Chapter 1
Vegetables slid across his white dinner shirt.
The room went silent.
Ione smiled.
“Animals eat whatever falls on them.”
My fingers tightened around my glass.
I didn't stand.
Not yet.
Nash wiped gravy from his eyelashes with one tiny fist.
Then he looked at me.
That was what did it.
Not the food.
Not Ione's laughter.
His face.
He was trying not to cry because somebody had taught him crying made things worse.
“Daddy…”
His voice shook.
“She told me to eat on the floor.”
I set down my glass.
Very carefully.
Merritt laughed.
“Don't encourage him.”
He shoved Nash's chair backward.
“It’s discipline. Sit back down.”
I stood.
Nobody else did.
I removed my jacket.
Walked to my son.
And wrapped it around him.
Nash immediately clutched both sides closed.
His whole body was trembling beneath it.
I crouched.
“Did she hurt you?”
He looked at Ione.
That was answer enough.
I stood.
Merritt grabbed my shoulder.
“Cassian.”
I removed his hand.
He grabbed again.
Harder.
I turned.
He swung first.
He was sixty-eight.
He had also spent twenty years telling younger men he could still fight.
He learned something that night.
Stories get old faster than fists.
I moved outside his punch and hit him once.
Merritt spun backward into the carving display.
The wooden frame collapsed around him.
Silver covers rolled across the marble.
Carving boards struck the floor.
Folded cloths burst from the shelves.
Nobody moved to help him.
Ione screamed my name.
Then reached toward Nash.
That was her mistake.
I caught her wrist.
“Don't.”
She tried to pull free.
I slapped her once.
Not because she insulted me.
Because she reached for my son after he had already flinched from her.
She crashed into the rolling bread station.
Baskets overturned.
Wrapped rolls scattered across the floor.
Condiment bowls bounced underneath the table.
Every person in that room went silent.
I picked up Ione's untouched dinner plate.
Walked toward her.
And emptied it onto the ruined table.
“Enjoy the last meal of your life.”
Her face changed.
That caught my attention.
Ione had known me since I was born.
She had watched my father teach me to shoot.
Watched me bury enemies.
Watched me take control of the Halbrook family at twenty-nine.
She had seen me angry before.
But this wasn't the face of a woman frightened by a threat.
This was different.
She looked toward my glass.
Just once.
Then toward the service doors.
I followed her eyes.
And heard Nash whisper behind me.
“Daddy?”
I turned.
He was still wrapped in my jacket.
“What?”
He pointed toward my place at the table.
“Don't drink.”
Every muscle in my body stopped.
“Why?”
Nash's lip trembled.
“Aunt Ione said that glass makes you sleep.”
I looked at my untouched glass.
Then at Ione.
Merritt stopped trying to stand.
May you like
And suddenly dinner wasn't about what they had done to my son.
It was about what they had been planning to do to me.
