Chapter 3

3

André stared down at the phone in his hand. Resentment was a living thing inside him, eating him alive. Curling his fingers around the phone, he pressed his lips together and closed his eyes briefly to calm himself down.

The resentment hurt only him. The man who inspired that feeling—and all his negative feelings—would never witness it. He probably wouldn't bat an eye even if he stood in front of André now…which would never happen.

Lashes lifting, he glared at the phone screen. It was that time of the month. Time when his bank alerted him that his account balance was another fifty thousand dollars richer. The money had started coming when he'd turned nineteen, two days after his mother died. A day after the first fifty thousand dollars showed up, he learned the identity of his father. Watching the man's face on TV, reading about him on the internet, was the closest André would ever come to meeting his father. The man didn't want him, and André had never felt that rejection, that abandonment, as acutely as the day his stupid, stupid ass decided to travel to where he'd read his father lived.

He'd been in search of a connection, someone to make the pain of losing his mother a bit more bearable. He hadn't even made it farther than the airport in D.C. before someone bumped into him, yanked him into a dark corner, and told him to leave and never come back. That his father wanted nothing to do with him.

"Go the fuck home, boy. He wants nothing to do with you."

He rubbed his chest. Those words would forever be stamped across his forehead.

"Dré! Dré, are you listening to me?"

He jerked his head up at the shout and shoved his phone into his pocket as he spun around to smile at Juliette. "I'm listening."

She squinted at him, those older-than-her-years eyes of hers calling bullshit. She rolled closer in her wheelchair. "Are you done? Ready to go home?"

Every evening he took his sister out to the basketball courts in the park near their home so she could hoop. She loved playing shoot-around with him, something they'd started when their mother passed on; she would've never allowed it. Jules had lost permanent use of her legs after a serious illness as a toddler, before she'd entered their lives via adoption. Their mother died when Jules was seven, and she'd preferred to keep her daughter locked up in the house, wrapped in cotton wool and bubble wrap for good measure. But Jules was about to be fifteen, and André loved watching her eyes light up with every basket she made. He loved the way she glowed when the neighborhood kids would drift over to them and play with her, talking trash and treating her like any other person.

Because she was.

He tucked a stray curl behind her ear—the one with the three piercings, another thing that had occurred fairly recently. "I'm good if you're good." He eyed her up and down, then pulled a bottle of water from the pack he always carried with him. "You do look a bit tired." He handed her the water and retrieved a towel to wipe her forehead. She snatched the towel away with a dirty look, wiping her face and then handing it back along with the water.

"I'm hungry. Can we have pizza?"

He refrained from rolling his eyes. She always did that. The pizza place was just at the corner and the best ever. He couldn't say no, especially when she turned those big innocent eyes on him. "Yeah, we can have pizza, but you still have to do the dishes when we get home."

She groaned, dropping her head back and frowning up at the sky that was getting darker by the minute.

He tugged on one of her braids with a chuckle. "Keep that up and I'm taking away your phone, then you can explain to what's-her-face why you didn't make your eight o'clock call."

She gasped. "You can't do that!"

She had a new girlfriend, this one lasting longer than the previous—or the boyfriend before that—but they were still in the talk on the phone until late into the night phase. He'd had to yell at her to hang up and go to bed more times than he could count. "I can and I will, so watch yourself." He bent and kissed her forehead even though they were in public and she hated when he did that. When he lifted his head and stepped back, color was splashed on her cheeks and her eyes were shooting daggers at him. He grinned. "Let's go, brat."

He kept stride with her as they made their way over to the pizza shop. Once they'd gotten their food, they continued on home, which wasn't too far away. His mother had owned the building, and after adopting Jules, she'd renovated it so it'd be perfect for Jules's needs. Once inside, Jules grabbed a slice of pizza and held it in her mouth as she wheeled herself to her room.

André watched her go, shaking his head with a bemused smile. "Make sure you don't forget the dishes!" His sister was something else, but it was thanks to her that he hadn't lost his mind after everything that transpired since their mother's sudden death. He piled two slices of the meat lover's pizza onto his plate after washing his hands, grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge, then made his way to his bedroom. Jules was on the opposite side of the house from him, but they had an intercom system if they needed each other.

