"This is festive."
No one smiled.
That, too, was informative.
Liam slipped his hands into his pockets and looked between them. "Should I assume someone has died, or are we still in the more traditional stage of Canmore family bonding where I'm summoned without explanation and expected to supply my own fear?"
Ray's jaw tightened first.
Cain's mouth almost moved.
Felix, unfortunately, looked pleased.
"There he is," Felix said, his voice smooth with age and cultivated patience. "Our little engineer."
Liam's smile did not reach his eyes.
"I stopped being little years ago. The fact that you refuse to update your worldview sounds expensive, but not technically my problem."
Ray closed his eyes for one brief second, as if summoning restraint from a private reserve.
"Liam," he said. "Sit down."
"No, Ray," Felix intervened. His light purple eyes watched his nephew with an interest that made Liam shudder. "Come closer."
Liam did not move.
Every instinct he had told him that obeying Felix Canmore was a one-time mistake that would cost him the rest of his life in interest. But refusing him outright in a room like this - here, with Ray behind the desk pretending to be carved from something nobler than cowardice, and Cain by the window standing in that same polished stillness that always suggested he had already decided how much bloodshed would remain socially acceptable - was its own kind of gamble.
So Liam smiled.
It was a bad idea, and he knew it.
"I'm already close enough to regret being here."
Felix smiled back.
'Fuck.'
Every smile Felix had was poison. There was never any warmth, amusement, or genuine softness; only a thin, elegant curve of the mouth that made cruelty appear civilized.
"Come closer," he repeated.
The room had gone still around the words.
Ray said nothing.
Of course he said nothing.
Liam looked at him for one beat, just long enough to confirm the old truth in full: his father was going to let this happen. Whether out of fear, calculation, weakness, or the particular breed of rot that passed for family loyalty among the Canmores, it hardly mattered. The result was the same.
Liam stepped forward.
One pace.
Then another.
He stopped at a distance that would have been safe with almost anyone else.
Felix rose.
The movement was unhurried, almost graceful, the measured ease of an old predator with no need to prove speed. His cane stayed behind, propped against the chair. He did not need it for this.
Liam had enough time to register that.
Then Felix struck him.
The slap cracked through the office so hard it seemed to split the air.
Liam's head snapped to the side with the force of it. Pain burst white across his cheekbone, hot and immediate, the taste of copper blooming against the inside of his mouth where one tooth cut the flesh. For a split second, the entire room tilted, not enough to knock him over, not enough to satisfy anyone, but enough to force him to lock his knees.
"That," Felix whispered, his voice as calm as a summer pond, "is for the state of your attire. You stand in this office representing a lineage that carved this city out of the dirt, and you do so looking like a common grease monkey. It is an insult to the blood in your veins."
Liam didn't have time to recover. He didn't even have time to breathe before Felix's hand came back, swifter and harder than the first.
The second blow struck with enough force to make his vision flare.
Liam stumbled half a step this time before he caught himself, one hand curling hard enough into a fist that his nails bit into his palm. The other side of his face lit up in a matching wave of heat and pain, sharp enough to make his eyes water for one humiliating second. He tasted more blood.
Felix lowered his hand with the same elegant precision with which another man might have adjusted a cufflink.
"And that," he said, still in that terrible, level tone, "is for your audacity."
Silence spread through the office like ink in water.
Ray did not stand.
Cain did not intervene.
Liam stayed where he was only because moving now would have looked like weakness, and collapsing would have looked like victory.
So he straightened slowly.
His cheeks were burning so hard they felt flayed. One side of his mouth throbbed where the cut had deepened. The room had not stopped tilting entirely, but he forced it into place by sheer spite and locked his gaze back onto Felix's face.
That smile was still there.
Every smile Felix had was poison.
Poison distilled over decades into something smooth, expensive, and fatal enough to be served in crystal.
Liam swallowed the blood gathering under his tongue and smiled back.
It was a mistake.
He made it anyway.
"I assume," he said, voice roughened by pain but steady enough to remain offensive, "that the third strike would be for disappointing you by staying upright."
Ray inhaled sharply through his nose.
Cain's expression did not change, but something in his eyes flickered once, quick and unreadable.
Felix, however, looked pleased.
Which was worse than anger.
Felix stepped closer, close enough that Liam could smell the cold edge of his pheromones beneath the polished civility of his scent. Dominant omega. Old power. The sort of presence that had learned long ago how to make violence feel like etiquette.
"You confuse endurance with defiance," Felix said softly. "That is a family flaw on your mother's side."
Liam's smile sharpened despite the pain splitting his face.
"Interesting," he said. "I had assumed the family flaw was you."
Ray's hand came down flat against the desk.
"Enough."
The word cracked through the room, not with authority but with strain. Too late. Too weak. A man trying to close a door after inviting the wolf in himself.
Felix did not even glance at him.
His pale eyes remained fixed on Liam with that same cool fascination, as though this were not an assault but an assessment.
Then, with the ease of a man rearranging furniture, Felix reached out and caught Liam by the jaw.
Not hard enough to bruise immediately, but hard enough to remember.
His fingers pressed into both sides of Liam's face, right where the heat was worst, and pain lanced hot and electric through his skull. Liam's breath caught despite himself.
"There," Felix murmured. "Now you look attentive."
Liam would have rather died than make a sound for him, so he said nothing.
Felix tilted Liam's face slightly, inspecting the damage with a detached sort of satisfaction.
"This is what happens," he said, "when useful things forget what they were made for."
Ray looked away.
Only for a second, but Liam saw it.
He saw it, understood it, and felt something old and ugly inside him turn colder.
Felix released him at last, leaving Liam's jaw aching.
Liam took one measured step back, slow enough to look intentional, and wiped the fresh line of blood from the corner of his mouth with the side of his thumb. He looked at the red smear briefly, then at Ray, then at Cain, and finally back to Felix.
"Well," he said quietly, the softness in his voice now far more dangerous than volume would have been, "the welcome has been memorable. Shall we move to the part where you explain why I was called here, or was the point simply to remind everyone that civility in this family is a decorative lie?"
Ray closed his eyes.
Cain's mouth almost twitched again, though whether from disapproval or amusement Liam could not tell.
Felix only smiled wider.
"Yes," Felix said. "Now we can begin."
He turned away as though the matter of hitting Liam had already become too insignificant to hold his interest any longer, then resumed his seat with infuriating calm. One hand settled over the head of his cane. The other rested lightly on the armrest.
He looked, Liam thought, like a man presiding over a board meeting rather than one who had just struck his grandson twice across the face.
"Sit down," Felix said.