hide the relief in his eyes. Or maybe that was amusement. “I’d do exactly what I did when you and your brothers were little—let you crawl all over your mother until you were toilet-trained.” He paused for a beat, his eyes sparkling. “And for Ethan, that was quite some time. Nearly five years, if memory serves.”
“Thanks, Dad.” Ethan snatched a towel from the old benchpress machine and used it to wipe sweat from his face and chest.
Ryan snorted, and Ethan glared at him. In spite of very close family ties, and the fact that all but one of my siblings still lived with me in our childhood home, none of us had much sympathy for Ryan’s extended stint in the cage. Not even me, though until Ryan took up residence in the basement, I’d held the Pride record for consecutive days spent behind bars. I hadn’t seen daylight for two straight weeks once.
Ryan was nearing the end of his ninety-first day, with no end in sight, and he deserved every single second of his punishment. Actually, he deserved worse, but our father consistently refused my request to have him neutered. It must have been a guy thing.
“Watch it, jailbird, before I forget to empty your coffee can,” Ethan snarled.
Ryan opened his mouth to reply, then closed it with a click of teeth against teeth. His gaze traveled to the corner of the cage, where his makeshift toilet sat, empty—for the moment.
“That’s what I thought.” Ethan dropped the towel on the bench press and stepped back onto the mat. Ryan glowered at him but kept his mouth shut. He’d been pathetically well behaved over the past thirteen weeks, apparently hoping to get time off for good behavior. But our father was no state prison warden. He wouldn’t let Ryan out until he knew what to do with him. Unfortunately, short of skinning him alive, we had yet to come up with a single more appropriate punishment for the part Ryan played in the hell Miguel put us all through. Except for the kitchen shears I kept sterilized and ready to go.
“Okay, let’s try it again.” My father backed slowly away from the mat. “Marc, would you care to join them?”
“Love to.” Turning his back to the Alpha, Marc favored me with a teasing smile, emboldened by the heat in his eyes. “It would be my pleasure to take her to the mat. Again.”
I pushed past Marc to glower at my father. “Two against one? That’s hardly fair.”
Ethan snickered, but I ignored him, already wishing I’d kept my mouth shut.
“Only children speak of life in terms of fairness, Faythe.” My father’s face was expressionless, his mouth a firm, straight line. But his eyes reflected the ghosts of more painful memories than I could possibly guess at. “Life is neither fair nor unfair. It is what it is, and our responsibility is to deal with whatever comes our way. Including opponents who don’t fight honorably. You have to be completely aware of your surroundings. Be prepared to deal with the unexpected, such as Marc jumping you from behind.” He came a step closer to the mat, driving his point home by his very presence.
A lump formed in my throat as I realized he was right. If I’d been paying more attention to my surroundings three months earlier, I would never have been kidnapped.
I nodded, feeling like the kindergartner I’d once been, accepting a well-deserved scolding for coloring on the leather upholstery in his office. “So, you’re saying two against one is fair?”
“No, I’m saying that fair doesn’t matter. You do whatever you have to do to survive. We all do. Now, give us your best.” With that, his gaze flicked pointedly over my shoulder.
I turned to face Marc, preparing to go again, whether I was ready or not. But Marc was gone. I spun to my right, and Ethan was gone, too. Damn it, I thought, comprehension sinking in a moment too late.
I whirled toward the whisper of a soft sole on concrete. Marc was on me before I could react. He shoved me backward with one hand. His foot swept my legs out from under me. Air exploded from my lungs as I hit the mat on my back. Again. Marc straddled my hips, his hands pinning my shoulders to the mat. My hands encircled his wrists trying to push him away, but he didn’t budge.
Adrenaline scalded my veins, prompting me into action. I struck out. My right fist slammed into the left side of his head, just above his ear.
His eyes widened in surprise, and his smile vanished in a grimace of pain. Before he could react, I shoved him in the chest with both hands. He fell onto the mat on his left hip, one hand pressed to his head. I leapt to my feet, pleased with my performance.
Marc stood, rubbing his skull.
“Damn, Faythe.” Ethan whistled. “Dad, I don’t think we need to see her best during practice anymore. We all know what she’s capable of.”
From the corner of my eye, my father nodded, his expression caught between surprise and pride.
Hinges creaked overhead, and we all looked up. “Greg, you have a phone call.”
Blinking, I made out Victor Di Carlo standing on the top step, his bulky form dark against the background of afternoon sunlight shining from the kitchen behind him.
“Take a message,” the Alpha said, without a moment’s hesitation.
Vic frowned. “Um, you should probably take this one. It’s Parker. They found another body.”
Five
My father paced back and forth in front of the sturdy oak desk in one corner of his office, the telephone pressed to his right ear. His stride was characteristically long, smooth, and confident, in contrast to the tension clear in the lines of his face. From the telephone receiver came the steady cadence of Parker’s voice, calmly explaining what he’d found.
I sat on the leather love seat with Marc, listening in on my father’s phone call.
We weren’t just being nosy, though; it was expected. If my father hadn’t wanted us to hear, he would have kicked us out of his concrete-walled, and thus virtually soundproof, sanctuary. Most humans would have used the speaker phone, but we didn’t bother.
Ethan and Vic sat opposite us, on the matching leather love seat. Covering the hardwood at the center of the seating arrangement was an Oriental rug in rich shades of silver, jade, and black, across which my father paced as he listened to Parker’s report.
What I’d gleaned from the conversation so far was that Parker and Holden, his youngest brother, had found the body of a stray in an alley behind a restaurant in New Orleans—in broad daylight. Parker had left the Lazy S the day before to drive Holden back to campus for his senior year at Loyola, after a month-long visit to the ranch. Holden had talked him into staying for a late lunch at his favorite Cajun restaurant in nearby Metairie. After their meal, and probably a couple of drinks, if I knew Parker, the Pierce brothers had gone outside to catch a cab back to campus. Instead they’d caught the scent of an unknown stray.
New Orleans and the surrounding communities were on the edge of the south-central territory. Our territory. As one of my father’s enforcers, Parker was honor bound to find the trespasser and escort him across the border into Mississippi, as Marc and I had done with Dan Painter two days earlier. But as the search for the stray in New Orleans led them to the alley behind the restaurant, the scent grew stronger rather than weaker. The stray wasn’t running from them, which meant that he was either looking for a fight, or he’d already found one. And lost.