In his room, the TV was tuned to a random serial crime drama that he ignored as he shoved pizza into his mouth with one hand while trying to undress with the other. There'd been a lot of rules to follow when his mother had been alive. Chief among them? No eating in the bedrooms. She was gone now, but sometimes he could still hear her scolding him for doing something he shouldn't, back when he'd been rebellious and eager to test her limits.

When she died, he began understanding why there were so many things he couldn't do. Why she'd kept him sheltered and isolated. He'd understood, too, how it was that she stayed home with him all day and never had a job, but they still managed to have a privileged life.

She'd been bought. Kept. By the man who wanted nothing to do with André—his own father. The man who bought and paid for André with fifty thousand dollars every month, the same way he'd bought and paid for André's mother.

He could no longer taste the pizza, so he guzzled some water and then put the plate down on the nearby dresser before wiping his hands with the wet wipes he kept near his bed. When he was done, he reached into his drawer and pulled out the letter. It'd been among his mother's things, five whole pages, written in her hand as she explained who she'd been, what she'd done, and the shit she was leaving behind for him to figure out.

The letter said a lot of things, but it didn't tell him that the man who'd fathered him would reject him. It didn't explain the anger André would feel standing over his mother's casket. It didn't give a hint that he'd wake up from nightmares of his father issuing orders for someone to ‘throw him in the trash' while pointing a gun at André's head.

She asked for forgiveness in that letter, for not telling him before. He'd been nineteen then; he was twenty-seven now, and it still hurt just as bad. He swore he'd forgiven her, but there were times…

Lying on his stomach on the bed, he smoothed out the letter. It was getting faded, some words smudged, and what looked like an oil stain dotted the bottom right of all five pages. He flipped to the last page. It was on that last page, the last line, where she told him his father's name, then issued a warning.

"Your father's name is Ennis Canto. Whatever you do, son, do not go looking for him. Do not draw his attention. You won't like what you find."

She'd been right.

Members of The Council surrounded Gideon in the not-big-enough overflow room beyond the main conference area. He tuned out the questions and demands they threw at him as if he answered to them and not the other way around. Instead, he watched them.

Studied them closely.

He didn't know if they'd all been in on it. Or if it'd just been a few. It didn't matter. They were all on his shit list and he would kill every single one of them. No, he still didn't know who'd taken his mother from him and shot him, but he was getting closer.

Ennis Canto was the only one out of all of the members who wasn't bombarding Gideon with questions. He sat back, doing the same thing Gideon was doing: studying, taking notes. He was the analytical type, Gideon knew. And he'd been the one to sponsor the new council member.

The now-dead council member.

Gideon held up a hand and the room quieted, though scowls creased their faces when they realized how easily they'd followed where he led. Fuckers. They hadn't seen anything yet. Leaning forward, elbows on his knees, he smiled. "We have so much to discuss, but let me just put your minds at ease; I am who I say I am and I'm here to stay."

"You haven't shown us any proof as yet," Ennis Canto said, tone mild, head cocked and expression just a little bit mocking. "As of right now, you're an imposter and a child, playing in a sandbox you have no business in."

He was nearing fifty, but Ennis was apparently one of the most eligible bachelors around. He was tall and well-built, with smooth brown skin, dark hair streaked with silver, and assessing brown eyes that locked on Gideon and stayed. The salt-and-pepper scruff on his jaw gave him an alluring appearance, something Gideon could objectively acknowledge. But Ennis was the cold type, more concerned with business than anything else.

Gideon got to his feet with a smirk. Samir stood at the door, and at Gideon's nod, he stepped inside just far enough to press a button on the TV mounted to the wall. They'd already preloaded the video Gideon's father had made for this very purpose.

As Gideon and the others looked on, Aldo laid out every detail of how he'd kept Gideon hidden away and all the things he'd done to ensure his son's safety. Gideon watched him with a knot in his throat. In the video, Aldo sat at his desk in his office. Gideon had wanted him to make the video from his bed, but Aldo refused. He hadn't wanted the others to see any kind of weakness in him. He came across just as strong as ever on the screen, commanding, powerful. But Gideon had been off to the side during the filming, witness to his father's coughing fits, his breathlessness, his shaking. Aldo had collapsed in his arms the minute they stopped recording, too weak to make it back to his bedroom without assistance.

