Call Me Nothing

Chapter Four: Sharp Rules, Sharper Edges

He studies me for a beat. Then smiles. Not warm. Not polite. The kind of smile that knows exactly how to ruin you.

“Touché.”

Silence coils between us like smoke. I feel the heat rise in my chest, but I don’t look away. He’s not going to be the first to win this stare down.

“Who the hell are you?” I ask, arms crossed tight.

He shifts—still lounging like he owns the place—and lets the mug dangle from his fingers. “Someone Elaine regrets letting in. But not enough to kick out.”

My jaw tightens. “She regrets a lot of things.”

“Like you?” he asks.

No pause. No blink. Just knives in his mouth.

That’s when I move.

I grab the nearest book off a shelf—something thick and bound in red leather—and hurl it across the room with everything I’ve got.

He ducks with lazy, almost bored grace.

The book slams into the wall behind him with a solid thunk and falls to the floor, spine-first.

He still doesn’t flinch.

Just sets his mug down slowly. Leans forward.

Smiles.

The real kind.

The dangerous kind.

“Finally,” he murmurs, like he’s just been given a reason to live. “Something interesting.”

I’m already turning to leave when he adds, too quietly— “She used to throw things too, you know. Your mother.”

That stops me cold.

I hate how everyone seems to know about my mother while I have no clue what she even looks like.

I turn back slowly, the blood roaring in my ears. My body shaking, my voice cracking. “You don’t get to talk about her.”

“I’m just saying,” he says, leaning back again, arms stretched across the sofa like wings, “it must run in the family. The temper. The theatrics. The way you walk into a room that isn’t yours without knocking.”

“You don’t know me.”

“Don’t I?”

His voice is smooth, unreadable, but it scrapes over every raw nerve I’ve got.

We stare at each other for one long, unbearable moment.

And I don’t know if I want to slap him or—

No.

I don’t let that thought finish.

I turn on my heel and walk out without another word.

Because if I stay one second longer in that room.

I’ll do something worse than throw a book.

I slam the door behind me, the echo ricocheting through the marble ribs of the estate like a war cry muffled by velvet. My chest rises and falls too fast. My fingers itch. My whole body is a tight coil of fury and grief, and that boy—no, that man—just poked the hornet’s nest like he wanted to be stung.

Down the hall, a clock ticks loud enough to split atoms.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Like the estate is counting down to my unraveling.

I don’t know who he is—not yet. But he knew who I was. Knew.

And he said it like it was a curse. Like being my father’s daughter was something dirty.