Page 77 of Ruthless Claim

“I don’t care about the names right now.” He says it so flatly that a shiver races up my spine. “The names I was going to get regardless. That’s not why I’m standing here looking at you bleeding on my floor.” He looks at my knuckles with disgust before he takes a step toward the desk. “You put a man in a hospital, Cillian. A man who was talking. A man who had more to give us. A man who has a reason to talk to people I would prefer he didn’t talk to, because you decided”—his voice drops even further—“that your feelings were more important than my operation.”

I stiffen. My feelings? “He made comments⁠—”

“I don’t give a fuck what he said!” He brings his fist down on the desk once and the lamp jumps. I don’t. “I don’t care if he said every filthy thing you’re thinking right now. That is not a reason. That is not a justification. That is you deciding that what’s between your ears matters more than twenty years of me putting everything I had into making you worth a damn.” His cold eyes don’t move off my face. “I pulled you out of nothing. You understand that? Eleven years old, nothing, nobody, and I made you into something. What you did tonight is spit directly in the face of every single thing I’ve given you.”

There’s a roaring in my ears.

He pulled me from nothing? My parents died for fuck’s sake.

I look at him. At the man who took me in and made me and has been cashing in on it ever since.

Connor doesn’t give a fuck about anyone other than himself. Not his wife and not his daughter, who he cut out because she chose Leo Santoro over him.

And if he doesn’t give a fuck about his only child, he certainly doesn’t care about me.

Connor is furious but not because I hurt someone.

It’s because I hurt someone for a reason he didn’t authorize.

Disparaging my wife isn’t a good enough reason for my uncle.

I don’t say any of that.

I’m not ready for that conversation yet, maybe not ever.

“You’re right,” I tell him automatically. These are words I have been saying to this man since I was eleven, but the words taste different than they used to. “It won’t happen again.”

Connor eyes me like I’m a pest he’s debating executing.

He’s not done with this.

Connor is never done with anything.

He just decides when to put it down temporarily.

“Go home,” he says, turning back to the window. “And get your hands looked at. You’re bleeding on my floor.”

I get up. I go home.

Valentina is waiting for me, sitting in the living room in her chair.

Her bare legs are tucked under her and a hardcover open in both hands.

She’s wearing a deep burgundy robe, wrapped around her like she settled in for the night.

The lamp makes the inky blackness of her hair almost look blue in the light.

She looks up when I come in. Her eyes widen and the book drops from her hands. She’s out of the chair before it’s finished falling.

“What the hell happened to you?” She crosses the room fast, her hands coming up to my face first.

Her eyes move over me frantically and I’m a little stunned at what I see.

This looks like…actual concern. “Are you—Cillian, your hands⁠—”

“I’m fine,” I tell her.

“You are not fine, you’re bleeding.” She takes my hands and turns them in the light, making a sound low in her throat that is somewhere between horrified and furious.