He'd held on for Gideon.

For this day.

"My son remains my proxy, as is his right," Aldo said in the video. "My seat is his. My responsibilities are his. All the power I had, they now belong to Gideon." He smiled then, and it took a while, but it crept up to his eyes. Pride. Love. And the bit of sadness Gideon hoped only he caught before it disappeared. "As is also the right of the Winters's seat, Gideon has the deciding vote and control of the purse."

The video ended, and everyone stared from the blank screen to Gideon. The heaviest tension filled the room, putting him on alert. Samir must have felt it, too, because he relaxed his stance at the door, hands hanging loosely at his sides, gaze casting about, searching out threats. Gideon could've told him they didn't have anything to worry about. Not yet. Whoever it was in the room that wanted him dead wouldn't make their move now. No, they'd strike from the shadows, under the cover of darkness, as was the way of cowards.

"Has?" Joseph Morrow got to his feet and stepped toward Gideon. Samir tensed, but Gideon held him off with a slight shake of his head. "Did he say you already have control of the purse strings?"

Gideon grinned. "He did, and yes, I do." Lifting an eyebrow, Gideon said, "I hope that's not gonna be a problem for you?"

Morrow stared at him, visibly struggling to maintain his composure. "You're an imposter. And the sooner we prove it, the sooner we can kill you and send your body back to wherever you came from."

"You already tried to kill me, Joseph." Gideon glanced around, speaking to all of them when he said, "You couldn't do it before. You'll find it even more difficult this time, seeing as I'm more than capable of fighting back. Besides"—he turned toward the door—"it's against the rules to kill a member of The Council, isn't it?"

"You're not a member of The Council," Prislaya Chopra spoke up from behind him.

Gideon chuckled. "Says who?" He didn't look back, allowing Samir, Will, and Kaleb to encircle and lead him out the back of the building and into the waiting SUV.

Once settled inside the vehicle, Gideon unbuttoned his jacket and sat back, waiting until they were a few minutes into the ride to speak. "Send it."

Seated in front of him, Marco tapped away on his tablet and then said, "It's been sent."

A heaviness settled around them at those three words and what they really meant. Gideon exhaled. Just like that, his days of living in hiding, of anonymity, were over. Marco had just sent an alert out that the long-lost Winters heir was home, stepping into his now-dead father's role as head of the billion-dollar Winters media conglomerate. There would be obligatory shit he'd have to do as part of stepping back into the light and as head of an international corporation. All that was surface shit. He wouldn't be focusing his energies on the business. No, he and his father already had someone picked out who'd be running things behind the scenes while Gideon remained the public face so as not to arouse any suspicion. All of his focus would be on unveiling the traitor or traitors inside The Council. Nothing was more important.

"G."

He glanced at Samir, who sat at his side.

"Are you ready for this?" Gideon opened his mouth, but Samir continued. "Not The Council shit. I know you've been ready for that." His dark eyes bored into Gideon. "I'm talking about the scrutiny that comes with stepping into the public role of being your father's son. You never really got to experience it before you had to go into hiding. There will be questions. Everybody wanting a piece of you. Shit's gonna get crazy for a while."

Gideon knew that, but he wasn't fazed by any of it. "We control as much as we can." He lifted a shoulder. "The rest will work itself out."

As a result of Gideon coming out of the shadows, people who were privy to such knowledge would immediately know he was now on The Council. They'd be coming to him, because as much as the other members of The Council wanted to pretend otherwise, the Winters's word, the Winters's approval, the Winters's influence was the one that carried the most weight.

They'd be coming in droves to curry favor.

Gideon didn't care about anything except getting revenge for himself and his family. Fuck anything else. He'd do whatever needed to be done. His father had taught him that—do whatever you had to for the family, to protect the family. His blood family was gone now. He was the only one standing, and that made him an even bigger target in some respects. Kill the heir and the empire would come tumbling down.

But he wouldn't make it easy.

They'd have to put in work if they wanted his throne.