Page 58 of The Forgotten

“Oh, they have really good chocolate peanut butter shakes here,” I moan. “Can I have one of those and a bacon cheeseburger, please?”

“Have you sampled all the restaurants?” Gareth teases me. “Maddox, I’ll take the same!”

Everyone orders, and soon I’m eating my food in Gareth’s lap, disliking the alphas a little less than when we started.

MADDOX

“We almost didn’t get to her in time,” I growl. Olivia is just outside of the murder room on a fluffy, comfortable couch we dragged out for her. We have a ton of men surrounding her, andBalthazar laying at her feet. She’s as safe as we can make her, and Gareth left her a gun, reminding her to point and shoot.

Raynard leans against the wall as he supervises his men. I have a feeling he wants to make sure there’s something left for him to haul back to California. They’re currently stripping and stringing him up in the chains we keep in this room. I’ve thought of just about everything, on a “just in case” basis.

It just hasn’t been enough.

“She’s safe,” Gareth reminds me. “Yes, a fuck ton of shit could have happened, but it didn’t.”

“Olivia even shot someone’s kneecap out with my gun.” Cai says. “It was a mistake to think she couldn’t handle this life or us.”

“You know it was never about that,” I grumble, picking up a bat once Dad is hung up properly. He doesn’t look as strong and large as he used to anymore. “Hewas always the issue.”

“Son, wait!” Dad yells, but I swing at his shoulder despite his words.

“We’re no sons of yours,” I growl, beating the fuck out of him.

“I think we should teach him the importance of keeping his hands to himself,” Gareth decides, finding a very dull knife. He prefers to keep his torture simple.

“Feel free to do your thing,” Raynard says in a bored tone. “Maybe leave me his head.”

“You motherfucking asshole!” Dad screams. “You just want to take over. Boys, he’ll fuck you over one day too.”

“They haven’t been ‘boys’ in a long fucking time,” Raynard snorts in derision. He watches as Gareth grabs one of Dad’s fingers and begins to saw at it with the knife. Yeah, that’s gonna take awhile. “The level of hate they have for you is all your fault. What did you think would happen after all the abuse you’ve leveled at them?”

“It makes them strong,” Dad snarls.

“Oops,” Gareth mutters, breaking the finger and then painstakingly pulling and cutting it off. Throwing it to the side as Dad yells, Gareth starts again.

Crossing my arms, I begin to ask my father all the questions that I’ll need to know to take over. Dad has always prided himself in being strong enough to stand up under intense torture. He’s always insisted the same of us, which is why we each disappeared on our sixteenth birthdays for the day to be tortured. Cai and Aled were side by side, making things even more difficult.

We should have said enough was enough years ago, as we are grown fucking men, but our family lore is littered with broken bones and abuse. This became our normal. It took watching Livy about to be a victim to our father to decide we needed to break the cycle.

As I said, it was too damn close.

Watching dispassionately, I watch as Cai walks over with a much larger knife and cuts off Dad’s dick mid-urine stream.

“Real men don’t terrorize their sons and their omega,” he mutters. “I don’t think you’ll be needing this in hell.”

Raynard swallows back a smile as he watches us, not saying a word as we burn, cut, and punch our father. Getting creative after about an hour of torture, Cai starts to heat up a poker.

“Isn’t this enough?” Dad begs.

I have the numbers to the hidden bank accounts, the secret business ventures he refused to give us a cut from, and anyone he works with that he’s hidden from his partners. Raynard stabbed him in the shoulder when he found out how much he’d been fucking them over before stepping back and apologizing.

There’s no need to apologize when dealing with this level of disrespect.

“I don’t think you understand yet that you’re not walking away from this,” I drawl, taking the poker from Cai. One brand from each of us sounds about right.

“Do you really think you can continue to be the boss while dickless?” Cai laughs. “That’s definitely going to get around.”

“Eeny, weeny, tiny, weeny…”