Queen of Quarantine (Brutal Boys of Everlake Prep #4) - Caroline Peckham Page 0,189

the loss of a man he'd never been.

"But," he agreed coolly. "You had to go and fall for the trap of love, didn't you?" he said, his voice thick with disappointment.

I glanced up at Tatum and she reached out to take my free hand, the very real feeling of her fingers in mine confirming to me that he didn't have her and making my brows pinch, because if he wasn't referring to her, then who-

"The O'Brien heir I can understand," Father said thoughtfully. "To some degree at least. He has power, connections, and they are a breed of brutality which would hold a certain appeal to your baser nature. A red-blooded man such as yourself needs a little violence in his life. And the girl...well, I never did allow a tight pussy to corrupt my mind and blind me from my interests, but it’s well-known that a lot of men are easily beguiled by such things. I had expected better from you, but you're young, no doubt she's eager and fucks well enough to distract you from-"

"You won't speak about her like that," I snarled, a very real warning in my voice. "I won't warn you again, old man. But if you talk about her like she's some disposable whore one more time, I'll come for you with the full force of all that I am and I won't stop until you're nothing but a corpse crushed beneath my heel."

Silence followed my outburst and I knew I should have held my tongue, but I didn’t see the point in that. He knew. He knew all too fucking well. She had my heart, and my life was in her hands. He'd already figured out that she was my weakness, so he may as well realise she was my strength too.

"The footballer is in bad taste," he said after a beat. "New money. No connections beyond the flashy world of sports and media - I will admit I encouraged you to make an ally of him for those very reasons, but such people are disposable, interchangeable and have no long-term use. Besides, it doesn't even look like the boy will go pro, so I fail to see the appeal. Still, I suppose he has been in your life a long time and you always did show a weakness for sentiment. But then there's the teacher," he said slowly, like he was waiting to see if I might elaborate on that for him but I stayed silent, so he went on. "Nash Monroe...or is it Jase Harrington?"

Tatum's grip on my fingers tightened painfully as my father revealed his knowledge of my brother, but I wasn't even surprised. Once he saw those passports we'd used in the camp, he would have seen that Nash was still keeping company with me. Of course he took a closer look at the working man who had somehow slipped into our ranks, and once he'd started digging it wouldn't have been at all hard for him to uncover the truth of his identity. It wasn't like Nash had been able to pay for the kinds of forgeries that I could, and a change of name was a pretty simple blockade to bypass.

"Of course, you already knew that," Father went on, barely pausing long enough for me to confirm or deny it and taking my silence as his answer. "I will admit, even when his true name was presented to me, I didn't remember him. But my people pulled up all the information I required to jog my memory of his halfwit mother pulling her car out in front of me all those years ago and sealing her family's fate. Honestly, son, I would have expected you to keep a higher class of-"

"She didn't just pull out in front of you, you fucking sicko," Tatum snarled, losing her cool at his casual dismissal of Nash's entire world. "You were drunk, and you killed them! You covered up your own fucking failure with money and lies and one day soon, we're going to hunt you down and put a fucking knife in your throat for it."

"Really, Saint," Father replied, a sneer in his tone. "You should put your woman in her place before she continues to embarrass herself and you-"

"Tatum is in her place," I growled. "And that's firmly at my side. She has a mind of her own and will speak it if she chooses. Get to the point of your tirade before I grow tired of it and