The Rejected True Heiress (Liora and Callum) novel Chapter 344

Callum’s POV

My father’s shadow darkened the room.

There was a time in my life when my father’s presence seemed enormous and all-consuming, like a black hole filling any space he entered. When I was a child, I remembered thinking that he was big enough to reach the moon, or to blot out the sun.

I’d gotten much bigger since then. I was taller than him now, although not as broad. He didn’t scare me anymore.

At least, that was what I thought.

But now, as I stood there in the middle of his office, holding evidence for something that I clearly shouldn’t have known about, I felt so small and insignificant that I could practically feel myself shrinking before my father.

“Callum.” His eyes flicked to the folder in my hands. “What do you have there, boy?”

My throat bobbed, but I held the folder up. “You and Mom took out loans?”

He didn’t answer right away. Just stared at the folder without the slightest change in his expression.

Then, slowly, he reached for his belt buckle.

“Yes,” he said calmly, easily, like we were discussing the weather. The sound of his belt buckle clinking in the quiet space made my nerves stand on end. “I suppose you know all about it now, don’t you? Or at least, you think you do.”

I stared at him and tried to ignore the way he slowly removed his belt, one loop at a time, with such painstaking slowness that it was definitely meant to scare me. Just as it did when I was little and I thought he was the size of the world.

“If there’s more to it,” I replied in a surprisingly even voice of my own, “then I guess there’s no point in not telling me all of it now.”

“Yes. I suppose you’re right.” He looked at me. “Callum, when you were a child, your mother and I made some bad investments.”

“Bad as in…?”

“Let’s just say that the people we decided to work with were the unsavory type.”

My father didn’t look angry when I finished saying those words. If anything, he just looked utterly calm, which was more terrifying than anything.

I knew that look all too well. I’d seen it plenty of times growing up, when my father knew that he was going to get his way in the long run, regardless of what I or anyone else wanted.

It was a look that spoke of an impending punishment, followed by an ultimatum that I wouldn’t be able to refuse.

Just like the ultimatum he and my mother had made about Liora.

“Is that your final decision?” he asked.

I nodded. “I’m not marrying Bianca.” I pulled the ring off my finger and threw that down, too. “To hell with her dowry. I’m not your slave to use as you see fit. And I don’t have to repay you just because you decided to go and take money from a loan shark. I never asked for any of this.”

“Kneel,” he said calmly.

I glanced at the belt again. He’d taken the buckle end of it in his hand now, and pulled the leather taut, forcing it to make a familiar snapping sound that made me flinch.