Page 3 of Cruel King
Shaking his head, my father says, “No, I have my gloves. I was just looking for the thank you note for Mr. King for that beautiful necklace he gave you for Christmas.”
I point toward the fireplace mantel. “Right there on the end. Please tell him I love it.”
He turns to take the card and smiles back at me as he walks toward the front door. “I will. You know he thinks of you like the daughter he never had, so he likes to buy you something special for Christmas.”
With a nod, I smile and follow him. “I know, Dad. Mr. King is a very nice man to all of us.”
My father turns around right before he opens the door and hugs me to him. “Remember to stay inside, especially if it starts snowing,” he quietly says in my ear.
I lean back and shake my head. “I will, but you know, Dad, I’m not made of sugar. I won’t melt if I get wet.”
That gets me an eye roll before he kisses me goodbye. “I swear you’ll understand when you have kids someday. I used to tell your mother you had enough sass to light up the whole island of Manhattan.”
His mention of my mother for the first time today makes me smile. “And she used to tell you that you had the sweetest daughter in the world.”
That makes him stop as he reaches to open the door, and when he turns back toward me, he cradles my cheeks in his rough hands. “You remind me of her, you know that?”
I cover his hands with mine and sigh. “I know. That’s a good thing. Sweet and sassy, just like my mother.”
He smiles, but in his eyes I see the hint of tears beginning to form. “Sweet and sassy,” he repeats in a faraway voice.
“Have a good time, Dad.”
Nodding, he sighs and releases my face from his gentle hold. “It’s work, so I’m not sure anyone will be having a good time. I’ll see you tonight, honey.”
I watch him walk out the door and down the stairs toward the road that connects our house with the main house on the King estate. The sky is that milky white color it always turns right before it begins to snow and the wind has stopped, making the estate look calm and peaceful, like a scene from an old-fashioned Christmas card.
As I look out, I see the first snowflakes start to fall. Maybe I was right about smelling snow.
CHAPTERTWO
Matthias
The football gameis drowned out by my brothers shooting a game of pool, so I aim the remote across the room to turn the volume up. In typical ball-busting fashion, Theo intentionally stands in front of me so it doesn’t work. Asshole.
“What did you do that for? I’m trying to watch this, but you guys are noisy as fuck.”
My younger brother I’m closest to rolls his eyes at me. “You watched that game when it was on the first time. Did you actually DVR it too?”
He acts like I’ve committed some kind of crime. “Yeah, so get the hell out of the way so I can hear it too.”
Since he can’t stop himself from getting on my nerves, it seems, he shifts his body left and right so I can’t turn up the sound on the TV. Jesus. And my father can’t figure out why I wish I was an only child sometimes.
“Quit trying to watch some game you already saw and shoot some pool like a normal fucking person, Matthias,” Theo says as he grabs a pool cue from off the rack.
I look over at my youngest brother and see he’s not playing either. “Bother Ronan. I’m trying to do something. He’s just texting that damn girlfriend of his again.”
Theo turns to look and nudges Marius standing next to him. “He’s so fucking whipped. Again with that girlfriend.”
Our brother Marius, who just turned twenty last month and is probably the most jaded out of all of us after his girlfriend broke up with him right before Christmas, shakes his head in disgust. “Run away from any woman who needs to keep you on that short a leash, Ronan. Don’t make the mistake I did. To think of all the nights I wasted trying to figure out what Maia wanted. Fuck that.”
Ronan throws him a dirty look and then turns to face me. “Why do you have to be such a dick? What about me talking to Kate is such a problem that you have to get them busting my ass?”
I roll my eyes at him and his whining. “Love is a waste of time, Ronan. Accept that fact and your life will be much easier. Trust me.”
As he types out a text to reply to whatever that girlfriend of his said, he snaps, “Says the person who’s never loved anyone. What the fuck would you know about the subject anyway?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see my second youngest brother Kellen smirk. As if he knows a goddamned thing about love at the ripe old age of nineteen.