C/W: nongraphic violence, blood and amputation.
Elias’s POV
My older brother and I stare at each other without moving.
The air is buzzing with enough energy to make a blind man choke on air. Electric. Daring. Poisonous.
Our stares are heavy and charged with promises for each other.
My glare is full of the silent rage I’ve been nursing overnight like a new watch from the jewelry store. This rage is the quiet need to take a life.
But where mine is silent, Damien’s brown eyes are lively with anger. His usual playfulness is gone as blood continue to drop from his fist.
"You better have good reasons for attacking me at breakfast, brother" he says, picking and throwing his own knife at me, all while he’s holding my knife up in his face.
I don’t catch his knife, I dodge it and it crashes into a vase behind me.
Our mom would hear of this.
"Really, Damien. An aphrodisiac?" I ask, stretching my hand out to pick Noah’s unused silverware. It’s fine hand crafted knife.
I took this one myself. Chopped off the hand of a celebrity, kept the knife in my pocket and fed the hand to his dog.
Killing my brother has never been a part of my goals in life, but I hate when my things are toyed with.
With one quick movement, I throw Noah’s knife at him, and he catches it with his other hand.
"Elias" my brother growls at me, flashing his golden eyes with warning as he holds both knives up.
"You gave my husband aphrodisiac" I state and Damien drops the knives on the table. Not bothering to stop the flow of thick red liquid ruining his breakfast.
Damien has thing for blood, and I hate it.
"I gave your husband aphrodisiac?" Damien asks, emphasizing on the word ’I’, and I give him a small nod.
"I?" he roars, slapping his palms to the table as he gets up. The table doesn’t shake, not when he’s looking at me with mad eyes. He’s jamming his knife into my skull in his head, but of course, he’s not touching me.
Damien would never touch me.
"Yes, you. Damien. You" I say, leaning back in the seat and meeting his eyes with dead fury.
"If I wanted the omega, Eli, there will be no need for aphrodisiac" he growls and I tilt my head.
He didn’t do it.
The veins in his temple is bulging with his anger. He’s gripping the table despite the wounds on his hands. And he’s angry...very angry.
Whenever Damien is guilty, he’s calm. But when he’s innocent, he’s wild.
"If I wanted that omega. I would have taken him before you laid claim on him. Hell, I would have had him even after you called him yours" Damien spits the word bitterly.
"Did you, or did you not do it?" I ask, ignoring his other words and my conviction.
It’s just how it is, Death and Chaos go hand in hand.
Provocation.
He seems to figure my game, because he instantly calms down, and instead of a frown, he gives me a dark and twisted smile.
"Do you want me to want him, Eli?" Damien asks and I get up, matching his posture as we meet eyes to eyes.
"You don’t get to want what’s mine"
"Then be careful, little brother. I can still take him if I want, I can have him moaning my name, ass up and face down-"
This time, it’s a fork I throw. And the fork does a better job than the knives.
The prongs manage to tear a part of his upper lip and instead of exploding, Damien shut his eyes to take a deep breath.
"I want to fucking kill you" he says.
"Stay away from my possession"
"I want to kill you so bad, but mom would kill me" he says again, reining his anger in before opening his eyes.
My leverage is that I’m mom’s favorite child. The one who’s less like my father and the one who’s more like him. Cold and cynical.
"So someone gave your husband aphrodisiac, and your first thought is to attack me" Damien says.
"Who else would I attack?" I ask, sitting back in my chair and picking up a piece of egg.
"You’re supposed to attack motherfucker who did it. Fucker, drop that spoon and let’s go" Damien huffs, pushing his chair away and heading for the door.
On my way out, I pick up the already bloodstained knife on Damien’s plate. Using a gun this early will only call mom’s attention and I don’t want that.
We walk through the long hallway of the Deus family mansion side by side as if we didn’t just try to murder each other.
Some of the employees scatter as we get closer and soon, we’re in the quarter of the mansion that belongs to the live-in employees.
"Mr Damien, Mr Elias, what a pleasure" the head servant, a short man in his late forties greets, and Damien graces him with a smile.
I don’t smile.
I just stand and wait for the answer I need.
I can’t smile.
Smiling is a waste of time. It gives people reasons to prolong conversations with you. Gives them reasons to believe you should give them more attention.
"Which maid attended to the new Mr Deus last night?" I ask and the man frowns, trying to recall. He taps his chin and looks up to the ceiling, and hell, each second he puts into remembering a detail as small as that is irritating me.
’Remind him with a knife to the neck’ my alpha supplies and my brother gives me a look.
"Eli, relax. The easier we get this over with, the sooner you get back to your omega" Damien says when he senses my change in composure.
Noah. The beautiful omega I own. The newest addition to my collection.
The omega is somewhere alone with Kai. I trust Kai not to hurt him physically, but I don’t trust him not to toy with his mentality.
I don’t want that. The only one who gets to do that to him is me. Only me, his owner.
"It’s a new servant from Winslow, he said Winslow has a special way of preparing an omega for their wedding night" the man finally remembers and I shove my hands into my pocket to clench my fist around the cold metal body of my watch.
I want to turn the head servant’s warm body into the temperature of my watch.
Cold.
"You let a stranger touch my belonging?" I ask quietly and his eyes widen as he realizes what is happening.
"I-I...I didn’t know the omega was your belonging sir"
"That would be all for today, Mr Henry" Damien takes my elbow and pulls me out of the space.
"You won’t touch him, Elias. Henry is efficient to mom. Let’s go find the person who did it" Damien says, being the sensible one between us for once.
It doesn’t take long before we find the Winslow dog.
A tall man with red hair and blue eyes. Damien goes first, the war that invites death.
"Well hello there, you are the one that prepared my brother’s husband?" Damien asks and the man nods, he looks confused.
"Yeah, why?" he asks and my fingers twitch.
"Yeah, well you see...my brother got curious" Damien’s smile is wide as he places his bloody palm on the man, but he doesn’t notice, he’s too excited.
"Was he good? I used a special blend of herbs and the coconut oil" he says and I feel my pocket watch again...it’s less cold.
"He has all the training to be a good fuck, but I think he was a virgin, so I..." the man makes a circle with his right hand and uses his middle finger to indicate a fucking motion.
He won’t live past ten minutes. No...six.
"I pre-stretched him good" he continues to talk and the encouraging smile on Damien’s face almost looks sinister.
A trap. He’s the family’s hunter, but I am the hunter today.
"I see...which hand did you put inside of him?" my brother asks and the man raises his hand.
"This one" he announces.
No thoughts. No count down. No warning.
"Arghhh" a bloodcurdling scream fills the room and the wet sound of a hand hitting the floor resounds in the room.
Rule number one: only I get to touch my property sexually.