, pushing him down onto the chair, tilting his head back, staunching the blood that still gushes freely with a thick bandage.

“You two will need to learn to get along,” Sterling advises cooly.

“But that girl!” Maxwell yells, wildly waving his hands.

“Thatgirlis the least of our concerns. Darius here put on ashow. And now he needs to finish it up. The outside is concerned aboutpolice brutality.” Sterling’s tone is level, but even still Darius shivers under the weight of his words.