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As if he realized it too, he settled back in his chair and dragged his gaze over Mari, that cruelty coming out in waves. He didn’t have the upper hand yet, so he was going to push at us until he did. “Is this her, Nate? I can see why you’d falter. She looks like she’d be a good fuck. Turn around for me, sweetheart. Let me see that ass.”
Apparently, I’d forgotten that Cash shared our father’s need for antagonizing others. Mari sighed in aggravation while I growled, “Don’t talk about her like that.”
Ace tipped his head back and laughed. “Oh my God, you do love her. I thought Cash was kidding, but it’s true. You fucking idiot.”
I didn’t even like the man, but hearing your father call you an idiot was always going to hit deep.
Ace didn’t seem to mind my irritation, continuing to be an obnoxious prick. “I can’t believe you fell for it. Love’s the oldest lie in the book, Natey boy.”
“Not to me.”
Love was the only thing keeping me going some days. The idea that when all this shit with Cash was over, I’d have Mari and my true brothers at my side. Men like Ace and Cash, they didn’t get it. If it wasn’t tangible, they couldn’t imagine it holding sway over them. Money, drugs, or pussy led them. Power, too. But while it wasn’t tangible, you could always feel when someone had it. Emotion was something you used to manipulate others, not something you lived your life on.
Thank God I wasn’t like them.
Ace scoffed. “You’re wasting your time, Nate. She’s going to leave you for someone hotter, richer, and with a bigger dick.”
“You assume he cares whose dick she rides,” Dominic drawled from where he was picking his nails with a knife. Drama king.
My father looked positively sick. It made me grin. “I’d heard the rumors, but I thought it was a joke. No way my son is sharing his woman.”
“Yet here I am, with two boyfriends and a husband.” Mari waved her fingers, flashing her wedding band, and Ace’s face darkened.
He turned to me, dismissing her as nothing more than pussy. Fucking moron. “A real man wouldn’t let anyone touch his woman. I didn’t raise a cuck, Nathaniel.”
“You didn’t raise me at all,” I countered. My girl finally dragged out her chair, sitting nice and slow and making sure to cross her legs like she was the main event of a sold-out show, while I dropped next to her. My mouth watered at how sinister she looked, and I desperately wanted this to end so I could steal her for five minutes. Twenty, tops.
“A real man understands he can’t control a woman, but I understand if that’s not your strong suit. It has been a while since you’ve been touched, right?”
“Less time than you’d think, and I controlled my women just fine when I was on the outside,” Ace sneered. How had my mother ever liked him? It took one look in his eyes to figure out he was a monster.
“Which is exactly why I wouldn’t consider you a good judge of ‘real men.’” Mari lifted her hand to encompass Dominic and me before dropping it back to her lap. “The men I keep around me, they’re real. Honest. Hardworking. They fight to protect their family, whatever it takes. They don’t just speak, they act. You wouldn’t know what a real man is because you’re nothing but a man of words, Ace Beckstrom.”
I’d never been more proud and horrified at the same time. She was so beautiful, but I saw my father’s face twist and knew what he was going to say next. We were collision-bound, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. My only warning was a squeeze to Mari’s leg, letting her know danger was coming.
Ace leaned forward as much as he could, hate blooming in his every movement. “You speak of family and loyalty and love, yet the person closest to you betrays you time and time again.”
“If you’re talking about my uncle, he’s dead and we weren’t that close.”
My father’s face split into an evil grin. “He may be dead, but his spawn isn’t. What’s that saying again? The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
Mari gave no outward appearance that she understood what my father was insinuating—only a blankness in her eyes, like she’d shuttered all possibility of showing any emotion, that told me she knew exactly what he meant.
Cameron was the Marcosa rat.
It was the last card I’d held to my chest while I’d watched his every move. I needed to keep her safe as much as I needed not to be the reason she was hurting again. But sitting here while my father flayed her alive, I wished I’d told her anyway. Had I manned up and given her the name with everything else, he wouldn’t hold this power over her. He certainly didn’t deserve it.
Behind us, Dominic was an inferno of hate directed at Ace and Cash and Cameron. God help us all if Dominic got to her cousin before Mari did.
“If you think your son’s so weak, why don’t you have a go?” Mari’s question came out of nowhere, and my head whipped around almost before I realized what she’d said. Dominic’s low growl echoed my own.
“You don’t need to beg me to touch you, darlin’. I’d do it for free.” Ace’s smirk got bigger, though there was a piece of him that was decidedly uncertain. He’d expected her to fall to pieces at the news that her cousin was a traitor, but he didn’t know Mari. She’d bury the pain until she could unleash it in private. It wasn’t his to consume, nor anyone else’s.
“I’m sure you would, but I’m offering for something else. You best me in a fight, you prove you’re the alpha male over Nate. I best you, you give me what I want.”
“Which is?”
“Information.”
