Page 11 of Deluge
I smile at her as she trips and almost lands flat on her face. I wait patiently while Luna regains her bearings, then cross my arms over my chest as she dusts herself off and gives me a damning glare.
“You’re just like him,” she hisses. “You’ve got that same fucking smug, shit-eating grin when you think you’ve got the upper hand.”
“Well, clearly he does if you’re running away all belle from the South circa eighteen ninety-nine,” I remark dryly.
She throws her hands up in the air, a sob escaping her, then turns and runs the rest of the way down the street.
I watch her disappear in amusement before my eyes slowly return to his home. Only now, I’m taken aback.
There he is.
He’s standing on the front porch, his back leaning against one of the pillars, watching me with pure hellfire in his eyes.
The exact same way he looked at me when I graduated. Alone.
My arms drop to my sides, and my hands ball into fists.
I don’t know what it is about this sickly old man that makes me so fucking angry, but I want nothing more than to punch him as hard as I can and hopefully snap his neck in the process.
But that would be too much of a mercy. This is one wounded animal that doesn’t deserve to be shot.
If anything, he deserves to feel as much fucking pain and misery as he’s put the rest of us through.
His family.
The one thing he was supposed to love and protect. Not treat us like some kind of botched experiment and mutate us into this ever-growing clan of monsters like he is.
I start to walk toward him, my eyes never leaving his. My mouth becomes a tight line the closer I get, and when I see the edge of his mouth curve up slightly, it takes everything in me not to fucking lose it.
“What are you doing here, boy?” he calls out when I’m a few feet from the walkway.
Boy? Is that what he thinks I am?
I make my way onto his property and up the stairs until I’m standing two steps beneath the porch, one foot resting on the top step.
He rolls his eyes and looks me up and down briefly before he puts a fist to his mouth and coughs.
I didn’t expect to flinch.
It almost felt like he would take a swing at me, and my instinct was to be afraid.
I don’t know how it’s possible to feel fear for a man I barely know past a“you’ll do,”but I can honestly say that the shiver that shoots through me right now is a direct product of that exact thing.
Fear.
He pushes himself away from the pillar and waves off Luna. “She’ll come back once she’s done having her tantrum. All of my children come back. ‘Course, you should know that since you’re standing here uninvited,” he finishes sharply.
“Sorry for not calling first,” I state evenly.
He chuckles, then coughs again, a little more violently this time, before he motions with his head for me to follow him.
As Luke Greene, the man that’s caused so many goddamn nightmares throughout generations of his lineage, disappears into his home, I can’t help but wonder.
If I follow him inside, will I walk back out the same way I walked in, or will he try to turn me into the very same evil that he is?
ChapterNine
“Getyour old man a glass of cold water before your ass hits that couch,” he barks as he sits down on a big, comfy recliner in the living room. “You don’t get to walk in here and sit down like you own the goddamn place. Have some fucking respect.”