By the time Liam stepped out of the lift, he was no longer angry in any ordinary, manageable sense.
The main hall of Canmore Manor was as immaculate and oppressive as ever, all polished stone, old wealth, and the sort of architectural arrogance that assumed everyone entering it ought to feel smaller than the family that built it. The staff moved quietly beneath the chandeliers with trained efficiency, eyes lowered, expressions neutral, as though the house itself had taught them that survival depended on never noticing what happened behind closed doors.
Liam crossed the floor without slowing.
A footman near the doors straightened at once. "Sir, shall the car be—"
"No."
The man stopped.
Liam did not.
He pushed through the front doors and stepped into the late afternoon air with his jaw clenched hard enough that the ache in his bruised face flared again.
The front terrace opened over the descending gardens, all geometric hedges and black stone paths and ornamental ether lamps that would come alive at dusk in tasteful shades of gold. Beyond them, the city spread outward in layers of glass, iron, and old money pretending it had invented industry out of personal virtue.
Liam took the steps down too fast for elegance and just slow enough not to look like he was fleeing.
Because he was not fleeing.
He was leaving before he did something dramatic enough to become inconvenient.
There was a difference.
At the bottom of the terrace, he stopped beside one of the long reflecting pools and looked down at the water. His own face stared back at him, slightly fractured by the ripple of the fountain current.
Two handprints blooming invisibly beneath the skin, one on each side of his face, with swelling already beginning to pull at the sharpness of his cheekbones.
Felix had hit him like Liam was a possession that required maintenance.
Ray had sat there and watched like the absence of intervention could still be mistaken for neutrality.
Cain had said nothing, which was himself, truly.
Liam stared at his reflection for another second.
Then he laughed once, low and humorless.
"Oh, absolutely not," he said to the water.
Because that, truly, was the core of it.
'Absolutely not.'
Felix wanted him still. Contained. Bruised into cooperation and then polished into usefulness. He wanted Liam at that reception in three nights standing exactly where he was placed, dressed how he was told, speaking when permitted, and serving some purpose that had not yet been explained because monsters always preferred their knives wrapped until the last possible second.
He wanted a doll.
A Canmore doll, admittedly. Expensive, sharp-featured, badly tempered, and prone to technical sabotage, but a doll all the same.
Liam straightened.
'No.'
If Felix wanted a room full of power arranged to his liking, then Liam could do that too.
He was not limited to one side of the bloodline.
That realization landed with such clean force that it almost steadied him.
His mother.
His mother had seen the rot in this family early, or perhaps she had simply possessed the good sense not to romanticize it once it turned its attention toward her. She had divorced Ray before Felix could lock the marriage down into one more permanent arrangement of control. She had walked out with dignity, lawyers, and a surname she could afford to lose because the one she had been born with still meant something on its own.
More importantly, she had not walked out alone.
Her family had been strong enough, rich enough, and vicious enough in the correct legal and social ways that Felix had never managed to reach too far into Liam's childhood without paying for the attempt.
Not that he hadn't tried.
But there were reasons Liam had not been raised entirely under this roof, reasons his earliest memories did not all smell like polished wood and trapped air and political suffocation. Reasons his mother's side had evolved into a second foundation rather than a refuge.
Felix hated foundations he did not own.
Liam pulled out his phone.
For one second he considered calling his mother directly.
Then he rejected the idea.
Not because she would not help. She would.
But because if he brought this to her first, she would come in hot, personal, and furious, and while Liam loved many things about his mother, one of them was not subtlety under emotional provocation.
No. He needed the other boss in the room.
The real one.
He scrolled once, found the contact, and pressed call.
The line rang only once.
"Well," said a woman's voice, smooth as old silk and twice as dangerous. "Either someone has died, or you've finally decided to admit my side of the family is genetically superior."
Liam closed his eyes briefly.
Aunt Mirelle.
His mother's eldest sister.
Not the sentimental option, but the highly effective one.
"No one's dead," Liam said. "Though the afternoon did make a compelling argument."
There was a pause on the line.
When Mirelle spoke again, the lightness was gone.
"What happened?"
Liam looked back at the manor.
At the black stone, the high windows, and the carefully preserved face of a family that believed architecture could compensate for moral failure.
"Felix called me in," he said. "Ray was there. Cain too."
Another pause.
"Ah," said Mirelle. "The holy trinity of congenital disappointment."
Despite himself, Liam felt the corner of his mouth pull. It hurt like hell.
"He hit me."